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How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

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How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#1

Post by AdobiWanKenobi »

To set the scene: I wanted to build my own devboard for my own projects. I'm sat here looking at my screen after having opened KiCAD with some of the documentation for an STM32H7 MCU. It dawns on me that I have absolutely zero clue of what I am looking at and have no idea where to start beyond watching youtube. Here I am now writing this.

Now this would be fine under normal circumstances and I would be happy to learn, like I previously did with web dev. Nor would I expect to know how to do it intuitively. However I literally went to university for this subject, this stuff surely should have been covered (it wasn't)? Feeling illiterate, and missing foundational knowledge (and so often across many fields) can't be right?.

I don't mean to write this as a university is a scam type post ... but like is this normal?

Does everyone go through this?

Did their degree actually help them in any meaningful way? Assuming you stayed in the same field of course.

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#3

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

Life is too large. It's impossible to cover it all, but I get what you're saying. At this point, your best bet is to start asking questions online until you get the information you need.

I will say that my degree was useful but mostly because a 4 yr degree was required by my job. I could have gotten a 4 yr degree in pottery + 6 months of code monkey school and I could have gotten the same job.

I have the same gripe about k-12 school. !2+ years of school and most people by far can't get a decent paying job once out of school. That's the real scam from my view.

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#4

Post by GianFabien »

Building your own devboard requires skills in many interdependent areas. Have you tried using an Arduino or similar first? Having built computers from TTL chips and wirewrap chassis, I can confirm that digital electronics field has grown massively and requires knowledge in many specialist areas. Even designing a PCB requires a great deal of knowledge. Tools like KiCAD are great, but they don't abstract out the requisite underlying knowledge.

A university degree in any professional field is only the starting point for a lifetime of learning. In my pre-internet days I spent several thousand dollars a year on books and professional journals all of which I read cover-to-cover. With the internet I find all the materials I need with some focused searching.

The only thing that you truly learn at university is how to research, ie ask questions and then find the answers. Being a professional means having the experience to apply your learning to specific outcomes.

For me learning is very much just-in-time. I stumble across something I don't have a clue about, so I research. Typically I come across something that I don't understand, so then I dig into that and so on. Generally I need to get down into the weeds until I connect with something I already know. Then I start building upwards. Pretty soon I hit another thing I don't understand and repeat the exercise.

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#5

Post by psyklic »

Everyone must learn new things after university. For example, LLMs, blockchain, and new frameworks likely weren't covered. This is why they say in university you learn how to learn.

My personal opinion is that universities should teach things that would be useful to an expert which you won't have time to learn at a job. Like math and gaining deep understandings of things.

That said, I'd assume if you went to university in computer engineering (i.e. embedded systems/digital electronics), you'd have numerous labs and projects designing and using microcontrollers.

In CS, you might have one lab/class on CPU architecture/assembly but I'm guessing this would be a specialized focus area.

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#6

Post by NetworkPerson »

My degree is in cybersecurity. But the education was so bad that I filed a defense against repayment claim and won. So not really sure how I feel about that one… lots of wasted time which I made up teaching myself. Degree looks good on applications at least.

Bottom line I suppose is that I’m a network engineer working with a variety of clients. I enjoy the work for the most part (could do with less after hours stuff) and have fun interacting with the end users to fix their problems. The education might have been bogus, but I put in the work to learn it myself and am happy with where I’m at.

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#7

Post by ungreased0675 »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #3

Life is too large. It's impossible to cover it all, but I get what you're saying. At this point, your best bet is to start asking questions online until you get the information you need. I will say that my degree was useful but mostly because a 4 yr degree was required by my job. I could have gotten a 4 yr degree in pottery + 6 months of code monkey school and I could have gotten the same job. I have the same gripe a…

You make a great point about K-12 school. That’s a lot of time invested, but what job skills do almost all high school graduates have? It’s not nearly good enough return on investment.

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#8

Post by arduinomancer »

It’s covered if you major in computer engineering rather than CS

Digital circuits, FPGAs, microcontrollers, basic electronics, lots of making stuff on breadboards

One of my big undergrad projects was to build a CPU from scratch on an FPGA and write an assembler for it

Hot take: CE is a better foundation for programming than CS

Re: How do non-software engineers feel upon reflection, about their degrees?

#10

Post by syndicatedjelly »

GianFabien wrote: post #4

Building your own devboard requires skills in many interdependent areas. Have you tried using an Arduino or similar first? Having built computers from TTL chips and wirewrap chassis, I can confirm that digital electronics field has grown massively and requires knowledge in many specialist areas. Even designing a PCB requires a great deal of knowledge. Tools like KiCAD are great, but they don't abstract out the requis…

Listen to this person, this is brilliant advice
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