5 ms·

Well, I gained a lot from my fellow students. I doubt our current best modes of communication can match the insight I gained from the friends which I gained dur

by tarkin2 18y ago

Well, I gained a lot from my fellow students. I doubt our current best modes of communication can match the insight I gained from the friends which I gained during my degree. Other than that, a self-taught student may be tempted to tackle easy problems. For instance, I don't think I would have ever attempted a ray tracer in c++ if I had learnt from home. And what about teachers? It's not like wikipedia would say, "hey, looks like you're creating a 2d game. ever thought about this mapping algorithm? it may make your code simpler?" You could get that information from the internet, but you'd have to realise you had a potential problem to do that, and without a teacher, who'd tell you that? Most of all, a lot of this thought comes from retrospect. Of course I now know what subjects make up a good computer science degree, but before my degree I wouldn't have known the significance of compilers, for example. Nor would I have known where to /start/, and where to go after that. It's not that it's not possible to be self-taught, but you'd need a hell of a lot of passion and motivation for the subject to shack off all the problems you'd encounter without a teacher aiding and guiding you.

PieSquared 18y ago
> "Other than that, a self-taught student may be tempted to tackle easy problems. " I completely disagree, and I'd say the opposite. If someone has the motivation be self-taught, then they will have the motivation to try difficult things. Though I would agree that you can't really be well self-taught unless you really have the determination for it.
- donw 18y ago
  All of this depends on the person. Somebody who is self-taught because they want a job in programming is going to tackle easy problems. For the same reason, and I know I'm speaking to the wrong crowd to say this, someone who is just in a hurry to slap an application together so that they can sell it will also not tackle anything really hard. Somebody who has a problem that isn't solved by any current software will, by definition, tackle something harder than someone who is just trying to make money.
- calpaterson 18y ago
  So far, I haven't ever had anyone teach me programming (will probably change next year). I just finished reading SICP (I love it!), and I've done _moderately_ difficult projects. I've seen another article recently that claimed that self taught people will only attempt "easy" things. I just thought that was derogatory, because other than being self-taught, I didn't "resemble that remark" in any other ways; he painted a picture of someone doing some hypothetical "bad PHP website".
Hexstream 18y ago
"It's not that it's not possible to be self-taught, but you'd need a hell of a lot of passion and motivation for the subject to shack off all the problems you'd encounter without a teacher aiding and guiding you." Bah. Personally I find the traditional teacher/student dynamic constraining. Being dependent of a teacher to learn puts an artificial ceiling on the skills you can acquire, and if your potential is significantly higher than the actual skill of the teacher (likely) then you'll keep banging your head on it, possibly without even knowing. When I was young I was super motivated in school and was a high-achiever but most of that talent went to waste because I was always waiting for the rest of the class. Then came the later years and I wasn't doing so good because I was used to understand everything in class quickly, I wasn't expecting to have to spend time outside class to perform. Here's a telling story: In some advanced math class in high-school, I was really having a hard time following, I had really bad grades. Then at some point I decide to tackle the material from the beginning on my own and in a couple weeks I totally turned the situation on its head and I had great grades! Now picture this: I dropped out of college at term 5 out of 6 and since that time I've learned at a much greater pace and developed a thirst for advanced math and CS topics because I know I encounter some problems in my projects and this knowledge would give me a good framework to solve them much, much more easily. To top it off, the things I learn are now completely relevant, meaningful and fun to me.

by tarkin2 18y ago

PieSquared 18y ago

> "Other than that, a self-taught student may be tempted to tackle easy problems. " I completely disagree, and I'd say the opposite. If someone has the motivation be self-taught, then they will have the motivation to try difficult things. Though I would agree that you can't really be well self-taught unless you really have the determination for it.

donw 18y ago
All of this depends on the person. Somebody who is self-taught because they want a job in programming is going to tackle easy problems. For the same reason, and I know I'm speaking to the wrong crowd to say this, someone who is just in a hurry to slap an application together so that they can sell it will also not tackle anything really hard. Somebody who has a problem that isn't solved by any current software will, by definition, tackle something harder than someone who is just trying to make money.
calpaterson 18y ago
So far, I haven't ever had anyone teach me programming (will probably change next year). I just finished reading SICP (I love it!), and I've done _moderately_ difficult projects. I've seen another article recently that claimed that self taught people will only attempt "easy" things. I just thought that was derogatory, because other than being self-taught, I didn't "resemble that remark" in any other ways; he painted a picture of someone doing some hypothetical "bad PHP website".

Hexstream 18y ago

"It's not that it's not possible to be self-taught, but you'd need a hell of a lot of passion and motivation for the subject to shack off all the problems you'd encounter without a teacher aiding and guiding you." Bah. Personally I find the traditional teacher/student dynamic constraining. Being dependent of a teacher to learn puts an artificial ceiling on the skills you can acquire, and if your potential is significantly higher than the actual skill of the teacher (likely) then you'll keep banging your head on it, possibly without even knowing. When I was young I was super motivated in school and was a high-achiever but most of that talent went to waste because I was always waiting for the rest of the class. Then came the later years and I wasn't doing so good because I was used to understand everything in class quickly, I wasn't expecting to have to spend time outside class to perform. Here's a telling story: In some advanced math class in high-school, I was really having a hard time following, I had really bad grades. Then at some point I decide to tackle the material from the beginning on my own and in a couple weeks I totally turned the situation on its head and I had great grades! Now picture this: I dropped out of college at term 5 out of 6 and since that time I've learned at a much greater pace and developed a thirst for advanced math and CS topics because I know I encounter some problems in my projects and this knowledge would give me a good framework to solve them much, much more easily. To top it off, the things I learn are now completely relevant, meaningful and fun to me.