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I've come to believe that many degrees are overrated, including my own CS degree. I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. While I don't like boo

I've come to believe that many degrees are overrated, including my own CS degree. I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. While I don't like bootcamps, there is no reason why there are no IT trade schools. Maybe two years long. No BS courses like philosophy, social sciences, etc. Not a degree, but a trade school. Hell, my plumber makes more than my wife and I together. He specializes in installing tankless water heaters. He makes a mint. I've never been impressed with Ivy league or other "rarified air" educational establishments. I've worked around people from some of these places and almost to a man, they reeked of one-upmanship, my father knows..., I know..., oh, you went to <insert no-name university> while glancing down their nose at you. I worked with a guy like this at UUNet who went to Brown. He thought he was the cat's pajamas and everyone should defer to him because he went Ivy League. Oddly enough (sarcasm), his mistakes were often corrected by those who attended the no-name schools. He never saw the error of his ways. Daddy, after all, was a prominent attorney in the DC area. Why this guy went IT is a mystery. He would have been a better fit with the other sharks and scammers in DC or on Wall Street.

onychomys 8y ago
> No BS courses like philosophy, social sciences, etc. ....you totally missed the point of those classes.
- ben509 8y ago
  If a course, especially philosophy, can't justify its existence in all the hours of lectures, it has problems. It's fine to study something for the sake of studying it. I have no problem with a course on basket-weaving because it's an art and worthy of attention in its own right. As a center for higher learning that explores the full human experience, it's entirely justifiable that a university should consider a course in basket-weaving. But the academy is a human institution and subject to decay. More concrete courses like math are constantly checking themselves and anyone can work through proofs and say, "no, this is wrong," and get people back on track. Your basket-weaving course, on the other hand, has no practical moorings and can drift off into irrelevancy. FWIW, I did a minor in philosophy, and while I found it very enlightening, they pretty much admitted it was pointless.
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  They're hit or miss depending on the instructor. Too easy for bias to seep in in the more social science type classes. Not regarding any particular subject though, a breadth of experiences is always good because it gives you more contexts to think in and draw analogies from. Things like the behavior of ants influencing your thinking on distributed systems, issues of group communication brought up in a Communications class relevant to server architecture (connections in a group growing as a square), queue behavior in shopping centers/theme parks, thinking of Sherlock's investigation methods while debugging, lots of examples.
andreilys 8y ago
This is a dangerous mindset. If anything we should be encouraging technologists to take humanity courses (whether on their own time or through school doesn’t matter). You don’t have to look far to see examples of leaders of companies who could’ve benefited from an education in humanities (e.g Facebook). Yes it’s still possible to act unethically and immorally after an education in humanities, but the hope is that it will lessen that outcome. Ultimately ignoring ethics in technology will lead to bad outcomes.
- stirfrykitty 8y ago
  You either have morals or you don't. Classes don't instill them. The most moral people I've ever worked with were the Marines I served with for 8 years. I've met others, but most people are, sadly, opportunists who will gladly do what's best for them at the drop of a hat.
  - elihu 8y ago
    Taking an ethics class taught me something that in retrospect should have been obvious but wasn't to me at the time: disagreements about ethical questions come largely from a different prioritization of certain values. If I come to one ethical determination and someone else comes up with another, it's not because they didn't apply logic in the same (obviously correct) way I did. Most likely, they just have different priorities or they use a different ethical framework. That isn't to say that ethics is completely subjective or whatever you feel like, but the class helped nudge me out of an "everyone who disagrees with me must be wrong" attitude. Plenty of people learn this without having to take a class but in my case the class was helpful.
  - watwut 8y ago
    Your opinions about what is moral act and what is not one matter. You can do quite a lot harm while believing you are doing good things. Besides morality, knowledge of impact of this or that o world around matters. That is diferrent then morality and you can't derive it only from own experience. Lastly, there are plenty of near psychopaths and assholes in the army including marines. And it is not like various units did not had problems with bullying harassment and what on. Or if ships did not hit other ships recently because of chain or errors quite a few of them in ethical category.
max0563 8y ago
Yeah, I completely disagree with on the "BS classes". Philosophy may have been one of the most interesting and important classes that I took as a CS undergrad.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
> I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I sincerely doubt it. For learning the non-practical fundamentals of, say, computer science, there is no known learning environment that beats a university. > Not a degree, but a trade school So, only directly applicable skills, no theory and nuts-and-bolts fundamentals? Sounds far inferior to a bachelor's degree. The software field is known for being open to talented autodidacts, in a way that, say, bridge engineering is not. That doesn't mean it makes sense to dismiss the benefits of quality formal education. Someone with a decent bachelor's degree in computer science will have a depth and breadth of knowledge far in excess of where they'd be if they'd spent that time teaching themselves web development on the job. > No BS courses like philosophy, social sciences, etc Here in the UK, a STEM degree is quite 'pure', and you aren't expected to study topics like philosophy. That doesn't mean there's no value in studying them though. If philosophy struck you as a complete waste of time, then either it was taught badly, or you failed to make the most of it.
- scarface74 8y ago
  >I sincerely doubt it. For learning the non-practical fundamentals of, say, computer science, there is no known learning environment that beats a university. I think you kind of just made the point. Why would I pay for something that isn’t practical?
  - zbentley 8y ago
    Because what may prove practical over a long term may not do so in the short or medium term. And because what counts as “practicality” changes as people progress through their careers, but the foundations required to meet each new standard of what counts as practical often remain the same (or change less).
    - ghaff 8y ago
      That's perhaps the key point. I have engineering degrees (not CS) yet I work for a software tech company and do a lot of things that are much more about a broader liberal arts education and extracurricular activities than they are about specific technical courses I took. And, even when I did work as an engineer, it mostly wasn't in an area where I directly applied coursework.
chuckgreenman 8y ago
> I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I think people with CS degrees working the field could probably re-cover all of the content of their degree in 4-5 months of independent study, however, there's a lot of school which is deliberative practice. Hours that you need to spend getting good at understanding concepts, writing proofs and building the skill of critical thinking in a computing context. I think post graduation there's a tendency to compress that period and forget about the hours of practice and just being terrible at building things that it took to gain the craftsman's mind.
- carnagii 8y ago
  I think it is true that it takes a lot of practice to develop implementation skill but that is largely optional in cs. You can graduate from cs programs with no implementation skills and only the ability to talk about programming.
- jcora 8y ago
  Do you think people who say things like "universities are useless and haven't thought me anything" ever _saw_ an actual proof?
viraptor 8y ago
> I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I'm sure this does apply to almost everyone - given a specific curriculum and removing constraints people could learn things faster. But that doesn't mean that without the constraints you could come up with the same curriculum and still learn things you're not forced to learn immediately.
WalterBright 8y ago
On the other hand, I have a BSME from Caltech. For all degrees, Caltech required 3 years of math, 2 years of physics, one of chemistry, a chemlab, 3 of humanities. My career is one of programming, after a stint at Boeing. The point is, if I was only a self-taught programmer, it never would have occurred to me to take those "irrelevant" physics classes. But those classes, along with the mechanical engineering classes, math, etc., have helped improve my programming in quite unexpected ways. There's also the simple pleasure of knowing how things work. I'm able to figure out why my car doesn't work, and when the mechanic is giving me a line of bull. Many, many features of the house I live in was the result of my diverse education. (For example, don't use iron nails to hold copper. Don't run cat5 cables through the same holes as the 125V wires.)
- WalterBright 8y ago
  Two other courses everyone should take, and I think they should be in high school, are basic accounting and learning how to touch type. These will pay off for your entire life. A very good investment. Public speaking, too.
cgh 8y ago
> there is no reason why there are no IT trade schools. There absolutely are schools where programming is treated as a trade, eg: https://www.bcit.ca/study/programs/5500dipma https://www.bcit.ca/study/programs/5500dipma I've worked with several graduates from this school and I can say it produces excellent programmers, particularly for low-level systems stuff.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sonnyblarney 8y ago
"I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time." If you were just looking for a specific skill or job training then Uni may have not been the place for you. "I've never been impressed with Ivy league or other "rarified air" educational establishments." I did undergrad at a great but niche school and Grad school at a fairly exceptional school and there is a difference. The top schools generally have the best profs, students, facilities. It was inspiring and motivating, and the relationships and networks do matter as well. As far as 'looking down their noses' ... this comes in two parts 1) they are doing it, sometimes without knowing it but 2) often we perceive 'snobbery' when really it's just our own insecurity. When we perceive someone to be of higher social status (ie our perception), or, when we think that they may perceive us as having lower social status, then I think we have a tendency to interpret every little thing as snobbery, when really it might be nothing at all.
- stirfrykitty 8y ago
  You make great points, and thank you for responding with zero perceived animosity, a rarity these days. Personally, I'm not insecure. I grew up military, and served for 8 years. I'm you're atypical alpha male. I have will and intent in spades, but I care deeply for other people. Let me explain... My time in the Corps taught me that we are all equal, no matter our origins. I don't play favorites, be it education, time in position, man/woman, it doesn't matter. I believe in earned merit. Full stop. I treat everyone with dignity and respect, but merit is earned and demonstrated. I don't yell at juniors, I lead from the front. There is nothing I will not do for a teammate who tries their best. I tell my teammates even now, please, make mistakes. It's healthy. If you bork a production server, and you did your best, but made mistakes, we'll fix it together. You learn, and I'll learn along with you, because maybe I could have done something better, like documentation, or settings. Good leaders are open to correction. If your ideas are better than mine, convince me. If you're right, I stand corrected. If you're wrong, I still want you to keep stabbing forward. I encourage experimentation, tinkering, and always improving. As far as social status, I've never been envious of those from that arena. I just don't care. I look like Shaggy Rogers if that says anything. I can afford a much nicer car than I drive, but I don't care. Ditto my clothes. It's point A-B for me. I'd rather my children have better clothes, nicer treats, and time spent together. I have zero tolerance for social snobbery, as it shows an air of superiority that is not real. If you (metaphorically) think you're better than me, let's see how things go when the power is out, the food stops being delivered, and your apps don't work. Me? I would thrive in this world should it happen. When the zombies are coming, you'll be running to my house.
Ambroos 8y ago
We have those in Belgium and they work great. It's three years and you'll go out with a "professional" bachelor's degree in applied IT, with one of the specialisations being software development. I did this and am now an engineer at Facebook five years later, so they work at least to some extent, and in Belgium attract about the same numbers computer science BSc's do. You start off right away with object oriented programming basics and simple algorithms, with most of your first year dedicated to those, design patterns, basic maths, basic communication (English and French in our case). Second year moves into specialisations (networking, business systems design, or software development). I did software development and that's where the Java enterprise projects come in (applying design patterns), some Android programming, some more advanced algorithm stuff (still easy on the whole, similar level to the leetcode questions at FB interviews), ... The final year will have some side courses on introduction to law (focus on copyright), some stuff about extreme programming, some communication, a bigger project and then the second half will be an internship. And that's it. No crazy math, no super theoretical stuff, only basic non-engineering skills with a focus on the things that are practical skills as a software engineer. I felt prepared for the professional world after that. Maybe not the things where you micro-optimise algorithms, build low-level tools and languages. But it definitely gave me a fantastic basis to join a web development company. Enough knowledge about programming and patterns to be able to pick up new languages and be productive in them fast. You'll see few people with this degree in the hard computer science jobs, but I do think (having seen both) that people straight from school with my degree are better at just building applications on top of existing frameworks. We had practical experience with a lot of popular tools at school, and maybe less hang-ups about not always sticking with the theoretical most efficient way if it'd take longer to implement. This type of education exists, works and has it's place. (Note: I actually dropped out after three years without finishing the internship and without passing some of the non-coding courses because I had a nice job offer. I did do every subject so basically have the education, just not the proof.)
itslennysfault 8y ago
Totally agree with this. I've been saying for at least 10 years that Software Engineer should be a trade not something you go to university for. If you want to be a researcher then academia is the right path, but if you want to build software a trade program / apprenticeship would be much more effective imo. I've interviewed 100s of university grads and most of them don't know how to actually do anything useful. They have the foundations to grow into the position, but they certainly need someone to hold their hand for a while. One great example is IBEW electricians. They do a 5 year program. 6 months class room, 6 months on a job site as an apprentice applying the skills learned. Repeat for 5 years with gradual pay raises until you hit journeyman and it jumps up to full union scale. I think the exact same type of program would work GREAT for software engineering. Learning for 4 months in a vacuum and THEN working in the industry for the first time is a terrible idea. However, doing 6 months back and forth would allow you to apply what you learn and more importantly to learn what you don't know so you can focus on those things during the classroom segments.
eco_n 8y ago
> I've come to believe that many degrees are overrated, including my own CS degree. I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I think I have something to add to this. During the course of completing a Ph.D. in computer science I discovered that I actually have a huge passion for behavioral ecology. For the first years of my Ph.D. I just treated it like a side hobby and tried to learn as much about it on my own. Halfway though the Ph.D. I decided I might as well take some intro bio courses and as many ecology/evolution courses as possible since my tuition was being paid for anyways. The amount that the coursework improved my learning rate was incredible even though I was spending approximately the same amount of time as before. As to why I think it is a combination of many factors. One of the main ones being held accountable to truly mastering the material (tests, projects, homeworks etc...). This is just a sample of 1, but from my experience the classroom experience was a huge net benefit to learning about a subject I really cared about.
LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
Not wanting to insult, but im often called as a firemen to projects that have been run and run-into-the-ground by self-tought people. I do not believe that university fullfills a really good role when it comes to filtering for intelligence, it rather filters for familys who put pressure to preservere on kids. But they do a really good job, on forcing people through stuff, that a self-tought person might skip- because they found it useless or not applicable. Algorithm theory and the limits of computation? That is a dry topic and tough to get through without beeing forced too. Software-architecture? Cant see me using that- those small projects i worked on always worked well without. And so on and so forth. University does one thing right, it forces you to be interested in stuff you do not know you should be interested in. I do find the filtering out of people who go to university - either by school grades or by monetary parent background really nasty though. In my eyes, anyone who is shown to apply himself, should be able to stay at a higher education.
- vtange 8y ago
  This is a good point, though for most people, valuable skills are often "dry" and undesirable like plumbing, so someone who was really passionate might've persevered on his own anyways. Even if academia has the merit of making you persevere through a class you wouldn't have on your own, it's not efficient; Most of the classes colleges require from you to just graduate aren't "you-will-actually-need-this-later-in-life" classes and are just filler classes. Front-loading on dry subjects also has the downside of scaring away people who would've otherwise done well given a different path of learning. The timing of when you learn some things is also important; it matters not if you learned software architecture in college only to have all the knowledge become obsolete by the time you really need that skill - you'd have to review or worse relearn it by yourself all over again.
  - elihu 8y ago
    > Most of the classes colleges require from you to just graduate aren't "you-will-actually-need-this-later-in-life" classes and are just filler classes. There's no way to know in advance which of those classes you won't need, though. Programming has become very specialized; it's no longer possible for a University to provide an education sufficient to prepare a student for the work they'll be doing in the "real world" because there's so much variability from one job to the next. Having a broad education, though, puts a person in a situation where they can more readily adapt to a wide variety of roles than they would without that background knowledge.
butisaidsudo 8y ago
I went to a school that is pretty much as you described. A 2 year intensive program designed to make you productive right out of the gate. We still took math, operating systems, computer architecture, and the like, but in general there was a big focus on writing a lot of code (often doing so in groups), and learning how to communicate effectively. It wasn't perfect, but it was absolutely the best decision for someone like me where programming wasn't my first career.
- jaquetheduck 8y ago
  Do you mind sharing what school you went to? My partner is looking at getting into software engineering and I don't think a bootcamp is comprehensive enough for them and would prefer they look for schools like this.
  - butisaidsudo 8y ago
    BCIT (near Vancouver, Canada)
dwd 8y ago
It's been almost 20 years since I completed my degree. Three things that I got out of it: - engineering processes, - data structures and modelling, and - algorithms and the application Learning to code well in a particular language you really did in your own time, and that never stops. It was those fundamentals and learning how to apply software engineering to develop a solution to a problem that I came away with. You could learn those fundamentals from a book, but the degree should really be an indicator that you have mastered those basics. Given the risk of privacy and security breaches and the financial/legal consequences if you get it wrong, it's probably time there was an IEEE/AMA/Bar equivalent that signals that you have that understanding and rigorous process.
sopooneo 8y ago
I respect what you say for the most part, but I'd like to offer my opinion that philosophy is not BS. Nor is history, or literature, or a slew of other academic disciplines which are unlikely to help a person find employment.
EricE 8y ago
Indeed - we need more like this: https://discoverpraxis.com https://discoverpraxis.com

onychomys 8y ago

> No BS courses like philosophy, social sciences, etc. ....you totally missed the point of those classes.

ben509 8y ago
If a course, especially philosophy, can't justify its existence in all the hours of lectures, it has problems. It's fine to study something for the sake of studying it. I have no problem with a course on basket-weaving because it's an art and worthy of attention in its own right. As a center for higher learning that explores the full human experience, it's entirely justifiable that a university should consider a course in basket-weaving. But the academy is a human institution and subject to decay. More concrete courses like math are constantly checking themselves and anyone can work through proofs and say, "no, this is wrong," and get people back on track. Your basket-weaving course, on the other hand, has no practical moorings and can drift off into irrelevancy. FWIW, I did a minor in philosophy, and while I found it very enlightening, they pretty much admitted it was pointless.
jimmaswell 8y ago
They're hit or miss depending on the instructor. Too easy for bias to seep in in the more social science type classes. Not regarding any particular subject though, a breadth of experiences is always good because it gives you more contexts to think in and draw analogies from. Things like the behavior of ants influencing your thinking on distributed systems, issues of group communication brought up in a Communications class relevant to server architecture (connections in a group growing as a square), queue behavior in shopping centers/theme parks, thinking of Sherlock's investigation methods while debugging, lots of examples.

andreilys 8y ago

This is a dangerous mindset. If anything we should be encouraging technologists to take humanity courses (whether on their own time or through school doesn’t matter). You don’t have to look far to see examples of leaders of companies who could’ve benefited from an education in humanities (e.g Facebook). Yes it’s still possible to act unethically and immorally after an education in humanities, but the hope is that it will lessen that outcome. Ultimately ignoring ethics in technology will lead to bad outcomes.

stirfrykitty 8y ago
You either have morals or you don't. Classes don't instill them. The most moral people I've ever worked with were the Marines I served with for 8 years. I've met others, but most people are, sadly, opportunists who will gladly do what's best for them at the drop of a hat.
- elihu 8y ago
  Taking an ethics class taught me something that in retrospect should have been obvious but wasn't to me at the time: disagreements about ethical questions come largely from a different prioritization of certain values. If I come to one ethical determination and someone else comes up with another, it's not because they didn't apply logic in the same (obviously correct) way I did. Most likely, they just have different priorities or they use a different ethical framework. That isn't to say that ethics is completely subjective or whatever you feel like, but the class helped nudge me out of an "everyone who disagrees with me must be wrong" attitude. Plenty of people learn this without having to take a class but in my case the class was helpful.
- watwut 8y ago
  Your opinions about what is moral act and what is not one matter. You can do quite a lot harm while believing you are doing good things. Besides morality, knowledge of impact of this or that o world around matters. That is diferrent then morality and you can't derive it only from own experience. Lastly, there are plenty of near psychopaths and assholes in the army including marines. And it is not like various units did not had problems with bullying harassment and what on. Or if ships did not hit other ships recently because of chain or errors quite a few of them in ethical category.

max0563 8y ago

Yeah, I completely disagree with on the "BS classes". Philosophy may have been one of the most interesting and important classes that I took as a CS undergrad.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago

> I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I sincerely doubt it. For learning the non-practical fundamentals of, say, computer science, there is no known learning environment that beats a university. > Not a degree, but a trade school So, only directly applicable skills, no theory and nuts-and-bolts fundamentals? Sounds far inferior to a bachelor's degree. The software field is known for being open to talented autodidacts, in a way that, say, bridge engineering is not. That doesn't mean it makes sense to dismiss the benefits of quality formal education. Someone with a decent bachelor's degree in computer science will have a depth and breadth of knowledge far in excess of where they'd be if they'd spent that time teaching themselves web development on the job. > No BS courses like philosophy, social sciences, etc Here in the UK, a STEM degree is quite 'pure', and you aren't expected to study topics like philosophy. That doesn't mean there's no value in studying them though. If philosophy struck you as a complete waste of time, then either it was taught badly, or you failed to make the most of it.

scarface74 8y ago
>I sincerely doubt it. For learning the non-practical fundamentals of, say, computer science, there is no known learning environment that beats a university. I think you kind of just made the point. Why would I pay for something that isn’t practical?
- zbentley 8y ago
  Because what may prove practical over a long term may not do so in the short or medium term. And because what counts as “practicality” changes as people progress through their careers, but the foundations required to meet each new standard of what counts as practical often remain the same (or change less).
  - ghaff 8y ago
    That's perhaps the key point. I have engineering degrees (not CS) yet I work for a software tech company and do a lot of things that are much more about a broader liberal arts education and extracurricular activities than they are about specific technical courses I took. And, even when I did work as an engineer, it mostly wasn't in an area where I directly applied coursework.

chuckgreenman 8y ago

> I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I think people with CS degrees working the field could probably re-cover all of the content of their degree in 4-5 months of independent study, however, there's a lot of school which is deliberative practice. Hours that you need to spend getting good at understanding concepts, writing proofs and building the skill of critical thinking in a computing context. I think post graduation there's a tendency to compress that period and forget about the hours of practice and just being terrible at building things that it took to gain the craftsman's mind.

carnagii 8y ago
I think it is true that it takes a lot of practice to develop implementation skill but that is largely optional in cs. You can graduate from cs programs with no implementation skills and only the ability to talk about programming.
jcora 8y ago
Do you think people who say things like "universities are useless and haven't thought me anything" ever _saw_ an actual proof?

viraptor 8y ago

> I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I'm sure this does apply to almost everyone - given a specific curriculum and removing constraints people could learn things faster. But that doesn't mean that without the constraints you could come up with the same curriculum and still learn things you're not forced to learn immediately.

WalterBright 8y ago

On the other hand, I have a BSME from Caltech. For all degrees, Caltech required 3 years of math, 2 years of physics, one of chemistry, a chemlab, 3 of humanities. My career is one of programming, after a stint at Boeing. The point is, if I was only a self-taught programmer, it never would have occurred to me to take those "irrelevant" physics classes. But those classes, along with the mechanical engineering classes, math, etc., have helped improve my programming in quite unexpected ways. There's also the simple pleasure of knowing how things work. I'm able to figure out why my car doesn't work, and when the mechanic is giving me a line of bull. Many, many features of the house I live in was the result of my diverse education. (For example, don't use iron nails to hold copper. Don't run cat5 cables through the same holes as the 125V wires.)

WalterBright 8y ago
Two other courses everyone should take, and I think they should be in high school, are basic accounting and learning how to touch type. These will pay off for your entire life. A very good investment. Public speaking, too.

cgh 8y ago

> there is no reason why there are no IT trade schools. There absolutely are schools where programming is treated as a trade, eg: https://www.bcit.ca/study/programs/5500dipma https://www.bcit.ca/study/programs/5500dipma I've worked with several graduates from this school and I can say it produces excellent programmers, particularly for low-level systems stuff.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

sonnyblarney 8y ago

"I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time." If you were just looking for a specific skill or job training then Uni may have not been the place for you. "I've never been impressed with Ivy league or other "rarified air" educational establishments." I did undergrad at a great but niche school and Grad school at a fairly exceptional school and there is a difference. The top schools generally have the best profs, students, facilities. It was inspiring and motivating, and the relationships and networks do matter as well. As far as 'looking down their noses' ... this comes in two parts 1) they are doing it, sometimes without knowing it but 2) often we perceive 'snobbery' when really it's just our own insecurity. When we perceive someone to be of higher social status (ie our perception), or, when we think that they may perceive us as having lower social status, then I think we have a tendency to interpret every little thing as snobbery, when really it might be nothing at all.

stirfrykitty 8y ago
You make great points, and thank you for responding with zero perceived animosity, a rarity these days. Personally, I'm not insecure. I grew up military, and served for 8 years. I'm you're atypical alpha male. I have will and intent in spades, but I care deeply for other people. Let me explain... My time in the Corps taught me that we are all equal, no matter our origins. I don't play favorites, be it education, time in position, man/woman, it doesn't matter. I believe in earned merit. Full stop. I treat everyone with dignity and respect, but merit is earned and demonstrated. I don't yell at juniors, I lead from the front. There is nothing I will not do for a teammate who tries their best. I tell my teammates even now, please, make mistakes. It's healthy. If you bork a production server, and you did your best, but made mistakes, we'll fix it together. You learn, and I'll learn along with you, because maybe I could have done something better, like documentation, or settings. Good leaders are open to correction. If your ideas are better than mine, convince me. If you're right, I stand corrected. If you're wrong, I still want you to keep stabbing forward. I encourage experimentation, tinkering, and always improving. As far as social status, I've never been envious of those from that arena. I just don't care. I look like Shaggy Rogers if that says anything. I can afford a much nicer car than I drive, but I don't care. Ditto my clothes. It's point A-B for me. I'd rather my children have better clothes, nicer treats, and time spent together. I have zero tolerance for social snobbery, as it shows an air of superiority that is not real. If you (metaphorically) think you're better than me, let's see how things go when the power is out, the food stops being delivered, and your apps don't work. Me? I would thrive in this world should it happen. When the zombies are coming, you'll be running to my house.

Ambroos 8y ago

We have those in Belgium and they work great. It's three years and you'll go out with a "professional" bachelor's degree in applied IT, with one of the specialisations being software development. I did this and am now an engineer at Facebook five years later, so they work at least to some extent, and in Belgium attract about the same numbers computer science BSc's do. You start off right away with object oriented programming basics and simple algorithms, with most of your first year dedicated to those, design patterns, basic maths, basic communication (English and French in our case). Second year moves into specialisations (networking, business systems design, or software development). I did software development and that's where the Java enterprise projects come in (applying design patterns), some Android programming, some more advanced algorithm stuff (still easy on the whole, similar level to the leetcode questions at FB interviews), ... The final year will have some side courses on introduction to law (focus on copyright), some stuff about extreme programming, some communication, a bigger project and then the second half will be an internship. And that's it. No crazy math, no super theoretical stuff, only basic non-engineering skills with a focus on the things that are practical skills as a software engineer. I felt prepared for the professional world after that. Maybe not the things where you micro-optimise algorithms, build low-level tools and languages. But it definitely gave me a fantastic basis to join a web development company. Enough knowledge about programming and patterns to be able to pick up new languages and be productive in them fast. You'll see few people with this degree in the hard computer science jobs, but I do think (having seen both) that people straight from school with my degree are better at just building applications on top of existing frameworks. We had practical experience with a lot of popular tools at school, and maybe less hang-ups about not always sticking with the theoretical most efficient way if it'd take longer to implement. This type of education exists, works and has it's place. (Note: I actually dropped out after three years without finishing the internship and without passing some of the non-coding courses because I had a nice job offer. I did do every subject so basically have the education, just not the proof.)

itslennysfault 8y ago

Totally agree with this. I've been saying for at least 10 years that Software Engineer should be a trade not something you go to university for. If you want to be a researcher then academia is the right path, but if you want to build software a trade program / apprenticeship would be much more effective imo. I've interviewed 100s of university grads and most of them don't know how to actually do anything useful. They have the foundations to grow into the position, but they certainly need someone to hold their hand for a while. One great example is IBEW electricians. They do a 5 year program. 6 months class room, 6 months on a job site as an apprentice applying the skills learned. Repeat for 5 years with gradual pay raises until you hit journeyman and it jumps up to full union scale. I think the exact same type of program would work GREAT for software engineering. Learning for 4 months in a vacuum and THEN working in the industry for the first time is a terrible idea. However, doing 6 months back and forth would allow you to apply what you learn and more importantly to learn what you don't know so you can focus on those things during the classroom segments.

eco_n 8y ago

> I've come to believe that many degrees are overrated, including my own CS degree. I could have learned what I did in a much shorter time. I think I have something to add to this. During the course of completing a Ph.D. in computer science I discovered that I actually have a huge passion for behavioral ecology. For the first years of my Ph.D. I just treated it like a side hobby and tried to learn as much about it on my own. Halfway though the Ph.D. I decided I might as well take some intro bio courses and as many ecology/evolution courses as possible since my tuition was being paid for anyways. The amount that the coursework improved my learning rate was incredible even though I was spending approximately the same amount of time as before. As to why I think it is a combination of many factors. One of the main ones being held accountable to truly mastering the material (tests, projects, homeworks etc...). This is just a sample of 1, but from my experience the classroom experience was a huge net benefit to learning about a subject I really cared about.

LifeLiverTransp 8y ago

Not wanting to insult, but im often called as a firemen to projects that have been run and run-into-the-ground by self-tought people. I do not believe that university fullfills a really good role when it comes to filtering for intelligence, it rather filters for familys who put pressure to preservere on kids. But they do a really good job, on forcing people through stuff, that a self-tought person might skip- because they found it useless or not applicable. Algorithm theory and the limits of computation? That is a dry topic and tough to get through without beeing forced too. Software-architecture? Cant see me using that- those small projects i worked on always worked well without. And so on and so forth. University does one thing right, it forces you to be interested in stuff you do not know you should be interested in. I do find the filtering out of people who go to university - either by school grades or by monetary parent background really nasty though. In my eyes, anyone who is shown to apply himself, should be able to stay at a higher education.

vtange 8y ago
This is a good point, though for most people, valuable skills are often "dry" and undesirable like plumbing, so someone who was really passionate might've persevered on his own anyways. Even if academia has the merit of making you persevere through a class you wouldn't have on your own, it's not efficient; Most of the classes colleges require from you to just graduate aren't "you-will-actually-need-this-later-in-life" classes and are just filler classes. Front-loading on dry subjects also has the downside of scaring away people who would've otherwise done well given a different path of learning. The timing of when you learn some things is also important; it matters not if you learned software architecture in college only to have all the knowledge become obsolete by the time you really need that skill - you'd have to review or worse relearn it by yourself all over again.
- elihu 8y ago
  > Most of the classes colleges require from you to just graduate aren't "you-will-actually-need-this-later-in-life" classes and are just filler classes. There's no way to know in advance which of those classes you won't need, though. Programming has become very specialized; it's no longer possible for a University to provide an education sufficient to prepare a student for the work they'll be doing in the "real world" because there's so much variability from one job to the next. Having a broad education, though, puts a person in a situation where they can more readily adapt to a wide variety of roles than they would without that background knowledge.

butisaidsudo 8y ago

I went to a school that is pretty much as you described. A 2 year intensive program designed to make you productive right out of the gate. We still took math, operating systems, computer architecture, and the like, but in general there was a big focus on writing a lot of code (often doing so in groups), and learning how to communicate effectively. It wasn't perfect, but it was absolutely the best decision for someone like me where programming wasn't my first career.

jaquetheduck 8y ago
Do you mind sharing what school you went to? My partner is looking at getting into software engineering and I don't think a bootcamp is comprehensive enough for them and would prefer they look for schools like this.
- butisaidsudo 8y ago
  BCIT (near Vancouver, Canada)

dwd 8y ago

It's been almost 20 years since I completed my degree. Three things that I got out of it: - engineering processes, - data structures and modelling, and - algorithms and the application Learning to code well in a particular language you really did in your own time, and that never stops. It was those fundamentals and learning how to apply software engineering to develop a solution to a problem that I came away with. You could learn those fundamentals from a book, but the degree should really be an indicator that you have mastered those basics. Given the risk of privacy and security breaches and the financial/legal consequences if you get it wrong, it's probably time there was an IEEE/AMA/Bar equivalent that signals that you have that understanding and rigorous process.

sopooneo 8y ago

I respect what you say for the most part, but I'd like to offer my opinion that philosophy is not BS. Nor is history, or literature, or a slew of other academic disciplines which are unlikely to help a person find employment.

EricE 8y ago

Indeed - we need more like this: https://discoverpraxis.com https://discoverpraxis.com