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I think you might be attacking a straw man. I'm a strong believer in the traditional CS path, but when I argue for it in the context of a 4-year degree, I'm rea

I think you might be attacking a straw man. I'm a strong believer in the traditional CS path, but when I argue for it in the context of a 4-year degree, I'm really just using shorthand to describe the most obvious way to get there. Will Hunting was right about a library card, but many -- I think most -- people require the discipline imposed on them by a university setting to actually do the work. Obviously -- obviously! -- you can learn this stuff on your own. But I doubt there are many self-taught programmers who've actually spent hours drawing out trees and solving recurrences and so on. To the extent that you've done that, then hooray for you!

fapjacks 10y ago
> doubt there are many self-taught programmers who've actually spent hours drawing out trees and solving recurrences and so on I am a self-taught programmer that has done exactly this. What good is reading the material if you don't pound some of that stuff into your brain? I never did homework in school, but I have done tons of it for myself.
danso 10y ago
Definitely agree with you here...as a current faculty member, but someone who has been largely self-taught in recent years, I have to keep reminding myself that I myself needed the structure and artificial deadlines of homework and finals to get into the groove, to get to the point where I could get a job in which I learned more skills at a significantly faster rate (daily professional deadlines tend to do that to you). Not everyone starts out as a self-learner. Recently, a guy named Haseeb made some news for scoring a job worth $250K at Airbnb even though he was an English major who was not even a year removed from his bootcamp entry date. People were pissed but if you read the guy's story, you'd see that he's not your regular bootcamper...he was a millionaire as a teenager after teaching himself how to play poker...and this is how he describes his bootcamp experience: http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii/ http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii... > Entering into App Academy, barely knowing the basics of Ruby, I came into the office and grinded every day, spending 80+ hour weeks just coding and studying. I’d come in at 9AM in the morning and leave around midnight, 7 days a week, sleeping in a bunk bed in SOMA in a 200 square feet shared room. How many students at even the best colleges can describe themselves as working that hard on anything (well, other than athletes)?

fapjacks 10y ago

> doubt there are many self-taught programmers who've actually spent hours drawing out trees and solving recurrences and so on I am a self-taught programmer that has done exactly this. What good is reading the material if you don't pound some of that stuff into your brain? I never did homework in school, but I have done tons of it for myself.

danso 10y ago

Definitely agree with you here...as a current faculty member, but someone who has been largely self-taught in recent years, I have to keep reminding myself that I myself needed the structure and artificial deadlines of homework and finals to get into the groove, to get to the point where I could get a job in which I learned more skills at a significantly faster rate (daily professional deadlines tend to do that to you). Not everyone starts out as a self-learner. Recently, a guy named Haseeb made some news for scoring a job worth $250K at Airbnb even though he was an English major who was not even a year removed from his bootcamp entry date. People were pissed but if you read the guy's story, you'd see that he's not your regular bootcamper...he was a millionaire as a teenager after teaching himself how to play poker...and this is how he describes his bootcamp experience: http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii/ http://haseebq.com/farewell-app-academy-hello-airbnb-part-ii... > Entering into App Academy, barely knowing the basics of Ruby, I came into the office and grinded every day, spending 80+ hour weeks just coding and studying. I’d come in at 9AM in the morning and leave around midnight, 7 days a week, sleeping in a bunk bed in SOMA in a 200 square feet shared room. How many students at even the best colleges can describe themselves as working that hard on anything (well, other than athletes)?