4 ms·

Do you think the college model makes sense for science/engineering?

by pretendscholar 8y ago

jalgos_eminator 8y ago
I think it does. I got an EE degree at a state university, and couldn't imagine how anyone could just learn all that on their own. There is so much abstract/esoteric knowledge and skills you need to develop. Having a guided step-by-step process to learning is huge (along with experienced teaching profs to help you). Plus, at least with EE, you need to have access to some absurdly expensive tools like Synopsys Design Compiler.
bmdavi3 8y ago
If you want to learn as fast as possible, I think it does. For me, my computer science program in college was finally a place to get answers and move on when I did encounter that one stumbling block. Even if I could learn 99% of whatever material I was interested in from reading things online, I'd inevitably spend at least that much time struggling with something I didn't get that really held me up. For example. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why, a computer program wouldn't know at compile time how much memory its data structures would use. So while I could read about malloc, I just didn't get the use case (as dumb as that sounds). As you can imagine, asking someone who knows what they're doing leads to a real quick "ah ha, of course" moment. This was in 2001 before stackoverflow existed, and it felt like I was living in a bubble. Maybe things are different today. If I were learning from scratch now, I'm sure I could have learned the answer to that question and much more on my own. But I have to think that I would have just entered college a little bit further, stuck on slightly harder questions. To say nothing of the things school made me do that I wouldn't have done on my own, like learn how a compiler works, or take a database course. Two things I feel are paying dividends to this day.

4 ms·

Do you think the college model makes sense for science/engineering?

by pretendscholar 8y ago

Do you think the college model makes sense for science/engineering?

jalgos_eminator 8y ago
I think it does. I got an EE degree at a state university, and couldn't imagine how anyone could just learn all that on their own. There is so much abstract/esoteric knowledge and skills you need to develop. Having a guided step-by-step process to learning is huge (along with experienced teaching profs to help you). Plus, at least with EE, you need to have access to some absurdly expensive tools like Synopsys Design Compiler.
bmdavi3 8y ago
If you want to learn as fast as possible, I think it does. For me, my computer science program in college was finally a place to get answers and move on when I did encounter that one stumbling block. Even if I could learn 99% of whatever material I was interested in from reading things online, I'd inevitably spend at least that much time struggling with something I didn't get that really held me up. For example. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why, a computer program wouldn't know at compile time how much memory its data structures would use. So while I could read about malloc, I just didn't get the use case (as dumb as that sounds). As you can imagine, asking someone who knows what they're doing leads to a real quick "ah ha, of course" moment. This was in 2001 before stackoverflow existed, and it felt like I was living in a bubble. Maybe things are different today. If I were learning from scratch now, I'm sure I could have learned the answer to that question and much more on my own. But I have to think that I would have just entered college a little bit further, stuck on slightly harder questions. To say nothing of the things school made me do that I wouldn't have done on my own, like learn how a compiler works, or take a database course. Two things I feel are paying dividends to this day.