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Any high school senior who self-describes as a "pretty badass dev and designer" desperately needs more education. College is not the only way to get that educat
by alric 16y ago
Any high school senior who self-describes as a "pretty badass dev and designer" desperately needs more education. College is not the only way to get that education, but it is probably the most fun. You have the rest of your life to work, make money, launch projects, etc.
Especially if somebody else is paying your way, college is a small window of time where you can be entirely devoted to learning and growing. Meet people like you and people who are not like you but you still respect. Maybe instead of a doing startups, you find a field of research that draws you in. Or maybe you discover that philosophy is actually what you want to study and you spend the next four years trying to understand what it means to truly live a meaningful life. You can still keep programming on your own time and leave college if a great startup opportunity comes along.
If you are very, very intelligent, my advice is to go to the best school you can afford, not for the education but for the relationships you will make. It is a wonderful, humbling experience to walk around the grounds of Stanford, MIT, etc., and realize there are thousands of people just as smart as you, just as competent, just as lost and searching.
Whatever direction you take, put a large X on your calendar one year from now. Reevaluate your decision. A year of working full-time or a year of college will give you much, much more perspective. I'm glad I went to a great college, but I would have appreciated it more if I had spent a year in the workforce beforehand.
- palish 16y agoAny high school senior who self-describes as a "pretty badass dev and designer" desperately needs more education. And what if he is a pretty badass dev and designer?
- chadgeidel 16y agoIt's absolutely critical that he a) realize that there are much, much more "badass" people out there, and b) learn from them. College is a good way to do that, but not the only way.
- algorias 16y agoPossible, but very unlikely. More education is good advice either way.
- phamilton 16y agoThis is exactly what I've discovered over the last month. I just started my Junior year in CpE, and finally understand how unique a university environment is. There will be plenty of time down the road to start a company, make some dough. But when else am I going to have free access to a top 500 HPC facility. When am I going to be surrounded by people who will build a remote controlled nerf gun just because it looks fun. Housing is cheap, Tuition is taken care of, and you've got state of the art facilities at your disposal. If you are really going to be a serial entrepreneur, getting a degree may be the best environment to learn that Blub (http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html) is going to limit what you can and can't do. A degree isn't about learning things you don't know. It's about learning _what_ you don't know. It's where a Basic programmer learns about recursion, and a Java programmer learns about lambdas. It's about getting exposure to theory and new ideas so you can innovate and recognize better ways to solve problems.