4 ms·

Side note: how did you not go to high school and end up in tech(assuming here), just curious, you don't have to answer of course :-)

zitterbewegung 10y ago
You can skip high school by taking a GED and applying to a community college.
- 1_2__3 10y ago
  Or as the article points out you can just not go to college at all.
- LyndsySimon 10y ago
  Colleges and universities generally don't require that you have a GED at all. If you can score well on their entrance exam (SAT or ACT), they you qualify for enrollment.
VLM 10y ago
"High School" as an educational trifurcation is very USA, most of the world seems to bifurcate into pre-teen and teen. No concept outside the USA of going to a separate building for ages 14-18. For a good time there's also no enforced standard in the USA for middle school (older elementary) vs Junior High (youth high school). I went to a middle school that operated internally like a junior high, which was interesting. Construction/logistical reasons resulted in my high school experience being only 3 years sophomore to senior, freshmen year was the last year of middle school. Everyone who graduated with me had a middle school as their first year of high school on their transcript. When I was young enough for anyone to care about my education this sometimes led to bizarre conversations with HR people about why I transferred schools or why did I skip a grade, etc.
- cunac 10y ago
  When I was growing up what we had was (direct translation of terms) - basic school (grade 1-8) --> elementary - middle school (9-12) --> high school - high school --> 3yr college - university -> 4+ years so I got really confused most of the time :-)
- zokier 10y ago
  > "High School" as an educational trifurcation is very USA, most of the world seems to bifurcate into pre-teen and teen. No concept outside the USA of going to a separate building for ages 14-18. Division of secondary education into separate upper and lower stages is actually pretty damn common, and definitely not unique just for USA. For example in Finland (and I think in Norway too) we have 6 years in primary, 3 in lower secondary and 3 in upper secondary school. Both EU and UN classification have three levels for this range.
  - pacaro 10y ago
    The division certainly exists, but most of the rest of the world uses the concepts of primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The US tends to distinguish between before high school, high school, and college. Which puts the demarcation lines in different places. International comparisons are further complicated by the different focii that exist in different countries. For example, my final two years of secondary education in the U.K. were entirely focused on a very academic approach to Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. While the school payed lip service to the idea of well-rounded students, that was really left to the kids. At university, my first mathematics lecture was on surface integrals — if you weren't ready for that there had been a catch-up summer class, but the implication was that you'd be ready.
MichaelGG 10y ago
I did the same thing; never finished Grade 10. Had been playing with coding since I was 5 [1]. Always knew one day I'd "do something with computers". My dad wrote one of the first books on the Internet in '92 so I got some good exposure somewhat early. Moved to a third world country at 15 cause they didn't card for booze. Ended up with some web site contracts, and kept diving deeper until I was a "real" programmer (not just web/CRUD stuff - but high perf, high-scale, life-critical, reversing, etc.). It was only hard for the first little bit. No one takes a 17-yr-old seriously. But I had a 24-yr-old business partner and that helped. I managed to get a speaking slot at a 300+ person business conference and picked up some solid clients that built portfolio. Plus it was 2000, so a whiz-kid-Internet-thing had some sort of cachet perhaps. I already had a real career and some recognition by the time I would have graduated, so, eh, it worked out and was fun. Though I do regret not knowing maths and not having taken really solid algorithms classes (OTOH, no guarantee I'd have gone to a real school - might have gotten fake CS classes like so many end up with). And I wonder what kind of connections I might have made if I had stayed with it, especially staying in the US. 1: Most elaborate thing was designing a fake grade tracking program (demo) to convince other kids I had hacked the school's systems (hint: they used paper) and could change their grades.
- niceperson 10y ago
  which book?
  - MichaelGG 10y ago
    "Fundamentals of Database Systems". Hashing schemes and so on. I thought I had come up with some neat stuff, it seemed to work real fast, showed my diagrams to a friend and he showed me identical ones from his classes. Edit: Sorry I had made an edit and was referring to another book. The book my dad wrote was called NetPower. Was a collection of links, gopher servers, etc.
    - praneshp 10y ago
      Is it the one by Navathe and Elmasri or a different one?
droithomme 10y ago
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I didn't finish high school either. I dropped out, enrolled in a top ranked university, and graduated at the top of my class. Since then I've since then done extensive work as an engineer, hold numerous patents, and am a respected writer. I've also taught both college and high school classes on the side. Often the best thing someone can do is drop out of high school. I don't recommend it for anyone other than the developmentally disabled who need extra time to learn basic skills.
microcolonel 10y ago
Home schooling in my jurisdiction carries absolutely no reporting obligation, so after registering for that I didn't need to do anything in particular. I got my first job through a combination of meeting my boss at a meetup, and knowing somebody who worked for him. I started working at 17. My first week there, I learned AngularJS (by porting a vanilla javascript application). By my second week, I was already leading a project which was delivered ahead of schedule. Without Wikipedia and the Free Software Foundation I would probably not have had it as easy. Job success is mainly about a combination of basic mental health and general intelligence. If you have these two things, you can make it in software. I think it also helped that I had a fairly mature outlook and lifestyle by then. It also probably helped that I looked like a goofy adult and not just a mature adolescent. From time to time I wonder what life might have been if I stayed through high school and actually tried (I was a very bad student in primary school). I probably can't go to law school, though in some jurisdictions I could study independently to practice law; I almost certainly couldn't go into medicine. In a way, even though I am young enough to change course in life, a number of doors are closed because I did not go to high school. As for me, I like my life a lot.
- marak830 9y ago
  Interesting, thanks for taking the time to write that up.

zitterbewegung 10y ago

You can skip high school by taking a GED and applying to a community college.

1_2__3 10y ago
Or as the article points out you can just not go to college at all.
LyndsySimon 10y ago
Colleges and universities generally don't require that you have a GED at all. If you can score well on their entrance exam (SAT or ACT), they you qualify for enrollment.

VLM 10y ago

"High School" as an educational trifurcation is very USA, most of the world seems to bifurcate into pre-teen and teen. No concept outside the USA of going to a separate building for ages 14-18. For a good time there's also no enforced standard in the USA for middle school (older elementary) vs Junior High (youth high school). I went to a middle school that operated internally like a junior high, which was interesting. Construction/logistical reasons resulted in my high school experience being only 3 years sophomore to senior, freshmen year was the last year of middle school. Everyone who graduated with me had a middle school as their first year of high school on their transcript. When I was young enough for anyone to care about my education this sometimes led to bizarre conversations with HR people about why I transferred schools or why did I skip a grade, etc.

cunac 10y ago
When I was growing up what we had was (direct translation of terms) - basic school (grade 1-8) --> elementary - middle school (9-12) --> high school - high school --> 3yr college - university -> 4+ years so I got really confused most of the time :-)
zokier 10y ago
> "High School" as an educational trifurcation is very USA, most of the world seems to bifurcate into pre-teen and teen. No concept outside the USA of going to a separate building for ages 14-18. Division of secondary education into separate upper and lower stages is actually pretty damn common, and definitely not unique just for USA. For example in Finland (and I think in Norway too) we have 6 years in primary, 3 in lower secondary and 3 in upper secondary school. Both EU and UN classification have three levels for this range.
- pacaro 10y ago
  The division certainly exists, but most of the rest of the world uses the concepts of primary, secondary, and tertiary education. The US tends to distinguish between before high school, high school, and college. Which puts the demarcation lines in different places. International comparisons are further complicated by the different focii that exist in different countries. For example, my final two years of secondary education in the U.K. were entirely focused on a very academic approach to Mathematics, Physics, and Chemistry. While the school payed lip service to the idea of well-rounded students, that was really left to the kids. At university, my first mathematics lecture was on surface integrals — if you weren't ready for that there had been a catch-up summer class, but the implication was that you'd be ready.

MichaelGG 10y ago

I did the same thing; never finished Grade 10. Had been playing with coding since I was 5 [1]. Always knew one day I'd "do something with computers". My dad wrote one of the first books on the Internet in '92 so I got some good exposure somewhat early. Moved to a third world country at 15 cause they didn't card for booze. Ended up with some web site contracts, and kept diving deeper until I was a "real" programmer (not just web/CRUD stuff - but high perf, high-scale, life-critical, reversing, etc.). It was only hard for the first little bit. No one takes a 17-yr-old seriously. But I had a 24-yr-old business partner and that helped. I managed to get a speaking slot at a 300+ person business conference and picked up some solid clients that built portfolio. Plus it was 2000, so a whiz-kid-Internet-thing had some sort of cachet perhaps. I already had a real career and some recognition by the time I would have graduated, so, eh, it worked out and was fun. Though I do regret not knowing maths and not having taken really solid algorithms classes (OTOH, no guarantee I'd have gone to a real school - might have gotten fake CS classes like so many end up with). And I wonder what kind of connections I might have made if I had stayed with it, especially staying in the US. 1: Most elaborate thing was designing a fake grade tracking program (demo) to convince other kids I had hacked the school's systems (hint: they used paper) and could change their grades.

niceperson 10y ago
which book?
- MichaelGG 10y ago
  "Fundamentals of Database Systems". Hashing schemes and so on. I thought I had come up with some neat stuff, it seemed to work real fast, showed my diagrams to a friend and he showed me identical ones from his classes. Edit: Sorry I had made an edit and was referring to another book. The book my dad wrote was called NetPower. Was a collection of links, gopher servers, etc.
  - praneshp 10y ago
    Is it the one by Navathe and Elmasri or a different one?

droithomme 10y ago

I'm not the person you're responding to, but I didn't finish high school either. I dropped out, enrolled in a top ranked university, and graduated at the top of my class. Since then I've since then done extensive work as an engineer, hold numerous patents, and am a respected writer. I've also taught both college and high school classes on the side. Often the best thing someone can do is drop out of high school. I don't recommend it for anyone other than the developmentally disabled who need extra time to learn basic skills.

microcolonel 10y ago

Home schooling in my jurisdiction carries absolutely no reporting obligation, so after registering for that I didn't need to do anything in particular. I got my first job through a combination of meeting my boss at a meetup, and knowing somebody who worked for him. I started working at 17. My first week there, I learned AngularJS (by porting a vanilla javascript application). By my second week, I was already leading a project which was delivered ahead of schedule. Without Wikipedia and the Free Software Foundation I would probably not have had it as easy. Job success is mainly about a combination of basic mental health and general intelligence. If you have these two things, you can make it in software. I think it also helped that I had a fairly mature outlook and lifestyle by then. It also probably helped that I looked like a goofy adult and not just a mature adolescent. From time to time I wonder what life might have been if I stayed through high school and actually tried (I was a very bad student in primary school). I probably can't go to law school, though in some jurisdictions I could study independently to practice law; I almost certainly couldn't go into medicine. In a way, even though I am young enough to change course in life, a number of doors are closed because I did not go to high school. As for me, I like my life a lot.

marak830 9y ago
Interesting, thanks for taking the time to write that up.