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This has been covered many many times. The consensus is almost always "yes, go to college." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528863 http://news.ycombinator.

This has been covered many many times. The consensus is almost always "yes, go to college." http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528863 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1636275 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1636275 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198732 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=198732 There are many more but ycsearch and Google are failing me at the moment. Short answer: a degree is an easy way to weed out candidates. Also, if you're going to college to learn C or iPhone development or other "trade" bullshit, you're doing it wrong. You should be studying computer science. Anecdotally, I've never met a good systems developer without a degree-equivalent. The people without CS degrees also seem to be universally weak on theory: discrete math, computational complexity, proof construction, relational and abstract algebra, graph theory, and (amazingly enough) calculus. Edit: You don't have to major in computer science, I was simply stating that you shouldn't expect your university to teach you objective c. That's the kind of thing good hackers pickup in a weekend. Edit2: Seems Ptacek is an example of a systems developer who didn't get a degree. Looks like he had to duplicate the effort of learning the systems stuff anyway so, meh.

cletus 16y ago
The calculus one is a strange one. I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school. It wasn't required (it depended on what courses you chose) but most people who went into science and engineering did it (along with physics and chemistry). There's two ways to look at this problem: 1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and 2. There is everybody else. If you're asking "should I go to college?" you probably don't belong in (1). Those in (2) should go to college. Remember too that for every success story in (1) there are a hundred stories of failure and a dozen success stories in (2). It should serve as a cautionary tale that at the time something like Google could never have been created when it was without a solid theoretical foundation.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and This example is usually posted and, once again, usually noted that people like Gates and Zuckerburg are really bad examples of people who "didn't go to college" (especially since they actually did, they just didn't complete it). The only lesson that you can really take from them is that if you are already proficient, have achieved an upper-middle/upper class education and gotten into Harvard, and formed a successful software company that benefits heavily from luck of positioning and timing, yes it may be a good idea to drop out of school. I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school Confuses me too. I did multivariable differential/integral calculus in high school as well, but those with only calculus in high school seem to get in a bind whenever it comes to vector calculus or worse, calculus/differential equations with linear algebra.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    Ease up on the smoke machine there, friend. You don't have to be Harvard material to "make it" without a degree, and you know it. A good friend of mine with even less school than me (I have a summer semester at UIC) recently left his last job with a seven (7) figure pay-check to found and then sell (lucratively) his third startup. He could also kick both of our asses in a programming contest. JWZ: another obvious counterexample. There are people for whom school is extremely helpful, but if you're going to make your way through your career on raw technical aptitude, it's clearly not a requirement.
    - Locke1689 16y ago
      Ease up on the smoke machine there, friend. You don't have to be Harvard material to "make it" without a degree, and you know it Absolutely. I agree with the op's point, I was just pointing out that Gates and Zuckerberg are poor examples, not that they are the only examples.
ams6110 16y ago
The people without CS degrees also seem to be universally weak on theory: discrete math, computational complexity, proof construction, relational and abstract algebra, graph theory, and (amazingly enough) calculus I studied all that stuff in getting my BS in CS. I've not used any of it professionally, and now 20 years later I could not have an intelligent discussion on any of it much less apply it. My work has all been in business/enterprise computing, and strangely these are employers who are most likely to demand a degree as a basic qualification for employment, but are the least likely to actually require any of that knowledge.
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Anecdotally I used discrete math, relational algebra and calculus all during my summer at Microsoft. Proving that a possible architecture was valid in SQL server was very helpful before spending months trying to implement it. I think many people never use it and that's fine, but I also think it's a nice tool to have in your toolbox if you encounter a problem that could use it.
tptacek 16y ago
I'm not sure how much stock to put in the consensus of a group of people who overwhelmingly attended universities. It's not a vote. Also: a lot of the topics you've cited are only superficially implicated in systems programming. Discrete math is a great and obvious example, but (perhaps counterintuitively) so is complexity; once you understand 1, log n, n, n2, and 2n, you're ready to read papers and algorithms books critically. The number of times I've been called on to construct a proof of anything, let alone of the complexity of an algorith, is zero. Graph theory is something you'll miss. Go audit a class and read Skiena; better yet, build a router or a program dag analyzer. Finally, there's a hell of freight loaded onto that "meh"! You just "meh'd" a decade's worth of debt and four years outside of the industry. A "meh" answer here is pretty damning! Fortunately, I don't think it's at all "meh". There are plenty of good reasons to go.
- CGamesPlay 16y ago
  I'm in a similar bucket to the OP here. In my experience, everyone who went to college encourages me to go to college. However, everyone who didn't also encourages me to go to college: people who took an extra 4 or 10 years to finish their degrees encourage me to go to college; very successful college dropouts encourage their mentees to go to college. I think what it boils down to is that college is a universally accepted "good idea", and if you are deciding not to go that route, it's something that you have to tackle on an individual level.
  - Mz 16y ago
    FWIW: My sons were (and still are) adamant they are not going to college. Their father and my sister and probably a few other people tried to talk them into going. I respected their decision and my position was "I dropped out and went back later and their dad didn't go until he was older, so it makes perfect sense to me for them to not go now. Like both of their parents, they can go later if they so desire." Not everyone is a hypocrite. I just have first-hand experience with trying to decide a course of action based on all the things you don't like. It doesn't work very well. If someone has no idea what they want to do, there are worse ways to "waste" their time than pissing it away on college classes. And they are highly unlikely to be happier with that outcome. If you do know clearly what you want to do, that's different -- and I think that is part of what was different about people like Bill Gates and Madonna. They didn't drop out of college out of dislike of school. They dropped out because they were intently pursuing other goals and college was a hindrance to those goals.
swombat 16y ago
Try this link as well for my views on this topic: http://danieltenner.com/posts/0004-college-vs-startup.html http://danieltenner.com/posts/0004-college-vs-startup.html And of course the attached discussion on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500007 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500007
- Locke1689 16y ago
  Perfect. Thanks swombat, I knew I read your article and the discussion on HN a while ago but couldn't find it.
RobGR 16y ago
I don't think your links back up the assertion that there is a consensus on this subject.

cletus 16y ago

The calculus one is a strange one. I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school. It wasn't required (it depended on what courses you chose) but most people who went into science and engineering did it (along with physics and chemistry). There's two ways to look at this problem: 1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and 2. There is everybody else. If you're asking "should I go to college?" you probably don't belong in (1). Those in (2) should go to college. Remember too that for every success story in (1) there are a hundred stories of failure and a dozen success stories in (2). It should serve as a cautionary tale that at the time something like Google could never have been created when it was without a solid theoretical foundation.

Locke1689 16y ago
1. There are a significant number of college dropouts who founded massive companies (Bill Gates springs to mind). There are people who are so driven that college is a waste of time for them. A certain amount of luck is required too but luck rewards persistence; and This example is usually posted and, once again, usually noted that people like Gates and Zuckerburg are really bad examples of people who "didn't go to college" (especially since they actually did, they just didn't complete it). The only lesson that you can really take from them is that if you are already proficient, have achieved an upper-middle/upper class education and gotten into Harvard, and formed a successful software company that benefits heavily from luck of positioning and timing, yes it may be a good idea to drop out of school. I don't know what maths education is in US high schools but in Australia I learnt differential and integral calculus in high school Confuses me too. I did multivariable differential/integral calculus in high school as well, but those with only calculus in high school seem to get in a bind whenever it comes to vector calculus or worse, calculus/differential equations with linear algebra.
- tptacek 16y ago
  Ease up on the smoke machine there, friend. You don't have to be Harvard material to "make it" without a degree, and you know it. A good friend of mine with even less school than me (I have a summer semester at UIC) recently left his last job with a seven (7) figure pay-check to found and then sell (lucratively) his third startup. He could also kick both of our asses in a programming contest. JWZ: another obvious counterexample. There are people for whom school is extremely helpful, but if you're going to make your way through your career on raw technical aptitude, it's clearly not a requirement.
  - Locke1689 16y ago
    Ease up on the smoke machine there, friend. You don't have to be Harvard material to "make it" without a degree, and you know it Absolutely. I agree with the op's point, I was just pointing out that Gates and Zuckerberg are poor examples, not that they are the only examples.

ams6110 16y ago

The people without CS degrees also seem to be universally weak on theory: discrete math, computational complexity, proof construction, relational and abstract algebra, graph theory, and (amazingly enough) calculus I studied all that stuff in getting my BS in CS. I've not used any of it professionally, and now 20 years later I could not have an intelligent discussion on any of it much less apply it. My work has all been in business/enterprise computing, and strangely these are employers who are most likely to demand a degree as a basic qualification for employment, but are the least likely to actually require any of that knowledge.

Locke1689 16y ago
Anecdotally I used discrete math, relational algebra and calculus all during my summer at Microsoft. Proving that a possible architecture was valid in SQL server was very helpful before spending months trying to implement it. I think many people never use it and that's fine, but I also think it's a nice tool to have in your toolbox if you encounter a problem that could use it.

tptacek 16y ago

I'm not sure how much stock to put in the consensus of a group of people who overwhelmingly attended universities. It's not a vote. Also: a lot of the topics you've cited are only superficially implicated in systems programming. Discrete math is a great and obvious example, but (perhaps counterintuitively) so is complexity; once you understand 1, log n, n, n2, and 2n, you're ready to read papers and algorithms books critically. The number of times I've been called on to construct a proof of anything, let alone of the complexity of an algorith, is zero. Graph theory is something you'll miss. Go audit a class and read Skiena; better yet, build a router or a program dag analyzer. Finally, there's a hell of freight loaded onto that "meh"! You just "meh'd" a decade's worth of debt and four years outside of the industry. A "meh" answer here is pretty damning! Fortunately, I don't think it's at all "meh". There are plenty of good reasons to go.

CGamesPlay 16y ago
I'm in a similar bucket to the OP here. In my experience, everyone who went to college encourages me to go to college. However, everyone who didn't also encourages me to go to college: people who took an extra 4 or 10 years to finish their degrees encourage me to go to college; very successful college dropouts encourage their mentees to go to college. I think what it boils down to is that college is a universally accepted "good idea", and if you are deciding not to go that route, it's something that you have to tackle on an individual level.
- Mz 16y ago
  FWIW: My sons were (and still are) adamant they are not going to college. Their father and my sister and probably a few other people tried to talk them into going. I respected their decision and my position was "I dropped out and went back later and their dad didn't go until he was older, so it makes perfect sense to me for them to not go now. Like both of their parents, they can go later if they so desire." Not everyone is a hypocrite. I just have first-hand experience with trying to decide a course of action based on all the things you don't like. It doesn't work very well. If someone has no idea what they want to do, there are worse ways to "waste" their time than pissing it away on college classes. And they are highly unlikely to be happier with that outcome. If you do know clearly what you want to do, that's different -- and I think that is part of what was different about people like Bill Gates and Madonna. They didn't drop out of college out of dislike of school. They dropped out because they were intently pursuing other goals and college was a hindrance to those goals.

swombat 16y ago

Try this link as well for my views on this topic: http://danieltenner.com/posts/0004-college-vs-startup.html http://danieltenner.com/posts/0004-college-vs-startup.html And of course the attached discussion on HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500007 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=500007

Locke1689 16y ago
Perfect. Thanks swombat, I knew I read your article and the discussion on HN a while ago but couldn't find it.

RobGR 16y ago

I don't think your links back up the assertion that there is a consensus on this subject.