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> I would go so far as to say that I never actually learned anything in my undergrad CS classes. I'm not sure whether to think your school had an awful CS prog

by Boxxed 8y ago

> I would go so far as to say that I never actually learned anything in my undergrad CS classes. I'm not sure whether to think your school had an awful CS program or you went into your classes with the wrong attitude. There are lots of practical skills that get taught in universities that aren't direct trade knowledge -- you didn't feel like you learned how to learn? Or were exposed to new ideas and parts of the field that you otherwise wouldn't know about?

reallydude 8y ago
> For learning the non-practical fundamentals of, say, computer science, there is no known learning environment that beats a university. God forbid you don't even consider that you're wrong. "Wrong attitude" signaling is pathetic. > There are lots of practical skills that get taught in universities that aren't direct trade knowledge That's a problem, but it's also hyperbole. I mean, I'm talking to a 1998 CS/EE from Berkeley who couldn't bother to try to repair his own power supply because it has a danger sticker on it. What you learn in University is to be so blind in your lane, that you don't even recognize it. It's the antithesis of learning to learn.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  > God forbid you don't even consider that you're wrong. "Wrong attitude" signaling is pathetic. Write a substantive counterpoint, if you want me to consider a differing opinion. If you aren't interested in doing that, there's little point attacking me for expressing mine.
yorwba 8y ago
The next sentence is > A combination of challenging internships and personal curiosity let me to teach myself everything I was taught in school before I was taught it in school. Which doesn't mean that their CS program wasn't teaching anything worthwhile, just that it didn't have a monopoly on that value. It also doesn't mean that they had the wrong attitude; on the contrary, I think learning out of self-interest is a much better attitude than waiting for that knowledge to be fed to oneself in a classroom.
spc476 8y ago
Oh, practical skills, eh? Debugging? Nope. Version control? Nope. Testing? Nope (at least, no class directly about testing---you were on your own to get your programs working). Multithreading? Nope. ML? Okay, an introductory course in AI involving LISP. Functional programming? Nope. Declarative programming? A bit of SQL and that's it. Design patterns? Nope. Out of that list, I think the only thing I hadn't heard about prior to attending college was multithreading [1]. They did cover a lot of theoretical material though. In fact, there were a few professors in the computer science department that despised computers and barely touched the things (personally, I think they were failed math professors). [1] I attended university in the late 80s/early 90s.
- beambot 8y ago
  Which university? Sounds like the course offerings were weak or you selected poorly. (Though early-90s CS programs were different than today -- truly a different era).
  - spc476 8y ago
    It was a state university. Their stand out program was in ocean engineering (much better than MIT's program), and the computer science department was new when I attended.
- MaxBarraclough 8y ago
  I'm not sure if that's a function of your particular college, or of the decade. Perhaps both. Today, I'd expect any recent CS graduate to have studied most, or perhaps all, of those topics. In my CS degree we covered every one of them. (Of course, I'm simply mirroring beambot's comment, here.)

by Boxxed 8y ago

reallydude 8y ago

> For learning the non-practical fundamentals of, say, computer science, there is no known learning environment that beats a university. God forbid you don't even consider that you're wrong. "Wrong attitude" signaling is pathetic. > There are lots of practical skills that get taught in universities that aren't direct trade knowledge That's a problem, but it's also hyperbole. I mean, I'm talking to a 1998 CS/EE from Berkeley who couldn't bother to try to repair his own power supply because it has a danger sticker on it. What you learn in University is to be so blind in your lane, that you don't even recognize it. It's the antithesis of learning to learn.

MaxBarraclough 8y ago
> God forbid you don't even consider that you're wrong. "Wrong attitude" signaling is pathetic. Write a substantive counterpoint, if you want me to consider a differing opinion. If you aren't interested in doing that, there's little point attacking me for expressing mine.

yorwba 8y ago

The next sentence is > A combination of challenging internships and personal curiosity let me to teach myself everything I was taught in school before I was taught it in school. Which doesn't mean that their CS program wasn't teaching anything worthwhile, just that it didn't have a monopoly on that value. It also doesn't mean that they had the wrong attitude; on the contrary, I think learning out of self-interest is a much better attitude than waiting for that knowledge to be fed to oneself in a classroom.

spc476 8y ago

Oh, practical skills, eh? Debugging? Nope. Version control? Nope. Testing? Nope (at least, no class directly about testing---you were on your own to get your programs working). Multithreading? Nope. ML? Okay, an introductory course in AI involving LISP. Functional programming? Nope. Declarative programming? A bit of SQL and that's it. Design patterns? Nope. Out of that list, I think the only thing I hadn't heard about prior to attending college was multithreading [1]. They did cover a lot of theoretical material though. In fact, there were a few professors in the computer science department that despised computers and barely touched the things (personally, I think they were failed math professors). [1] I attended university in the late 80s/early 90s.

beambot 8y ago
Which university? Sounds like the course offerings were weak or you selected poorly. (Though early-90s CS programs were different than today -- truly a different era).
- spc476 8y ago
  It was a state university. Their stand out program was in ocean engineering (much better than MIT's program), and the computer science department was new when I attended.
MaxBarraclough 8y ago
I'm not sure if that's a function of your particular college, or of the decade. Perhaps both. Today, I'd expect any recent CS graduate to have studied most, or perhaps all, of those topics. In my CS degree we covered every one of them. (Of course, I'm simply mirroring beambot's comment, here.)