3 ms·
No? How is he supposed to learn basic theory of data structures and algorithms? Of course everything can be learned outside of college, but doing that in a par
by WhitneyLand 10y ago
No? How is he supposed to learn basic theory of data structures and algorithms? Of course everything can be learned outside of college, but doing that in a part time unstructured way is not easy.
Knowing relevant theory is power. Is the goal to be an enterprise CRUD programmer or an architect who is a thought leader and helps set the direction of what you're working on?
I know everything can be done without a degree, I have a few genius friends who are doing great. But could they have had more options to choose from, more freedom, more potential with a degree? Hard to say, but most people don't self-learn everything they would otherwise.
- Malic 10y agoI think what chpmrc means is that going for a Masters degree in CS versus stopping at a Bachelors degree in CS may or may not be of value.
- rahimnathwani 10y agoI'm not sure you're right. I read OP as already having a BS in another discipline, and considering doing a CS masters (without a BS CS first).
- WhitneyLand 10y agorahimnathwani that's correct. for this person a masters would be like intro to cs.
- emptyVal 10y agoI kind of agree and disagree I work a lot with distributed systems so I have to read a lot of papers, and I have to implement a lot of data structures myself, however I am severely lacking in formal education. While initially my lack of education was a difficult barrier I overcame it pretty quickly. I also have been writing nontrivial code in haskell just to improve my use of scala so that's more of academia I have to deal with. But I still stand by the fact that unless you're going to stanford, CMU, or MIT, or a professor who is not strictly a theorist at an above average school takes a liking to you. If not and you really enjoy the field you're better off teaching yourself.