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Hold up. I know college is like that for some people, but not everyone. I pretty much never partied and spent my time studying at the library. I wouldn't have b

Hold up. I know college is like that for some people, but not everyone. I pretty much never partied and spent my time studying at the library. I wouldn't have been able to usefully work on Rust without a lot of the PL theory that I learned at university—is Rust just "shallow ideas"? Before learning PLT I thought that the C type system was all anyone needed. I sure wasn't going to write an H-M style typechecker—the original version of which I wrote for rustc—for fun on my own time. (And I did end up with a decent knowledge of Aristotle, too.) Are there too many people who get in to Ivy League schools just to party? Sure. But fixing that problem—which I agree is worth fixing—need not involve burning higher education to the ground and depriving those who are actually going to get use out of it.

rayiner 7y ago
> Are there too many people who get in to Ivy League schools just to party? Sure. But fixing that problem—which I agree is worth fixing—need not involve burning higher education to the ground and depriving those who are actually going to get use out of it. Within Ivy League schools there are a ton of (very bright!) kids who get a degree just to have a credential they use to punch their ticket at a bank or consulting shop. And outside the Ivy League there are tons of kids who get a degree, spend a lot of time partying, to get a job they could have done without the degree. All told, probably a majority of people who get a degree today don’t need one. (Back when we sent a man to the moon only 10% of Americans had a college degree. It probably never needs to get higher than that.) There is a place for public funding of college. We need engineers, doctors, even writers and journalists. And we need to address the plight of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. But I suspect you could get most of the economic benefits with a targeted system that gave out full ride scholarships based on merit, need, and plan of study, instead of making college into grades 13-16 as we have today.
- non-entity 7y ago
  > And outside the Ivy League there are tons of kids who get a degree, spend a lot of time partying, to get a job they could have done without the degree. Reminds me of something I recently read. iirc, it was some local news story regarding a college student at a nearby state university. I remember someone asked him his plans after college and he replied something about wanting to start a landscaping business. I wondered why the hell someone would bother with all that debt for something that they could have started years ago.
pingyong 7y ago
>I pretty much never partied and spent my time studying at the library. I wouldn't have been able to usefully work on Rust without a lot of the PL theory that I learned at university Did studying by yourself at the library really require being enrolled in a university though? I mean which part of this education is not indefinitely scalable? Pretty much only the personal attention of a professor. Did you require the personal attention of a professor to learn PLT? Somehow I don't think so. >Before learning PLT I thought that the C type system was all anyone needed. Using C for a while would've fixed that for you, too.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  I surmise that pcwalton may have higher standards for "useful work on Rust" than the average HNer. (It is, after all, quite difficult to appreciate a "complex design" that doesn't yet exist - not in its current form, at least.)
- rayiner 7y ago
  > I mean Rust isn't exactly very difficult to use. He's talking about working on Rust, not working in Rust. A Rust compiler, with its borrowing/type-checking, is an order of magnitude more complicated than one for C.

rayiner 7y ago

> Are there too many people who get in to Ivy League schools just to party? Sure. But fixing that problem—which I agree is worth fixing—need not involve burning higher education to the ground and depriving those who are actually going to get use out of it. Within Ivy League schools there are a ton of (very bright!) kids who get a degree just to have a credential they use to punch their ticket at a bank or consulting shop. And outside the Ivy League there are tons of kids who get a degree, spend a lot of time partying, to get a job they could have done without the degree. All told, probably a majority of people who get a degree today don’t need one. (Back when we sent a man to the moon only 10% of Americans had a college degree. It probably never needs to get higher than that.) There is a place for public funding of college. We need engineers, doctors, even writers and journalists. And we need to address the plight of people from disadvantaged backgrounds. But I suspect you could get most of the economic benefits with a targeted system that gave out full ride scholarships based on merit, need, and plan of study, instead of making college into grades 13-16 as we have today.

non-entity 7y ago
> And outside the Ivy League there are tons of kids who get a degree, spend a lot of time partying, to get a job they could have done without the degree. Reminds me of something I recently read. iirc, it was some local news story regarding a college student at a nearby state university. I remember someone asked him his plans after college and he replied something about wanting to start a landscaping business. I wondered why the hell someone would bother with all that debt for something that they could have started years ago.

pingyong 7y ago

>I pretty much never partied and spent my time studying at the library. I wouldn't have been able to usefully work on Rust without a lot of the PL theory that I learned at university Did studying by yourself at the library really require being enrolled in a university though? I mean which part of this education is not indefinitely scalable? Pretty much only the personal attention of a professor. Did you require the personal attention of a professor to learn PLT? Somehow I don't think so. >Before learning PLT I thought that the C type system was all anyone needed. Using C for a while would've fixed that for you, too.

zozbot234 7y ago
I surmise that pcwalton may have higher standards for "useful work on Rust" than the average HNer. (It is, after all, quite difficult to appreciate a "complex design" that doesn't yet exist - not in its current form, at least.)
rayiner 7y ago
> I mean Rust isn't exactly very difficult to use. He's talking about working on Rust, not working in Rust. A Rust compiler, with its borrowing/type-checking, is an order of magnitude more complicated than one for C.