9 ms·

Similarly, I did not graduate with a CS degree, have been programming since 5th grade and yet feel I cannot program 'professionally' for a big firm that is load

by zaidf 16y ago

Similarly, I did not graduate with a CS degree, have been programming since 5th grade and yet feel I cannot program 'professionally' for a big firm that is loaded with CS geeks while I'm just an amateur programming for 13 years. In this case, a lot of it is what you tell your brain.

arethuza 16y ago
Most hiring is based on the idea that it is far worse to employ a bad candidate than reject a good one - which favors an approach of choosing fairly arbitrary filters to whittle down the mountain of applications that any decent job has these days to a manageable quantity. Requiring a degree is popular as it is an easy to implement filter rather than any correlation with ability. (Note that question of whether a CS degree is relevant or not is an other question entirely - I'm a CS graduate and I think the maths & theory heavy course I did is irrelevant to 98% of development jobs even if it has been pretty useful for me).
- stcredzero 16y ago
  I'm a CS graduate and I think the maths & theory heavy course I did is irrelevant to 98% of development jobs even if it has been pretty useful for me There are a few tidbits from your education that will save you from serious egg on your face. (See my other post this thread.) This is not just theoretical. I've seen a company suffer major embarrassment because software sold to Fortune 500 companies was written by programmers who thought, "all that poppycock about race conditions/transactions is just academic hot air."
  - arethuza 16y ago
    Absolutely - the course I did in Concurrent Systems as part of my degree was of huge long term value because of the excellent set of mathematical abstractions it made be familiar with (Petri Nets and CSP in particular). IMHO Computer Science courses deliver value through proving a knowledge of abstractions of software and hardware systems. These formal abstractions remain applicable pretty much forever whereas knowledge of particular technologies are of passing value. [NB My hardwired knowledge of vi commands, Unix system calls and C was merely pleasant side effects of my CS degree not an end in itself]
- singular 16y ago
  I, myself, did not do computer science at university (I did civil engineering), and regret that a great deal. Not only does learning this stuff make you considerably more hire-able, it also enables solution of problems more sanely than a naive approach. The real thing I feel that I miss is not being able to recognise where known algorithms/data structures could help out, something I'm working on fixing.
stcredzero 16y ago
Just study the following: - Understand time & space complexity - Security & Encryption - Concurrency & why ACID transactions are hard That will save you from most of the most embarrassing and costly mistakes of programmers without a formal education. I've actually worked at a company that wasted millions on a fruitless project because management didn't understand basic automata theory: - Finite State Machines / Regular Expressions - Stack Machines / Context Free Grammars - Turing Machines / Anything Computable I've been thinking of doing a presentation: Everything I still actually use from my CS education in less than an hour. (It will take you a bit longer to study and really absorb, but it will probably take a lot less than 4 years of college and cost much less.) EDIT: Another good thing to study, though I'm not sure if there's a good single source: Why distributed systems are Hard and why distributed transactions are Really Hard. I really didn't care for the teaching style of the professor who staked out that whole area as "turf" so none of my materials were particularly memorable or good, but the information was valuable.
- chopsueyar 16y ago
  Do you have any preferred links or book titles?
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    The following are books from my student days. These are sources from which I happened to learn the "everything in an hour, but longer to absorb" subject matter. I'd recommend Applied Cryptography as excellent, the other is just good. Algorithms: Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen, Leiserson, & Rivest) http://amzn.com/0262033844 http://amzn.com/0262033844 Security: Applied Cryptography (Schneier) http://amzn.com/0471117099 http://amzn.com/0471117099 I cannot find my automata book just now. It's down in the garage, and I want to stay inside where it is warm now. As for concurrency, I got part of that from the Tannenbaum OS book: http://amzn.com/0131429388 http://amzn.com/0131429388 But the rest, I actually got from a coworker on the job! We did cover databases and ACID transactions in school, but that wasn't taught very well and I didn't really get it until I was doing real work. Do some assembly language. It will give you a key advantage over everyone who is too scared to touch it. Write a compiler and/or interpreter. This can actually be pretty small, and it will also give you an advantage over those too scared of something so seemingly "esoteric."
snippyhollow 16y ago
If you really know how to program / software design / make it work, you can simply read "The New Turing Omnibus" (66 Excursions in Computer Science) from A.K. Dewdney and learn complexity/algorithms with "Introduction to Algorithms" from Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein. More important than _reading_ this last book is _doing_ the/some exercises, follow open course ware (for instance: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/video-lectures/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput... ) if you prefer but do some exercises found in that book (or on Top Coder or Google Code Jam or whatever suits you). Also, if you have time and passion, write a compiler.

by zaidf 16y ago

arethuza 16y ago

Most hiring is based on the idea that it is far worse to employ a bad candidate than reject a good one - which favors an approach of choosing fairly arbitrary filters to whittle down the mountain of applications that any decent job has these days to a manageable quantity. Requiring a degree is popular as it is an easy to implement filter rather than any correlation with ability. (Note that question of whether a CS degree is relevant or not is an other question entirely - I'm a CS graduate and I think the maths & theory heavy course I did is irrelevant to 98% of development jobs even if it has been pretty useful for me).

stcredzero 16y ago
I'm a CS graduate and I think the maths & theory heavy course I did is irrelevant to 98% of development jobs even if it has been pretty useful for me There are a few tidbits from your education that will save you from serious egg on your face. (See my other post this thread.) This is not just theoretical. I've seen a company suffer major embarrassment because software sold to Fortune 500 companies was written by programmers who thought, "all that poppycock about race conditions/transactions is just academic hot air."
- arethuza 16y ago
  Absolutely - the course I did in Concurrent Systems as part of my degree was of huge long term value because of the excellent set of mathematical abstractions it made be familiar with (Petri Nets and CSP in particular). IMHO Computer Science courses deliver value through proving a knowledge of abstractions of software and hardware systems. These formal abstractions remain applicable pretty much forever whereas knowledge of particular technologies are of passing value. [NB My hardwired knowledge of vi commands, Unix system calls and C was merely pleasant side effects of my CS degree not an end in itself]
singular 16y ago
I, myself, did not do computer science at university (I did civil engineering), and regret that a great deal. Not only does learning this stuff make you considerably more hire-able, it also enables solution of problems more sanely than a naive approach. The real thing I feel that I miss is not being able to recognise where known algorithms/data structures could help out, something I'm working on fixing.

stcredzero 16y ago

Just study the following: - Understand time & space complexity - Security & Encryption - Concurrency & why ACID transactions are hard That will save you from most of the most embarrassing and costly mistakes of programmers without a formal education. I've actually worked at a company that wasted millions on a fruitless project because management didn't understand basic automata theory: - Finite State Machines / Regular Expressions - Stack Machines / Context Free Grammars - Turing Machines / Anything Computable I've been thinking of doing a presentation: Everything I still actually use from my CS education in less than an hour. (It will take you a bit longer to study and really absorb, but it will probably take a lot less than 4 years of college and cost much less.) EDIT: Another good thing to study, though I'm not sure if there's a good single source: Why distributed systems are Hard and why distributed transactions are Really Hard. I really didn't care for the teaching style of the professor who staked out that whole area as "turf" so none of my materials were particularly memorable or good, but the information was valuable.

chopsueyar 16y ago
Do you have any preferred links or book titles?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  The following are books from my student days. These are sources from which I happened to learn the "everything in an hour, but longer to absorb" subject matter. I'd recommend Applied Cryptography as excellent, the other is just good. Algorithms: Introduction to Algorithms (Cormen, Leiserson, & Rivest) http://amzn.com/0262033844 http://amzn.com/0262033844 Security: Applied Cryptography (Schneier) http://amzn.com/0471117099 http://amzn.com/0471117099 I cannot find my automata book just now. It's down in the garage, and I want to stay inside where it is warm now. As for concurrency, I got part of that from the Tannenbaum OS book: http://amzn.com/0131429388 http://amzn.com/0131429388 But the rest, I actually got from a coworker on the job! We did cover databases and ACID transactions in school, but that wasn't taught very well and I didn't really get it until I was doing real work. Do some assembly language. It will give you a key advantage over everyone who is too scared to touch it. Write a compiler and/or interpreter. This can actually be pretty small, and it will also give you an advantage over those too scared of something so seemingly "esoteric."

snippyhollow 16y ago

If you really know how to program / software design / make it work, you can simply read "The New Turing Omnibus" (66 Excursions in Computer Science) from A.K. Dewdney and learn complexity/algorithms with "Introduction to Algorithms" from Cormen, Leiserson, Rivest and Stein. More important than _reading_ this last book is _doing_ the/some exercises, follow open course ware (for instance: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-046j-introduction-to-algorithms-sma-5503-fall-2005/video-lectures/ http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput... ) if you prefer but do some exercises found in that book (or on Top Coder or Google Code Jam or whatever suits you). Also, if you have time and passion, write a compiler.