5 ms·

Same here, getting close to hitting 7 figures. Never stepped foot in a university but I was coding from 13 and working part time from about that age. Uni just s

by 1290cc 7y ago

Same here, getting close to hitting 7 figures. Never stepped foot in a university but I was coding from 13 and working part time from about that age. Uni just seemed like a waste of time as the CS curriculum was already out of date for modern development in the country I'm from (this was mid 90s and internet was taking off). I would not recommend this career track if you're the kind of person that wants to climb a career ladder and go into management on the business side of things, there are definitely useful skills to acquire on the legal and softskills side. Having any degree will just check a box and help people without a clear view of what they want out of the future. It can also help if you want to put yourself through being just another number at a FANG organisation. Too stubborn and arrogant to allow someone to tell me I'm incapable of being a success without a piece of paper.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
winrid 7y ago
Regarding the management comment. I took the trade school route and after being an IC for a while I currently lead a team of engineers - without a degree. Maybe it would have helped though. I've had to read CS books everyday and still do.
cryptica 7y ago
The most valuable lessons I got from University were: - Time and space complexity (Big O, Little O, big Omega) - Algorithms and data structures (linked lists, heaps, trees, graphs, search algorithms, sorting algorithms) - Artificial intelligence (neural networks, evolutionary computation, decision trees) - Electrical engineering logic gates and circuit analysis (gives a good basic understanding) - Discrete maths (De Morgan's laws) - Database design The database design course I did was heavily centered around relational databases but some of the core concepts of this course ended up being very valuable for any kind of DB and also for areas outside of the DB. It taught me a lot about useful software engineering concepts such as identifying functional dependencies in the data, achieving good separation of concerns, establishing a clear data flow, one-source-of-truth principle, indexing of data, etc...
- antb123 7y ago
  Unfortunately with 95% of programming you just reuse libraries created by someone else and modern programming language come with much of the data structures built in.
- pickle-wizard 7y ago
  I had to learn all that stuff, and it has been nearly 20 years since I took many of those classes. Except for the database design, which I use regularly, I've forgotten it all. Which is really frustrating, because I put a lot of time, effort and money into learning that stuff. The other day one of our network guys asked me what a Red-Black Tree is. I couldn't explain it. I got an A in my algorithms and data structures class, but I haven't used it so I forgot it.

by 1290cc 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

winrid 7y ago

Regarding the management comment. I took the trade school route and after being an IC for a while I currently lead a team of engineers - without a degree. Maybe it would have helped though. I've had to read CS books everyday and still do.

cryptica 7y ago

The most valuable lessons I got from University were: - Time and space complexity (Big O, Little O, big Omega) - Algorithms and data structures (linked lists, heaps, trees, graphs, search algorithms, sorting algorithms) - Artificial intelligence (neural networks, evolutionary computation, decision trees) - Electrical engineering logic gates and circuit analysis (gives a good basic understanding) - Discrete maths (De Morgan's laws) - Database design The database design course I did was heavily centered around relational databases but some of the core concepts of this course ended up being very valuable for any kind of DB and also for areas outside of the DB. It taught me a lot about useful software engineering concepts such as identifying functional dependencies in the data, achieving good separation of concerns, establishing a clear data flow, one-source-of-truth principle, indexing of data, etc...

antb123 7y ago
Unfortunately with 95% of programming you just reuse libraries created by someone else and modern programming language come with much of the data structures built in.
pickle-wizard 7y ago
I had to learn all that stuff, and it has been nearly 20 years since I took many of those classes. Except for the database design, which I use regularly, I've forgotten it all. Which is really frustrating, because I put a lot of time, effort and money into learning that stuff. The other day one of our network guys asked me what a Red-Black Tree is. I couldn't explain it. I got an A in my algorithms and data structures class, but I haven't used it so I forgot it.