15 ms·

Online courses vs. colleges for software engineering

212 points by cplat 7y ago

o10449366 7y ago
The real take away is that structured exercises and projects are both a great way to develop and display your abilities and being able to demonstrate these is more important than holding a credential within the tech industry. The barrier to entry for most people to tech jobs isn't whether or not they can get interviews, it's whether or not they can pass the technical assessment that's become a standard part of the process. In other industries, GPA, school rank, highest degree earned are hard pre-reqs to inteviews, even for entry-level jobs. That isn't necessarily the case in tech. I work in a field that falls under the "data science" umbrella and I take issue with a lot of online courses compared to traditional education because almost all of them overpromise and underdeliver and take advantage of naive students that don't know any better. I can't tell you how many applicants I've interviewed that list dozens of online certifications for this and that skill, but can't demonstrate any knowledge of it when asked or assessed. Just my $0.02, but online tech courses and degrees are akin to the MBAs of a decade ago: exploitive, expensive, and often entirely unnecessary. I would still hold that a technical computer science degree from a 4-year university is worth it, however, for the benefit of being in a collaborative learning environment with peers (Note: That doesn't mean you have to go to Berkeley - I went to a top 50 state school and got the same education and job opportunities as all of my friends that went to top 10 schools, but I graduated with a positive net worth.) (Disclaimer: I know there are always exceptions to everything. I have generally heard very good things about GT's courses - Udacity's I'm more skeptical of.)
- gowld 7y ago
  Berkeley is a state school.
  - o10449366 7y ago
    You're right! I didn't want to delve into it too deeply, but for me and my friends who weren't CA residents the tuition was extremely steep, even after certain scholarships/aid. I think people in the US don't consider their state schools enough when looking into getting a college education. Again, my public school's CS department was ranked top 50, which certainly isn't the worse in the US, but it isn't prestigious either. In the end, the prestige didn't really matter in terms of getting job opportunities compared to my friends that went to much higher ranked schools.
- cplat 7y ago
  [OP here] I agree with you. Even if GT's courses, the course material is pretty standard and doesn't actually drastically increase your understanding. It's the assignments that give you the most value, which are similar to Udacity Nanodegree's projects.
- newguy1234 7y ago
  I completely agree. Personally I think some form of online education/self-study hybrid type of system is the future of education simply due to efficiency of such systems. The reality is that there needs to be something more to actually be in the form of credentials. We need something that allows people to display their mastery of certain subjects similar to how accounts have their CPA or lawyers have their BAR exam.
- Datenstrom 7y ago
  I think that what most of them are missing are testing hard questions and projects without hand-holding. Many of the courses I have taken have been good, but they will just graze the surface of anything approaching harder mathematical questions on tests and projects are too "fill in the blank (function)" rather than requiring critical thinking. I took one Udacity class and I certainly felt like I had been cheated, more cutesy animations and polished videos than real content. I would use them for an introduction, but would definitely pick up a well recommended textbook after, or do a medium sized personal project after. Although the Coursera Cryptography class I took was just as good as my University one so I guess it really depends.
anon1m0us 7y ago
My friend dropped out of college. My girlfriend is in college. I was talking about how she has a few years left and he starts shaking his head. "I just don't get it. So long and for what? To get a job?" When he dropped out of engineering school he went to manage a restaurant. Made good money. Then started to build a house. Quit that too. He almost had occupancy on it and said, "I'm done. I'm out." That's also what college is about. If you come to me looking for a job and didn't go to college, why? Did you drop out? Why? Do you not think learning is important? Do you not understand sticking it out until you have accomplished the goal? Do you give up before you are through? Not only that, but of course, I meet folks all the time who think "you don't need a degree to be a programmer." Sure. You don't need a degree to put Ikea furniture together either. I don't need programmers. I write programs to write programs. I need folks who know how to think... for themselves and learn and go out and find knowledge they need to solve problems and then solve the problems. Until they are done solving the problem. Not until they've given up.
- WilliamEdward 7y ago
  Why leave college? Could not afford it, did not enjoy it, thought more could be accomplished outside of it, etc. There are many reasons beyond just weak character for why someone would not go to college and it's not up to you as an employer to make that judgement call on someone's personality until you've dissected their real reasons for leaving. This is something that takes a lot of time, way longer than an interview has to offer, so it's best to not make assumptions.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- austincheney 7y ago
  College/university is supposed to be about getting an education. For most people it isn't. It is about getting that piece of paper and its clear they learned next to nothing. I take graduate degrees seriously, because people tend to take those seriously and focus on the education more than the paper at the end. I don't take 4 year degrees seriously at all. If all you've proven is that you can survive with minimal effort for four years before losing patience then you certainly have more potential than the lowest side of a bell curve, but you haven't proven you bring added value.
nosyharsh 7y ago
This is very true. I am in college (non-american) and feel very weird because of the way a lot of stuff it taught here. Teaching is a different matter, but it is the grading that makes it worse. Questions asked in exams don't correspond to what is useful as far as I have seen programming on my own. Things I've learnt on my own help me understand stuff but papers are made just to ensure that those who mug up get better grades. It's sad.
jaequery 7y ago
It’s quite simple really. There are some careers where you can learn and advance far more on your own. Software engineering is one of them. The amount of tutorials and videos available on the internet far surpasses any curriculum at school. But on the other hand, anything that requires hands on training that you can’t get at the comfort of your house, like medical or scientific careers, those you probably need to go to a school for. Further more, in terms of software engineering, I don’t think the school system can ever keep up with the fast pace of the tech world. It’s just a rigid system and too slow for anything fast changing, like the web/app development.
- cplat 7y ago
  [OP here] You're right. I actually did my bachelors in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering, which can only be done in college because of the expensive equipment required to learn anything of value.
bitL 7y ago
I think in your case the combo of Udacity nanodegrees and OMS CS is absolutely perfect. You get overwhelmed by Top 10 academia rigor and flooded by projects, and then jump to cutting edge with Udacity and do cool stuff like self-driving cars. The only drawback would be lack of time to do anything else.
- cplat 7y ago
  [OP here] Yes, you're right. In my case, I had the fortune of starting to program at a very young age, about 11. I started doing these courses to get on the whole ML/AI bandwagon (although I had been exposed to neural networks in the early 2000s). The broad understanding I came to was, it's important to make your own conclusions, and not take anyone else's conclusion for granted, whether it comes from universities, courses, or even blog posts like mine. In reality, however, it's difficult to devote that much time to personally research everything. So you should at least do it with the things that matter the most to you in life.
bradcrispin 7y ago
Ohai HN! I lead product and engineering for services and the project reviews system at Udacity - seeing this post gives me a lot of purpose to go to work on Monday. We are hiring engineers who are passionate about changing education! Frontend engineer on my team: https://boards.greenhouse.io/udacity/jobs/4320541002 https://boards.greenhouse.io/udacity/jobs/4320541002 All open engineering positions: https://www.udacity.com/jobs#engineering-it?location=all https://www.udacity.com/jobs#engineering-it?location=all
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- _4570 7y ago
  Just curious- Would you hire someone with only an online certification in programming to an engineering job at udacity? (As a junior/intern)
  - cameronwp 7y ago
    Not the OP but I can tell you about my experience. I used to work at Udacity, both on engineering and content creation. We for sure had engineers who were self-taught / learned using online resources (myself included). In fact, I hold zero certifications related to programming. Over the years we recruited and employed a handful of engineers who pretty much learned everything they knew about programming through Udacity courses. Frankly, I always felt it was a very supportive environment for non-traditional engineers :)
    - _4570 7y ago
      Very cool. Thanks for responding :)
cgearhart 7y ago
Interesting take. I am a graduate and former TA in OMSCS, and used to work at Udacity building Nanodegrees (worked on ML & AI mostly). My experience is from a different perspective than the article, but I appreciated the differences without disagreement. What I found in my time in both environments is that Nanodegrees appeal more to students who don’t have access to traditional education (college is too expensive, or grad school requires an undergrad degree, etc.). That makes most MOOC students less experienced, less qualified, and higher risk (in the sense that they mostly don’t have the profile of successful college students). Udacity, et. al., then appear to have a very important role to play in satisfying the need for education unencumbered by academic gatekeeping. But the _other_ constant undertone in the MOOC community is the “get-rich-quick” crowd who expects a Nanodegree to make them a 6-figure AI engineer in three months at 5 hours per week. The dirty secret is that we already have a fast-paced learning environment that can give you a good crash course on the required core skills to make you a useful apprentice: it’s called “college”. It’s arguable that the typical BS could be abbreviated a bit or focus a bit more on “job-ready” skills. But I think the time required for most people to get there is much closer to a 48-month BS than a 4-month Nanodegree. The other dirty secret is that no one wants to hire you as a junior developer at SV rates if you don’t have experience and need a visa or want to work remotely in your low CoL hometown. Unless you already have strong qualifications, you’re fooling yourself if you think an ND or Udemy course is gonna help you break into Google as a fully remote worker.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  > It’s arguable that the typical BS could be abbreviated a bit or focus a bit more on “job-ready” skills. But I think the time required for most people to get there is much closer to a 48-month BS than a 4-month Nanodegree. A US Bachelor’s is not 48 months, at most 9 months a year is spent officially studying, the rest is holiday. That would be 36 months. If we pretend the average student treats it as seriously as a full time job, ignoring all research on how students spend their time, we can still cut that 36 months in half, because half of the average US Bachelor is general education with no professional impact. That’d be 18 months. If we want to look at the real world for examples we can see the UK, where most Bachelor’s are three years, with the extensive breaks and holidays you have in the US, but two year, full time, non stop degrees exist, or at Lambda School, which takes nine months to turn people into software engineers. They also demand more and more consistent work than well over 90% of university courses.
bryanwb 7y ago
Raahul, how do you like the omscs program? i am in it as well but worry that it is easier than the on campus MS. Even though I suspect it is easier, I still find the workload very heavy.
- cplat 7y ago
  I might need someone who has done the on campus version to pitch in. However, I’m assuming that the assignments are on par with the on campus version, and proctored exams almost too. The difference is in the number of subjects that you can take per semester, and that also adds to the difficulty. Also, I’m not entirely sure but some courses are bound to be labs heavy. Those courses probably are not available on omscs.
- lammalamma25 7y ago
  FWIW a few of the courses (AI and ML4T that I'm currently taking) have the online and on campus being taught at the same time by the same TAs/autograders. So they are literally the same course in terms of material. It's been interesting. In AI they post the grade distribution for OC vs OL. Medians are similar with slightly lower average for the online section so far.
- nvarsj 7y ago
  It's not easier than on campus. The curriculum is the same, and it's taught by the same professors and on campus head TAs (usually). If anything, it can be more difficult due to lack of interactivity in lectures to clarify things - although on the whole the recorded lecture quality is very good. OMSCS is no joke! If you want to take it, keep in mind it is a top 10 program and the workload and intensity of the classes can be very high. You will learn a lot, but it will also mean personal sacrifices (free time, time with family and friends) to keep up.
  - bryanwb 7y ago
    I am 4 classes into the program and enjoying it a lot. The surprising thing for me is that a single class seems to consume about 15 hours per week. I have heard that the harder classes, such as AI, IHPC, ML, GA, take 20-25 hours/week. I don't remember my undergrad courses being so demanding but I did not attend a top tier school. All that said, perhaps for the sharper students these classes demand much less time than they do for me.
d-d 7y ago
This article is about learning, but the context seems to be about landing a job. Software jobs are all about who you know. People who know people get waved past all the red tape. The truer purpose of education is relationships not knowledge. This is why there are high school dropout senior engineers ordering burgers from CS grads. If you're in it for money, you're less likely to build relationships. This is why I'm genuinely concerned for all these people stampeding towards CS. It's gonna be ugly in 5-10 years IMO.
- wmp56 7y ago
  For a new hire, it's more about standing out of average: github projects and all that. At that level connections are same CS grads that can't help much with landing a job. 10 years down the road it's more about connections with people from past gigs. Being a former roommate with someone in college is of no little help: unless that connection has been maintained, it's gone, and even if it's been maintained, that reference is of no help unless you worked together.
master_yoda_1 7y ago
I think people are confused here. It is not about going to college, it is about selecting field of study. A plumber don't need to go to college he just need a vocational training by doing hands on. But a mechanical engineer/scientist has to go to college to study something deeper. Udacity and coursera are filling up the gap for college courses, but you need expert professor guidance if you want to do some research.
- icelancer 7y ago
  >> Udacity and coursera are filling up the gap for college courses, but you need expert professor guidance if you want to do some research. This is definitely not true across the board. I have multiple peer-reviewed published papers (in pretty solid journals) in a field I never formally studied, and am a college dropout to boot.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  No doubt there are marginal professors who are just barely capable of doing research by virtue of intense effort by the people who taught them, applying the techniques they learned in grad school for their entire careers. Everyone else ends up reinventing themselves and their research multiple times. Even something resembling explicit education in research is unnecessary. The average medical school teacher is a physician who never got a Ph.D. and most teachers at law schools have the same degree they end up teaching (in the US), the JD, which has no mandatory research component.
MarkMc 7y ago
Traditional universities have 3 advantages over online course providers like Udacity, Coursera and Khan Academy: 1. They act as a coach: The professor and your peers expect you to attend lectures. The assignment is due by 5pm on Wednesday. If your performance isn't satisfactory you will be dropped from the course. 2. They get better feedback about their teaching. If half the students can't do the assignment on a particular topic, the professor can schedule catch-up lessons. Watching a group of students struggle with a question can give valuable insights about how to teach that topic effectively. 3. They act as a high-quality filter: Only high-quality applicants will be admitted to the university course, while anyone can pay $10 and start doing a Coursera course. The university also offers the opportunity to become part of a valuable alumni network. (Some online bootcamps like Lambda also have these advantages because they insist on strict online attendance and are willing to drop students who don't put in the effort)
- cplat 7y ago
  The 2nd point really resonates with me. I was reading this book called “Ultralearning” and feedback was one of the biggest points mentioned there. People who get prompt feedback can immediately use it to learn from experience. People who don’t have to keep guessing of what they’re doing is right or wrong.
  - newguy1234 7y ago
    I agree as well. I've noticed that most of my learning simply consists of a series of "trial and error" repeated.
- tanilama 7y ago
  Also peer pressure sometimes can be a good thing. It could help you overcome fear and discover your true potential
- newguy1234 7y ago
  I think most of these points are mostly debatable and can easily be solved through technology. Yes, there are positives to traditional universities but there are almost major negatives. It is simply unrealistic to think the system of massive student loan debts will be sustainable going forward. 1. Online coaching can be provided through video conferencing or similar. An online course perhaps could have the added benefit of allowing students to experiment with a subject. If they need to be forced into staying on track then they're probably not interested in the subject to begin with. They could also come back to the course at a later time when they're more motivated. 2. Adaptive algorithms can solve this problem and do it in real time. 3. A well crafted examination/certification can do the same for less money. See the accounting industry's certified public accounting exams or the legal industry's BAR exams. Ultimately though, I see a hybrid system being created. If you want to take the traditional class, you can, for a fee. If you can self-study then you do the online course and only pay a much smaller fee plus any supplemental services you buy. Overall everyone wins.
semireg 7y ago
Learning complex subjects is often uncomfortable. For me, college was the start of becoming comfortable with feeling stupid while learning. You learn to learn. You learn what parts of learning are normal. I started college in 2001 as a computer science student and didn’t “finish” for over 10 years because of job (sysadmin for university) and consulting opportunities (travel). I’m glad I finished because it’s behind me and I don’t need to think about it any more. I still have the common nightmare of not knowing where my final exam room is located. Anyways, I am a big fan of online courses. In early 2000s I had learned and built many PHP sites and started with Rails. There were no classes/courses on PHP or rails! Fast forward to early 2010s and I find myself watching Stanford’s iOS development courses. I leveraged the knowledge to become a successful mobile app developer consultant. A few years ago I purchased a handful of online courses on React/Redux. With that knowledge I’ve built a successful Electron JS app available on app stores. These successes are not because I’m smart. It’s because I have a high tolerance for pain and boredom. When I see a challenge I keep digging at it until it’s solved. Protip: Watch lectures at 1.5X speed (2X if review). Anything slower and my attention becomes highly distractable.
wmp56 7y ago
For me college was only useful to learn math, while everything I know about programming I learnt myself. Technically, everything I learnt about math I also learnt myself, but there was an important difference: math courses were structured in a particular way, as a sequence of topics that build on previous topics, and I had to pass exams on those topics, while learning programming was unguided. I don't use math at work, but math completely changed the way I think, and that happened during the first year in college. By "completely changed" I actually mean a substantial meaningful change in my thinking process. I believe, that the same result can be achieved by reading and proving all the theorems in the calculus: the end result should be understanding how the notion of integrals is derived from the definition of numbers and the ability to actually derive it on paper (since just understanding often misses small details that change everything). As for my programming skills, I can safely say they are top 1%, as I can often ignore inquiries from say FB HRs. Yet I learnt everything myself. Without math, and without that structured way of thinking that's required to prove theorems, I wouldn't be able to get to the CS fundamentals, and my CS knowledge would be very shallow. There were a few CS teachers in college, but even then it was obvious to me that they don't know much and they had to cater to the least able students in the group anyway. I don't see a way to bring highly skilled and competent CS teachers to college: those who really know programming and have interest and ability to deal with people, often make 500k+ a year with very relaxed work hours - there is simply no incentive for them to bother teaching CS to (mostly uninterested) kids in college. And those who do teach CS in college as their full time job don't know much about CS, simply because gathering that knowledge is a separate full time job. Edit: so online courses or college? Neither. You only need a book that thoroughly explains fundamentals and will to go thru it. Not enough will? Then you need a teacher whose only job will be to assess your knowledge twice a year in the form of some exam. Both online courses and college are too slow: I could honestly finish a masters degree in 1 year if I could avoid wasting time on all the fluff.
- tanyatik 7y ago
  > As for my programming skills, I can safely say they are top 1%, as I can often ignore inquiries from say FB HRs. Oh man, I wish this was an accurate measurement of programming skills :D
- 7y ago
timzaman 7y ago
I like to think of (software) engineering as a craft. Obviously the most effective way to learn something is by doing. The best way to get going and help you jump hoops and level up is having a mentor, or friends to talk to. Master/apprenticeship is old-fashioned but highly effective. All courses I've seen are boring, uninspiring and often ineffective, as it's often hard to relate them to a real problem you might have. Having real problems make you learn really fast.
p4bl0 7y ago
So the author starts with a first paragraph in which his presentation is largely biased in favor of online courses and then a second one in which he reveals that what he calls "college courses" is also an online version of it. The title isn't appropriate.
Merrill 7y ago
In the US, college is very much about being taught - everyone following the professor's lectures through the syllabus step by step, with exercises, quizzes, and tests for course after course. It's my impression that in other countries the student is given broader direction, studies more on their own, attends lectures or not, meets with tutors, and is assessed at the end of the semester. This seems sort of half way between the US college and the US online approaches. The fully online approach seems good only for those who are natural autodidacts or as a fallback for those who simply can't get through some of the non-CS required college courses.
jasoneckert 7y ago
Dropping out of college (or not attending college) for comp sci is great if you can make it work, or if you have the knowledge and discipline to get where you want to go. However, for many (myself included), it provided a framework that I wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. After I got that framework, then the idea made more sense to me.
k__ 7y ago
I didn't learn much about software engineering in my "Computer Science and Media" degree. But somehow I have the feeling it helped me learn stuff in general.
LimKruscal 7y ago
I'm learning writing code right in my college now and many online courses do provide a lot of basic information in coding like Randomized Algorithm etc. I think if I get all these classes I can learn more than my classes in college in terms of quality.
SenHeng 7y ago
A 4 year degree really helps when trying to get an employment visa in a developed country though. e.g. Japan has a 4 year degree or 10 years equivalent work experience requirement. There was a thread last year where lots of people commented about being rejected for a visa in Europe because they didn't have a degree, despite having multiple years of experience.
nickjj 7y ago
I think it really depends on what you're trying to do and learn. Lots of folks who have taken my Flask course[0] said they learned more about web app development in 10 hours of self paced videos than they did in 4 years of university. Lots of them felt like they finished the course really knowing how to build something, and many of them have gotten hired for work shortly after. But the course doesn't touch algorithms or any theory around computer science. It's just 10 hours of exposure to building a real SAAS app in stages. I personally believe experience trumps almost everything and courses can be very good for people who consider themselves self guided learners, because you always have the power to research the theory while treating it as something that's on a need to know basis. Taking a course on a specific subject lets you focus your time on the exact thing you're trying to accomplish and some course instructors also provide free support (I do), so you always have an out or 2nd set of eyes to help get an answer for things you can't figure out alone. I never went to college but I do sometimes regret missing out on the social / networking experience, but I have no regrets about taking a self guided approach to web development for the last 20 years and I'm happy with how things turned out. [1]: https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/
- sciencewolf 7y ago
  Echoing this sentiment of: Motivated real world exposure > real world exposure > motivated self education > traditional education As someone who mindlessly "self taught" through tutorials, then did half a bootcamp, then did a MSCS-- none of those things were anywhere near as transformational for me as a dev than my first year as a software engineer. But of course, building AlgoDaily has probably taught me even more than the many years of work at this point, purely because there's been a strong impetus. The "need to know" basis is huge. I think with a strong enough "need to know", any method works.
- crtlaltdel 7y ago
  as someone who did not attend college, or all of highschool, but has worked in an engineering role in tech (electrical, electronics, firmware, systems, saas and mobile) for almost 20y, i agree with the thrust of this comment. i will say that there is an interesting social component on-the-job, especially early on in a (my) career. more than once i had a colleague who would zero in on a gap in theory (almost always algorithms) and talk down to me. in one case i had someone jab their finger at my face and yell (yes...raised, angry voice in a large cube farm environment) "I got my masters from MIT and you dropped out of highschool". The fact that this person was, in the end, completely wrong is immaterial to my point. About a year post-conflict we were (and still are) great and supportive friends. The issue boils down to a need to "prove yourself" to certain people when you lack an undergrad degree. If you bounce jobs, regardless of reason, the process starts all over again. Someone stepping into most of the environments I've worked in with a fresh BSCi in CS/EE/whatever have not been placed in the same position to justify their existence. For me, it resulted in a multi-year personal issue of harshly judging engineers with degrees from well-known schools like Stanford, MIT, and so on. I would think to myself "why can't you do this? I dropped out of highschool, learned on my own while working crappy paying jobs as a teenager before getting a shot...mommy didnt send me to a fancy school...i worked my way up from the assembly line to the engineering team" and other such toxic inner monologues. Harsh judgements based on the fact that everyone has a different melange of life experience. Super unhelpful. As time went on I realized that a papered engineer, especially one who was only a few years out of school couldn't possibly have covered all the things in their coursework...there is enough volume of knowledge it would take decades to learn it all in school...assuming that was all you had to study! By now I have been around the block so many times that my lack of a degree is less of a barrier, outside of passing the resume-gatekeepers at larger tech orgs. It resulted in my career focus being in the startup-SMB sized orgs. Mostly people seem surprised I didn't go to college, maybe a little amused by the fact they took on a debt load to be sitting next to me. I hear a lot of "damn, i could have saved so much money". My reply tends to be along the lines of "...yeah...but it took almost 10y for HR to stop trying to low-ball my pay based on my lack of a degree...so i think it may be closer to a draw than either of us realize".
ineedasername 7y ago
I work in the realm of higher education analytics. My comments here pertain to undergraduate students: For the vast majority of students, online courses are not a good vehicle for learning. Not because online courses are, in themselves, ineffective, but because success in them requires a much higher degree of internal motivation. Without the structure afforded by the traditional classroom experience, a very large number do not engage with the coursework, especially beyond the first week or two. We see a rapid drop off in activity & assignment completion.
ineedasername 7y ago
Tangential, but somewhat related: At the community college level, there is an excellent degree type that still allows for a small liberal arts core, but focuses much more on marketable skills: The Associates of Applied Science, or AAS. It has some, but reduced humanities requirements and focuses much more on career skills of the chosen area, all of which have specific, immediately accessible job opportunities. The really unfortunate part of this degree, however, is that it's very hard to build upon later at a 4 year school to finish a bachelors if you so choose: the credits either don't transfer or transfer as electives, not requirements towards a degree. Again, a major pivot is needed for traditional 4 year schools.
WomanCanCode 7y ago
Getting a university degree has been the single most rewarding experience in my life. It gave me opportunity in life. I was born to very poor parents who didn't have high school diploma or degree. We had almost nothing growing up. Getting formal education changed my life. I got internship before graduating with my degree. And I got entry level position immediately after graduating. I started saving to pay off my student loans immediately after that.
werber 7y ago
I've worked with people with cs degrees and self taught / bootcamp types and the biggest difference between them hasn't been based on their background but their commitment to continued learning on and off the job. Granted I can only judge their ability to do work similar to mine and not incredibly difficult by any stretch.
- astura 7y ago
  Are you saying that one group has commitment to learn and one doesn't? Or it's a mixed bag?
  - werber 7y ago
    It's a mixed bag, the people from either camp who seen exceptional are the ones who are constantly learning
dominotw 7y ago
If I was a young person I would do this instead of these courses. Start with leetcode easy and see what I am missing if i am unable to solve that problem. progress all the way to leetcode hard. Anything else is pure waste of time and would not land you a job.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
  If the job requires solving anything other than Leetcode problems, you're going to get PIP'ed real quick. Leetcode won't teach you solicit requirements from PM's, how to make network requests, set up your CI/CD environment, deploy your code, configure jest/babel/webpack (if you're doing front end web development). It's useful for demonstrating knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms, but that's only a small sliver of being able to perform the job function of a Software Engineer.
  - dominotw 7y ago
    > Leetcode won't teach you solicit requirements from PM' You might or might not be able to do this but if you don't leetcode you won't get that job in the first place.
ngngngng 7y ago
Another article spewing the same garbage. "You can't learn theory without a college degree." What? Do textbooks teaching theory not exist outside of college? Are there no blog posts teaching theory on the internet? My self education took about as long as a college degree anyways, but I was able to work the whole time which I think gave me a bit of an edge over most college graduates. Self education can feature as much or as little theory as you decide you want to learn
omouse 7y ago
The conclusion is sound, the assignments reinforce learning through multiple and repeated usage of the various skills needed to complete them. The lectures and notes and readings are there to give a foundation and to be a reference to some extent. However, it's difficult to say that the only useful part of these courses are the assignments... >The best way to learn is to do your own experiments. Once understood, that understanding lasts a lifetime. Facts can change, but the governing rules, if deciphered, won’t. I recommend to all software developers that they join the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery). This gives you access to computer science papers which are the foundations and the governing rules. There's also access to Safari Learning which gives you access to the latest books and video courses: https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-benefits https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-benefits It costs a few hundred bucks a year and I've learned more in reading random CS papers and having access to great books and video courses than paying for many courses.
itamarbd1 7y ago
If you want to create web apps go to online courses. If you really want to understand how machines work, how strings work. How distributed computing works How databases work How to program efficient string search How regular expressions work How to represent problems well for example in graph How statistics works How to analyze problems How to read papers How to be able to learn anything by your own And the list goes on and on It's all in real college University courses no online course would give that to you. You have to focus on theory of math and cs for a couple of years and stretch and train your mind.
- q3k 7y ago
  > It's all in real college University courses no online course would give that to you. I learned all of what you enumerated online, usually practically applied too. This is not something you have to go to a university to learn. Granted, I wasn't following a MOOC or a bootcamp - I just kept reading, and digging in deeper, and asking questions and practicing on my own.
  - Jagat 7y ago
    Yeah, but you're not representative of most people. And the same applies to those who are in the top 10% and claim college education is useless - they're not representative of most people. Folks who now have a job because they have a college degree most likely wouldn't have one if they didn't go to college. It's rare for someone to have so much self motivation. School environment forces you to learn those things without the burden of having to be so self motivated.
    - throwawayjava 7y ago
      Yeah, I started off super into self-learning, even before the whole MOOC thing took off. I loved the MIT Open Courseware courses in high school, and I even really liked the central thesis of Illich's Deschooling Society. Then I started tutoring and teaching. That's when I realized that I'm an extreme outlier. Most people are not particularly motivated and won't put in the hours upon hours of struggle. The average experience of learning CS in university is just completely alien if you teach yourself how to program as a child. The biggest differences is the emotional labor. There are lots of things that my students would describe as "frustrating" that I have literally never thought of as frustrating (e.g., reading compiler errors). I think it's similar to learning a new language as an adult vs. as a small child.
foobar_ 7y ago
Application development does not need Software Engineering.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Software engineering is mostly project management, with very little engineering content.
hindsightbias 7y ago
There was some link a few weeks back about the low completion rate for some online coursework being abysmally low. This is HN, I would expect a hundred anecdotes from those who have succeeded against the traditional educational system in CS. But are there studies or other evidence this is more then survivorship bias? Is any study following dropouts, non-BS grads, bootcampers and online students in the industry over time and counting from the total population who registered for CS 101?
codingdave 7y ago
> The one thing that most of the colleges don’t do well is teaching you how to apply what you just learnt. I disagree 100%. That is the primary value I got from college - learning how to not only learn, but break everything down, re-conceptualize it into new things, and build it back up into something productive. We absolutely applied what we learned to our own projects, and I've found those lessons continue to work well a couple decades into my career.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
No matter how you cut it: Understanding > knowledge

212 points by cplat 7y ago

The real take away is that structured exercises and projects are both a great way to develop and display your abilities and being able to demonstrate these is more important than holding a credential within the tech industry. The barrier to entry for most people to tech jobs isn't whether or not they can get interviews, it's whether or not they can pass the technical assessment that's become a standard part of the process. In other industries, GPA, school rank, highest degree earned are hard pre-reqs to inteviews, even for entry-level jobs. That isn't necessarily the case in tech. I work in a field that falls under the "data science" umbrella and I take issue with a lot of online courses compared to traditional education because almost all of them overpromise and underdeliver and take advantage of naive students that don't know any better. I can't tell you how many applicants I've interviewed that list dozens of online certifications for this and that skill, but can't demonstrate any knowledge of it when asked or assessed. Just my $0.02, but online tech courses and degrees are akin to the MBAs of a decade ago: exploitive, expensive, and often entirely unnecessary. I would still hold that a technical computer science degree from a 4-year university is worth it, however, for the benefit of being in a collaborative learning environment with peers (Note: That doesn't mean you have to go to Berkeley - I went to a top 50 state school and got the same education and job opportunities as all of my friends that went to top 10 schools, but I graduated with a positive net worth.) (Disclaimer: I know there are always exceptions to everything. I have generally heard very good things about GT's courses - Udacity's I'm more skeptical of.)

gowld 7y ago
Berkeley is a state school.
- o10449366 7y ago
  You're right! I didn't want to delve into it too deeply, but for me and my friends who weren't CA residents the tuition was extremely steep, even after certain scholarships/aid. I think people in the US don't consider their state schools enough when looking into getting a college education. Again, my public school's CS department was ranked top 50, which certainly isn't the worse in the US, but it isn't prestigious either. In the end, the prestige didn't really matter in terms of getting job opportunities compared to my friends that went to much higher ranked schools.
cplat 7y ago
[OP here] I agree with you. Even if GT's courses, the course material is pretty standard and doesn't actually drastically increase your understanding. It's the assignments that give you the most value, which are similar to Udacity Nanodegree's projects.
newguy1234 7y ago
I completely agree. Personally I think some form of online education/self-study hybrid type of system is the future of education simply due to efficiency of such systems. The reality is that there needs to be something more to actually be in the form of credentials. We need something that allows people to display their mastery of certain subjects similar to how accounts have their CPA or lawyers have their BAR exam.
Datenstrom 7y ago
I think that what most of them are missing are testing hard questions and projects without hand-holding. Many of the courses I have taken have been good, but they will just graze the surface of anything approaching harder mathematical questions on tests and projects are too "fill in the blank (function)" rather than requiring critical thinking. I took one Udacity class and I certainly felt like I had been cheated, more cutesy animations and polished videos than real content. I would use them for an introduction, but would definitely pick up a well recommended textbook after, or do a medium sized personal project after. Although the Coursera Cryptography class I took was just as good as my University one so I guess it really depends.

anon1m0us 7y ago

My friend dropped out of college. My girlfriend is in college. I was talking about how she has a few years left and he starts shaking his head. "I just don't get it. So long and for what? To get a job?" When he dropped out of engineering school he went to manage a restaurant. Made good money. Then started to build a house. Quit that too. He almost had occupancy on it and said, "I'm done. I'm out." That's also what college is about. If you come to me looking for a job and didn't go to college, why? Did you drop out? Why? Do you not think learning is important? Do you not understand sticking it out until you have accomplished the goal? Do you give up before you are through? Not only that, but of course, I meet folks all the time who think "you don't need a degree to be a programmer." Sure. You don't need a degree to put Ikea furniture together either. I don't need programmers. I write programs to write programs. I need folks who know how to think... for themselves and learn and go out and find knowledge they need to solve problems and then solve the problems. Until they are done solving the problem. Not until they've given up.

WilliamEdward 7y ago
Why leave college? Could not afford it, did not enjoy it, thought more could be accomplished outside of it, etc. There are many reasons beyond just weak character for why someone would not go to college and it's not up to you as an employer to make that judgement call on someone's personality until you've dissected their real reasons for leaving. This is something that takes a lot of time, way longer than an interview has to offer, so it's best to not make assumptions.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
austincheney 7y ago
College/university is supposed to be about getting an education. For most people it isn't. It is about getting that piece of paper and its clear they learned next to nothing. I take graduate degrees seriously, because people tend to take those seriously and focus on the education more than the paper at the end. I don't take 4 year degrees seriously at all. If all you've proven is that you can survive with minimal effort for four years before losing patience then you certainly have more potential than the lowest side of a bell curve, but you haven't proven you bring added value.

nosyharsh 7y ago

This is very true. I am in college (non-american) and feel very weird because of the way a lot of stuff it taught here. Teaching is a different matter, but it is the grading that makes it worse. Questions asked in exams don't correspond to what is useful as far as I have seen programming on my own. Things I've learnt on my own help me understand stuff but papers are made just to ensure that those who mug up get better grades. It's sad.

jaequery 7y ago

It’s quite simple really. There are some careers where you can learn and advance far more on your own. Software engineering is one of them. The amount of tutorials and videos available on the internet far surpasses any curriculum at school. But on the other hand, anything that requires hands on training that you can’t get at the comfort of your house, like medical or scientific careers, those you probably need to go to a school for. Further more, in terms of software engineering, I don’t think the school system can ever keep up with the fast pace of the tech world. It’s just a rigid system and too slow for anything fast changing, like the web/app development.

cplat 7y ago
[OP here] You're right. I actually did my bachelors in Electronics and Telecommunications engineering, which can only be done in college because of the expensive equipment required to learn anything of value.

bitL 7y ago

I think in your case the combo of Udacity nanodegrees and OMS CS is absolutely perfect. You get overwhelmed by Top 10 academia rigor and flooded by projects, and then jump to cutting edge with Udacity and do cool stuff like self-driving cars. The only drawback would be lack of time to do anything else.

cplat 7y ago
[OP here] Yes, you're right. In my case, I had the fortune of starting to program at a very young age, about 11. I started doing these courses to get on the whole ML/AI bandwagon (although I had been exposed to neural networks in the early 2000s). The broad understanding I came to was, it's important to make your own conclusions, and not take anyone else's conclusion for granted, whether it comes from universities, courses, or even blog posts like mine. In reality, however, it's difficult to devote that much time to personally research everything. So you should at least do it with the things that matter the most to you in life.

bradcrispin 7y ago

Ohai HN! I lead product and engineering for services and the project reviews system at Udacity - seeing this post gives me a lot of purpose to go to work on Monday. We are hiring engineers who are passionate about changing education! Frontend engineer on my team: https://boards.greenhouse.io/udacity/jobs/4320541002 https://boards.greenhouse.io/udacity/jobs/4320541002 All open engineering positions: https://www.udacity.com/jobs#engineering-it?location=all https://www.udacity.com/jobs#engineering-it?location=all

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
_4570 7y ago
Just curious- Would you hire someone with only an online certification in programming to an engineering job at udacity? (As a junior/intern)
- cameronwp 7y ago
  Not the OP but I can tell you about my experience. I used to work at Udacity, both on engineering and content creation. We for sure had engineers who were self-taught / learned using online resources (myself included). In fact, I hold zero certifications related to programming. Over the years we recruited and employed a handful of engineers who pretty much learned everything they knew about programming through Udacity courses. Frankly, I always felt it was a very supportive environment for non-traditional engineers :)
  - _4570 7y ago
    Very cool. Thanks for responding :)

cgearhart 7y ago

Interesting take. I am a graduate and former TA in OMSCS, and used to work at Udacity building Nanodegrees (worked on ML & AI mostly). My experience is from a different perspective than the article, but I appreciated the differences without disagreement. What I found in my time in both environments is that Nanodegrees appeal more to students who don’t have access to traditional education (college is too expensive, or grad school requires an undergrad degree, etc.). That makes most MOOC students less experienced, less qualified, and higher risk (in the sense that they mostly don’t have the profile of successful college students). Udacity, et. al., then appear to have a very important role to play in satisfying the need for education unencumbered by academic gatekeeping. But the _other_ constant undertone in the MOOC community is the “get-rich-quick” crowd who expects a Nanodegree to make them a 6-figure AI engineer in three months at 5 hours per week. The dirty secret is that we already have a fast-paced learning environment that can give you a good crash course on the required core skills to make you a useful apprentice: it’s called “college”. It’s arguable that the typical BS could be abbreviated a bit or focus a bit more on “job-ready” skills. But I think the time required for most people to get there is much closer to a 48-month BS than a 4-month Nanodegree. The other dirty secret is that no one wants to hire you as a junior developer at SV rates if you don’t have experience and need a visa or want to work remotely in your low CoL hometown. Unless you already have strong qualifications, you’re fooling yourself if you think an ND or Udemy course is gonna help you break into Google as a fully remote worker.

barry-cotter 7y ago
> It’s arguable that the typical BS could be abbreviated a bit or focus a bit more on “job-ready” skills. But I think the time required for most people to get there is much closer to a 48-month BS than a 4-month Nanodegree. A US Bachelor’s is not 48 months, at most 9 months a year is spent officially studying, the rest is holiday. That would be 36 months. If we pretend the average student treats it as seriously as a full time job, ignoring all research on how students spend their time, we can still cut that 36 months in half, because half of the average US Bachelor is general education with no professional impact. That’d be 18 months. If we want to look at the real world for examples we can see the UK, where most Bachelor’s are three years, with the extensive breaks and holidays you have in the US, but two year, full time, non stop degrees exist, or at Lambda School, which takes nine months to turn people into software engineers. They also demand more and more consistent work than well over 90% of university courses.

bryanwb 7y ago

Raahul, how do you like the omscs program? i am in it as well but worry that it is easier than the on campus MS. Even though I suspect it is easier, I still find the workload very heavy.

cplat 7y ago
I might need someone who has done the on campus version to pitch in. However, I’m assuming that the assignments are on par with the on campus version, and proctored exams almost too. The difference is in the number of subjects that you can take per semester, and that also adds to the difficulty. Also, I’m not entirely sure but some courses are bound to be labs heavy. Those courses probably are not available on omscs.
lammalamma25 7y ago
FWIW a few of the courses (AI and ML4T that I'm currently taking) have the online and on campus being taught at the same time by the same TAs/autograders. So they are literally the same course in terms of material. It's been interesting. In AI they post the grade distribution for OC vs OL. Medians are similar with slightly lower average for the online section so far.
nvarsj 7y ago
It's not easier than on campus. The curriculum is the same, and it's taught by the same professors and on campus head TAs (usually). If anything, it can be more difficult due to lack of interactivity in lectures to clarify things - although on the whole the recorded lecture quality is very good. OMSCS is no joke! If you want to take it, keep in mind it is a top 10 program and the workload and intensity of the classes can be very high. You will learn a lot, but it will also mean personal sacrifices (free time, time with family and friends) to keep up.
- bryanwb 7y ago
  I am 4 classes into the program and enjoying it a lot. The surprising thing for me is that a single class seems to consume about 15 hours per week. I have heard that the harder classes, such as AI, IHPC, ML, GA, take 20-25 hours/week. I don't remember my undergrad courses being so demanding but I did not attend a top tier school. All that said, perhaps for the sharper students these classes demand much less time than they do for me.

d-d 7y ago

This article is about learning, but the context seems to be about landing a job. Software jobs are all about who you know. People who know people get waved past all the red tape. The truer purpose of education is relationships not knowledge. This is why there are high school dropout senior engineers ordering burgers from CS grads. If you're in it for money, you're less likely to build relationships. This is why I'm genuinely concerned for all these people stampeding towards CS. It's gonna be ugly in 5-10 years IMO.

wmp56 7y ago
For a new hire, it's more about standing out of average: github projects and all that. At that level connections are same CS grads that can't help much with landing a job. 10 years down the road it's more about connections with people from past gigs. Being a former roommate with someone in college is of no little help: unless that connection has been maintained, it's gone, and even if it's been maintained, that reference is of no help unless you worked together.

master_yoda_1 7y ago

I think people are confused here. It is not about going to college, it is about selecting field of study. A plumber don't need to go to college he just need a vocational training by doing hands on. But a mechanical engineer/scientist has to go to college to study something deeper. Udacity and coursera are filling up the gap for college courses, but you need expert professor guidance if you want to do some research.

icelancer 7y ago
>> Udacity and coursera are filling up the gap for college courses, but you need expert professor guidance if you want to do some research. This is definitely not true across the board. I have multiple peer-reviewed published papers (in pretty solid journals) in a field I never formally studied, and am a college dropout to boot.
barry-cotter 7y ago
No doubt there are marginal professors who are just barely capable of doing research by virtue of intense effort by the people who taught them, applying the techniques they learned in grad school for their entire careers. Everyone else ends up reinventing themselves and their research multiple times. Even something resembling explicit education in research is unnecessary. The average medical school teacher is a physician who never got a Ph.D. and most teachers at law schools have the same degree they end up teaching (in the US), the JD, which has no mandatory research component.

MarkMc 7y ago

Traditional universities have 3 advantages over online course providers like Udacity, Coursera and Khan Academy: 1. They act as a coach: The professor and your peers expect you to attend lectures. The assignment is due by 5pm on Wednesday. If your performance isn't satisfactory you will be dropped from the course. 2. They get better feedback about their teaching. If half the students can't do the assignment on a particular topic, the professor can schedule catch-up lessons. Watching a group of students struggle with a question can give valuable insights about how to teach that topic effectively. 3. They act as a high-quality filter: Only high-quality applicants will be admitted to the university course, while anyone can pay $10 and start doing a Coursera course. The university also offers the opportunity to become part of a valuable alumni network. (Some online bootcamps like Lambda also have these advantages because they insist on strict online attendance and are willing to drop students who don't put in the effort)

cplat 7y ago
The 2nd point really resonates with me. I was reading this book called “Ultralearning” and feedback was one of the biggest points mentioned there. People who get prompt feedback can immediately use it to learn from experience. People who don’t have to keep guessing of what they’re doing is right or wrong.
- newguy1234 7y ago
  I agree as well. I've noticed that most of my learning simply consists of a series of "trial and error" repeated.
tanilama 7y ago
Also peer pressure sometimes can be a good thing. It could help you overcome fear and discover your true potential
newguy1234 7y ago
I think most of these points are mostly debatable and can easily be solved through technology. Yes, there are positives to traditional universities but there are almost major negatives. It is simply unrealistic to think the system of massive student loan debts will be sustainable going forward. 1. Online coaching can be provided through video conferencing or similar. An online course perhaps could have the added benefit of allowing students to experiment with a subject. If they need to be forced into staying on track then they're probably not interested in the subject to begin with. They could also come back to the course at a later time when they're more motivated. 2. Adaptive algorithms can solve this problem and do it in real time. 3. A well crafted examination/certification can do the same for less money. See the accounting industry's certified public accounting exams or the legal industry's BAR exams. Ultimately though, I see a hybrid system being created. If you want to take the traditional class, you can, for a fee. If you can self-study then you do the online course and only pay a much smaller fee plus any supplemental services you buy. Overall everyone wins.

semireg 7y ago

Learning complex subjects is often uncomfortable. For me, college was the start of becoming comfortable with feeling stupid while learning. You learn to learn. You learn what parts of learning are normal. I started college in 2001 as a computer science student and didn’t “finish” for over 10 years because of job (sysadmin for university) and consulting opportunities (travel). I’m glad I finished because it’s behind me and I don’t need to think about it any more. I still have the common nightmare of not knowing where my final exam room is located. Anyways, I am a big fan of online courses. In early 2000s I had learned and built many PHP sites and started with Rails. There were no classes/courses on PHP or rails! Fast forward to early 2010s and I find myself watching Stanford’s iOS development courses. I leveraged the knowledge to become a successful mobile app developer consultant. A few years ago I purchased a handful of online courses on React/Redux. With that knowledge I’ve built a successful Electron JS app available on app stores. These successes are not because I’m smart. It’s because I have a high tolerance for pain and boredom. When I see a challenge I keep digging at it until it’s solved. Protip: Watch lectures at 1.5X speed (2X if review). Anything slower and my attention becomes highly distractable.

wmp56 7y ago

For me college was only useful to learn math, while everything I know about programming I learnt myself. Technically, everything I learnt about math I also learnt myself, but there was an important difference: math courses were structured in a particular way, as a sequence of topics that build on previous topics, and I had to pass exams on those topics, while learning programming was unguided. I don't use math at work, but math completely changed the way I think, and that happened during the first year in college. By "completely changed" I actually mean a substantial meaningful change in my thinking process. I believe, that the same result can be achieved by reading and proving all the theorems in the calculus: the end result should be understanding how the notion of integrals is derived from the definition of numbers and the ability to actually derive it on paper (since just understanding often misses small details that change everything). As for my programming skills, I can safely say they are top 1%, as I can often ignore inquiries from say FB HRs. Yet I learnt everything myself. Without math, and without that structured way of thinking that's required to prove theorems, I wouldn't be able to get to the CS fundamentals, and my CS knowledge would be very shallow. There were a few CS teachers in college, but even then it was obvious to me that they don't know much and they had to cater to the least able students in the group anyway. I don't see a way to bring highly skilled and competent CS teachers to college: those who really know programming and have interest and ability to deal with people, often make 500k+ a year with very relaxed work hours - there is simply no incentive for them to bother teaching CS to (mostly uninterested) kids in college. And those who do teach CS in college as their full time job don't know much about CS, simply because gathering that knowledge is a separate full time job. Edit: so online courses or college? Neither. You only need a book that thoroughly explains fundamentals and will to go thru it. Not enough will? Then you need a teacher whose only job will be to assess your knowledge twice a year in the form of some exam. Both online courses and college are too slow: I could honestly finish a masters degree in 1 year if I could avoid wasting time on all the fluff.

tanyatik 7y ago
> As for my programming skills, I can safely say they are top 1%, as I can often ignore inquiries from say FB HRs. Oh man, I wish this was an accurate measurement of programming skills :D
7y ago

timzaman 7y ago

I like to think of (software) engineering as a craft. Obviously the most effective way to learn something is by doing. The best way to get going and help you jump hoops and level up is having a mentor, or friends to talk to. Master/apprenticeship is old-fashioned but highly effective. All courses I've seen are boring, uninspiring and often ineffective, as it's often hard to relate them to a real problem you might have. Having real problems make you learn really fast.

p4bl0 7y ago

So the author starts with a first paragraph in which his presentation is largely biased in favor of online courses and then a second one in which he reveals that what he calls "college courses" is also an online version of it. The title isn't appropriate.

Merrill 7y ago

In the US, college is very much about being taught - everyone following the professor's lectures through the syllabus step by step, with exercises, quizzes, and tests for course after course. It's my impression that in other countries the student is given broader direction, studies more on their own, attends lectures or not, meets with tutors, and is assessed at the end of the semester. This seems sort of half way between the US college and the US online approaches. The fully online approach seems good only for those who are natural autodidacts or as a fallback for those who simply can't get through some of the non-CS required college courses.

jasoneckert 7y ago

Dropping out of college (or not attending college) for comp sci is great if you can make it work, or if you have the knowledge and discipline to get where you want to go. However, for many (myself included), it provided a framework that I wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. After I got that framework, then the idea made more sense to me.

k__ 7y ago

I didn't learn much about software engineering in my "Computer Science and Media" degree. But somehow I have the feeling it helped me learn stuff in general.

LimKruscal 7y ago

I'm learning writing code right in my college now and many online courses do provide a lot of basic information in coding like Randomized Algorithm etc. I think if I get all these classes I can learn more than my classes in college in terms of quality.

SenHeng 7y ago

A 4 year degree really helps when trying to get an employment visa in a developed country though. e.g. Japan has a 4 year degree or 10 years equivalent work experience requirement. There was a thread last year where lots of people commented about being rejected for a visa in Europe because they didn't have a degree, despite having multiple years of experience.

nickjj 7y ago

I think it really depends on what you're trying to do and learn. Lots of folks who have taken my Flask course[0] said they learned more about web app development in 10 hours of self paced videos than they did in 4 years of university. Lots of them felt like they finished the course really knowing how to build something, and many of them have gotten hired for work shortly after. But the course doesn't touch algorithms or any theory around computer science. It's just 10 hours of exposure to building a real SAAS app in stages. I personally believe experience trumps almost everything and courses can be very good for people who consider themselves self guided learners, because you always have the power to research the theory while treating it as something that's on a need to know basis. Taking a course on a specific subject lets you focus your time on the exact thing you're trying to accomplish and some course instructors also provide free support (I do), so you always have an out or 2nd set of eyes to help get an answer for things you can't figure out alone. I never went to college but I do sometimes regret missing out on the social / networking experience, but I have no regrets about taking a self guided approach to web development for the last 20 years and I'm happy with how things turned out. [1]: https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/ https://buildasaasappwithflask.com/

sciencewolf 7y ago
Echoing this sentiment of: Motivated real world exposure > real world exposure > motivated self education > traditional education As someone who mindlessly "self taught" through tutorials, then did half a bootcamp, then did a MSCS-- none of those things were anywhere near as transformational for me as a dev than my first year as a software engineer. But of course, building AlgoDaily has probably taught me even more than the many years of work at this point, purely because there's been a strong impetus. The "need to know" basis is huge. I think with a strong enough "need to know", any method works.
crtlaltdel 7y ago
as someone who did not attend college, or all of highschool, but has worked in an engineering role in tech (electrical, electronics, firmware, systems, saas and mobile) for almost 20y, i agree with the thrust of this comment. i will say that there is an interesting social component on-the-job, especially early on in a (my) career. more than once i had a colleague who would zero in on a gap in theory (almost always algorithms) and talk down to me. in one case i had someone jab their finger at my face and yell (yes...raised, angry voice in a large cube farm environment) "I got my masters from MIT and you dropped out of highschool". The fact that this person was, in the end, completely wrong is immaterial to my point. About a year post-conflict we were (and still are) great and supportive friends. The issue boils down to a need to "prove yourself" to certain people when you lack an undergrad degree. If you bounce jobs, regardless of reason, the process starts all over again. Someone stepping into most of the environments I've worked in with a fresh BSCi in CS/EE/whatever have not been placed in the same position to justify their existence. For me, it resulted in a multi-year personal issue of harshly judging engineers with degrees from well-known schools like Stanford, MIT, and so on. I would think to myself "why can't you do this? I dropped out of highschool, learned on my own while working crappy paying jobs as a teenager before getting a shot...mommy didnt send me to a fancy school...i worked my way up from the assembly line to the engineering team" and other such toxic inner monologues. Harsh judgements based on the fact that everyone has a different melange of life experience. Super unhelpful. As time went on I realized that a papered engineer, especially one who was only a few years out of school couldn't possibly have covered all the things in their coursework...there is enough volume of knowledge it would take decades to learn it all in school...assuming that was all you had to study! By now I have been around the block so many times that my lack of a degree is less of a barrier, outside of passing the resume-gatekeepers at larger tech orgs. It resulted in my career focus being in the startup-SMB sized orgs. Mostly people seem surprised I didn't go to college, maybe a little amused by the fact they took on a debt load to be sitting next to me. I hear a lot of "damn, i could have saved so much money". My reply tends to be along the lines of "...yeah...but it took almost 10y for HR to stop trying to low-ball my pay based on my lack of a degree...so i think it may be closer to a draw than either of us realize".

ineedasername 7y ago

I work in the realm of higher education analytics. My comments here pertain to undergraduate students: For the vast majority of students, online courses are not a good vehicle for learning. Not because online courses are, in themselves, ineffective, but because success in them requires a much higher degree of internal motivation. Without the structure afforded by the traditional classroom experience, a very large number do not engage with the coursework, especially beyond the first week or two. We see a rapid drop off in activity & assignment completion.

ineedasername 7y ago

Tangential, but somewhat related: At the community college level, there is an excellent degree type that still allows for a small liberal arts core, but focuses much more on marketable skills: The Associates of Applied Science, or AAS. It has some, but reduced humanities requirements and focuses much more on career skills of the chosen area, all of which have specific, immediately accessible job opportunities. The really unfortunate part of this degree, however, is that it's very hard to build upon later at a 4 year school to finish a bachelors if you so choose: the credits either don't transfer or transfer as electives, not requirements towards a degree. Again, a major pivot is needed for traditional 4 year schools.

WomanCanCode 7y ago

Getting a university degree has been the single most rewarding experience in my life. It gave me opportunity in life. I was born to very poor parents who didn't have high school diploma or degree. We had almost nothing growing up. Getting formal education changed my life. I got internship before graduating with my degree. And I got entry level position immediately after graduating. I started saving to pay off my student loans immediately after that.

werber 7y ago

I've worked with people with cs degrees and self taught / bootcamp types and the biggest difference between them hasn't been based on their background but their commitment to continued learning on and off the job. Granted I can only judge their ability to do work similar to mine and not incredibly difficult by any stretch.

astura 7y ago
Are you saying that one group has commitment to learn and one doesn't? Or it's a mixed bag?
- werber 7y ago
  It's a mixed bag, the people from either camp who seen exceptional are the ones who are constantly learning

dominotw 7y ago

If I was a young person I would do this instead of these courses. Start with leetcode easy and see what I am missing if i am unable to solve that problem. progress all the way to leetcode hard. Anything else is pure waste of time and would not land you a job.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
If the job requires solving anything other than Leetcode problems, you're going to get PIP'ed real quick. Leetcode won't teach you solicit requirements from PM's, how to make network requests, set up your CI/CD environment, deploy your code, configure jest/babel/webpack (if you're doing front end web development). It's useful for demonstrating knowledge of Data Structures and Algorithms, but that's only a small sliver of being able to perform the job function of a Software Engineer.
- dominotw 7y ago
  > Leetcode won't teach you solicit requirements from PM' You might or might not be able to do this but if you don't leetcode you won't get that job in the first place.

ngngngng 7y ago

Another article spewing the same garbage. "You can't learn theory without a college degree." What? Do textbooks teaching theory not exist outside of college? Are there no blog posts teaching theory on the internet? My self education took about as long as a college degree anyways, but I was able to work the whole time which I think gave me a bit of an edge over most college graduates. Self education can feature as much or as little theory as you decide you want to learn

omouse 7y ago

The conclusion is sound, the assignments reinforce learning through multiple and repeated usage of the various skills needed to complete them. The lectures and notes and readings are there to give a foundation and to be a reference to some extent. However, it's difficult to say that the only useful part of these courses are the assignments... >The best way to learn is to do your own experiments. Once understood, that understanding lasts a lifetime. Facts can change, but the governing rules, if deciphered, won’t. I recommend to all software developers that they join the ACM (Association of Computing Machinery). This gives you access to computer science papers which are the foundations and the governing rules. There's also access to Safari Learning which gives you access to the latest books and video courses: https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-benefits https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-benefits It costs a few hundred bucks a year and I've learned more in reading random CS papers and having access to great books and video courses than paying for many courses.

itamarbd1 7y ago

If you want to create web apps go to online courses. If you really want to understand how machines work, how strings work. How distributed computing works How databases work How to program efficient string search How regular expressions work How to represent problems well for example in graph How statistics works How to analyze problems How to read papers How to be able to learn anything by your own And the list goes on and on It's all in real college University courses no online course would give that to you. You have to focus on theory of math and cs for a couple of years and stretch and train your mind.

q3k 7y ago
> It's all in real college University courses no online course would give that to you. I learned all of what you enumerated online, usually practically applied too. This is not something you have to go to a university to learn. Granted, I wasn't following a MOOC or a bootcamp - I just kept reading, and digging in deeper, and asking questions and practicing on my own.
- Jagat 7y ago
  Yeah, but you're not representative of most people. And the same applies to those who are in the top 10% and claim college education is useless - they're not representative of most people. Folks who now have a job because they have a college degree most likely wouldn't have one if they didn't go to college. It's rare for someone to have so much self motivation. School environment forces you to learn those things without the burden of having to be so self motivated.
  - throwawayjava 7y ago
    Yeah, I started off super into self-learning, even before the whole MOOC thing took off. I loved the MIT Open Courseware courses in high school, and I even really liked the central thesis of Illich's Deschooling Society. Then I started tutoring and teaching. That's when I realized that I'm an extreme outlier. Most people are not particularly motivated and won't put in the hours upon hours of struggle. The average experience of learning CS in university is just completely alien if you teach yourself how to program as a child. The biggest differences is the emotional labor. There are lots of things that my students would describe as "frustrating" that I have literally never thought of as frustrating (e.g., reading compiler errors). I think it's similar to learning a new language as an adult vs. as a small child.

foobar_ 7y ago

Application development does not need Software Engineering.

mcguire 7y ago
Software engineering is mostly project management, with very little engineering content.

hindsightbias 7y ago

There was some link a few weeks back about the low completion rate for some online coursework being abysmally low. This is HN, I would expect a hundred anecdotes from those who have succeeded against the traditional educational system in CS. But are there studies or other evidence this is more then survivorship bias? Is any study following dropouts, non-BS grads, bootcampers and online students in the industry over time and counting from the total population who registered for CS 101?

codingdave 7y ago

> The one thing that most of the colleges don’t do well is teaching you how to apply what you just learnt. I disagree 100%. That is the primary value I got from college - learning how to not only learn, but break everything down, re-conceptualize it into new things, and build it back up into something productive. We absolutely applied what we learned to our own projects, and I've found those lessons continue to work well a couple decades into my career.

chiefalchemist 7y ago

No matter how you cut it: Understanding > knowledge