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Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#81

Post by _pius »

erlanger wrote: post #74
_pius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I posted that before parent edited his post (classy). Now if only I could become as classy as you, injecting ad hominem jabs, bitter snark, and class warfare into the argument as a replacement for actually backing up your points. [edited for wit]

Am I tired, or was that comment nothing but ad hominem? Perhaps you should take the high road next time and assume that I am just stating my own opinions, not trying to argue with anybody. [edit below] However, as you're egging me on, I will rebut your flimsy argument, the crux of which is this anecdotal beaut: "It just seems unlikely that there's 'very little' that the computer science program gave to the developer.…

Am I tired, or was that comment nothing but ad hominem?

That was kind of the point. I was trying to be classy, like you.

Perhaps you should take the high road next time and assume that I am just stating my own opinions, not trying to argue with anybody.

I didn't mean to start an argument, I was just responding to your post. You said that a degree in computer science adds nothing to how someone develops software. I replied that this seems false, gave my reasons why, and asked if anyone had evidence to the contrary. You took offense and started flaming.

[yadda yadda yadda ... you insulted my argument then said a bunch of other irrelevant stuff ... yadda yadda yadda]

My argument was short because what you said is prima facie false: you more or less said that years of training in software development adds nothing to one's software development skill set. It doesn't take much to rebut that.

The rest of what you said was all well and good, but you're now attacking a strawman. We're not talking about a cost-benefit analysis of going to college, so your points aren't really germane here. We're talking about your claim that college adds nothing, which you still haven't backed up ... probably because it's a completely untenable position. Four years of anything will add something to your skill set.

But flame on ... I'm done with the thread.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#82

Post by stan_rogers »

carterschonwald wrote: post #75
stan_rogers wrote: post #27

Tough one. I'm a high school dropout, so I had to check Elementary School. Now, I've taught at colleges (electronics and linear mathematics), but I've never actually attended one as a student. Some lives are weirder than others, I guess.

how did you get the certification needed to teach linear algebra?

You assume that certification needs to fall within a particular discipline. And you have probably also assumed that "college" is at least approximately equal to "university", which is not the case in Ontario, Canada. What was required was a Teacher of Adults certificate and demonstrated competence. Short of posting my entire resume, I'll just say that there are areas of military avionics that require a little more than the mere ability to use an oscilloscope, and that I had had teaching experience in the interim period.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#86

Post by keefe »

edw519 wrote: post #45
narag wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assigned too many times to maintainance projects, I think I've deleted as many lines as I've written.

LifetimeLOC = LOCWritten + LOCDeleted Think about it. In order to write 300 good lines of code, you probably wrote 1,000 lines of code before refactoring. Same thing, just that someone else put in all the refactorable lines before you got there.

It's a pretty useless metric. How many lines of code did the people who invented quicksort (pick great algo of your choice) write in their first implementation? It's certainly important to have some minimum # so you can say you know what writing software is like, but imho judging by counting lines of code is roughly equivalent to judging mathematicians by # of lines in their proofs... that is to say, totally ridiculous.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#87

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

_pius wrote: post #17
erlanger wrote: post #7

Pst. Don't exclude people without college degrees. They're often far more resourceful, in my experience, and there's little that college gives you as a developer. Hire the person, not the school.

there's little that college gives you as a developer I hear this fallacy a lot. A lot of people seem to give it a pass and nod along with it, maybe because it makes them feel better or maybe because it seems like the politically correct thing to say in a room full of talented hackers, only some of whom went to college. While you in no way need to go to college to be a developer, I think people should be highly skepti…

Here's the thing: I got a Masters in Software engineering 10 years after getting a BSEE. I studied all the interesting topics in software development I could find in the 10 years before going back to school. During my masters coursework, however, I was exposed to a bunch of things I had absolutely no interest in or knowledge of and I was blown away by how little I knew about the field in general as opposed to my little slice of it.

The problem with most self-taught people is that the knowledge is deep, but narrow. To be an excellent, innovative, developer you need breadth in order to be able to consider alternate approaches to a problem, but with sufficient depth in certain key areas to be able to do analysis when necessary.

College provides in 4 years what could otherwise take decades of "on the job" learning.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#88

Post by jlees »

axod wrote: post #67
robin_reala wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don’t. I believe the last tuition grants were issued in 1996, and they’d been price-frozen for a while before that.

Shortly after Labour got into power they introduced tuition fees. There's still hope - they'll shortly be out of power, so who knows.

At least a few years ago, when I did my undergrad, you didn't actually have to pay the fees if you were from a low income background though. Couple that with a student loan you don't have to pay off until you're earning, and it's not quite as evil as it sounds.

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#89

Post by yummyfajitas »

metatronscube wrote: post #42

Got a B.Eng (Hons) and MSc (Distinction), the first one was a joint degree between CS and Electronic and Electrical Engineering and the last was straight up CS. Its interesting to see the number of PhD's here. Always considered doing one but was put off when told that I had to defend my PhD 4-5 times a year and the PhD I was offered sounded very interesting but not quite my cup of tea (it was Planning in AI) For the…

I got one. I certainly enjoyed the experience. Original research is fun, and beyond that I had no responsibilities. Hard to beat that as far as jobs go.

It may not have been worthwhile in terms of career benefit (jury is still out). I don't want to be an academic, though I may follow that trajectory a few more years if the market stays bad. I may be able to spin off a research related startup, but that isn't guaranteed yet.

Regarding opportunity costs, I definitely missed out on getting into finance during the bubble.

(Incidentally, if anyone is looking for a python/c++ dev with solid quantitative skills, feel free to contact me.)

Re: Poll: What is your highest educational qualification?

#90

Post by yardie »

They do have one thing going for them. Unlike the narrow defined parameters of American higher education they do have a variety of outlets. You can stop your education at any time and basically have a degree (I think it's called a license) for each year complete: Bac+1, Bac+2, Bac+3. I have so many friends that have nothing to show after 2 or 3 years of school because they stopped for health, financial, or personal reasons.
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