4 ms·

I like to compare CS to medicine. Most topics of it aren't difficult to understand, but overall it's just a lot of information. If you want to get a comprehens

by cel1ne 6y ago

I like to compare CS to medicine. Most topics of it aren't difficult to understand, but overall it's just a lot of information. If you want to get a comprehensive CS-education, you have to accept that it takes years of studying, learning and practise.

drchiu 6y ago
Agree with this. I’ve got a medical degree as well as self taught developer for 15+ years. The longer you do it, the easier it becomes as the knowledge just kind of seeps through immersion. But I can imagine for a mind that’s new to either topic can feel quickly overwhelmed without significant motivation to overcome that learning inertia.
- jimmaswell 6y ago
  Would you say CS is generally easier, with a smaller body of fundamentals, and a front-end JS dev could swap places with a back-end C# dev and the two would get up to speed a lot faster than an orthopedist and cardiologist, with all the specialized information in those two fields? Medicine just comes off like a lot more memorizing of an enormous volume of disparate information compared to programming.
  - diffrinse 6y ago
    From a frontend dev perspective a complex system like a living human being is nature's monolith of legacy hacks on top of legacy hacks, but you're damn right it holds up under millions of requests per second
  - drchiu 6y ago
    I'd say that in CS, there's a lot more transferrable knowledge. In medicine, there's a lot of specialization and niche knowledge. The cardiologist would know very little about orthopaedic specialist, for instance. I was a GP myself, and likely knew more about medicine & surgery in general. Although I had less specific knowledge, I could integrate information better (eg. Project manager, if you will, vs database specialist). So yes -- in CS, if you work in an area with a lot of general knowledge -- you are likely to get up to speed faster. In medicine, if you're a GP, you can probably undergo additional specialist training much quicker than someone who first pursued a single specialty first.
maps7 6y ago
I wonder if there's any TeachYourself Medicine resources?
- tsoukase 6y ago
  That would be very dangerous, albeit useful. Making a diagnosis and giving a therapy have different consequences than programming SW and executing code
  - mcguire 6y ago
    Yes, computer systems are carefully designed to prevent programming errors from killing or injuring anyone, costing too much money, and so on. Feel the power of the sarcasm side...
  - cutemonster 6y ago
    Trusting doctors can be dangerous too (personal experience)
tsoukase 6y ago
There are many similarities indeed (eg abstraction: cell -> tissue -> organ, modularity etc) but the fundamentals are different (deterministic CS vs probabilistic biomed)

by cel1ne 6y ago

drchiu 6y ago

Agree with this. I’ve got a medical degree as well as self taught developer for 15+ years. The longer you do it, the easier it becomes as the knowledge just kind of seeps through immersion. But I can imagine for a mind that’s new to either topic can feel quickly overwhelmed without significant motivation to overcome that learning inertia.

jimmaswell 6y ago
Would you say CS is generally easier, with a smaller body of fundamentals, and a front-end JS dev could swap places with a back-end C# dev and the two would get up to speed a lot faster than an orthopedist and cardiologist, with all the specialized information in those two fields? Medicine just comes off like a lot more memorizing of an enormous volume of disparate information compared to programming.
- diffrinse 6y ago
  From a frontend dev perspective a complex system like a living human being is nature's monolith of legacy hacks on top of legacy hacks, but you're damn right it holds up under millions of requests per second
- drchiu 6y ago
  I'd say that in CS, there's a lot more transferrable knowledge. In medicine, there's a lot of specialization and niche knowledge. The cardiologist would know very little about orthopaedic specialist, for instance. I was a GP myself, and likely knew more about medicine & surgery in general. Although I had less specific knowledge, I could integrate information better (eg. Project manager, if you will, vs database specialist). So yes -- in CS, if you work in an area with a lot of general knowledge -- you are likely to get up to speed faster. In medicine, if you're a GP, you can probably undergo additional specialist training much quicker than someone who first pursued a single specialty first.

maps7 6y ago

I wonder if there's any TeachYourself Medicine resources?

tsoukase 6y ago
That would be very dangerous, albeit useful. Making a diagnosis and giving a therapy have different consequences than programming SW and executing code
- mcguire 6y ago
  Yes, computer systems are carefully designed to prevent programming errors from killing or injuring anyone, costing too much money, and so on. Feel the power of the sarcasm side...
- cutemonster 6y ago
  Trusting doctors can be dangerous too (personal experience)

tsoukase 6y ago

There are many similarities indeed (eg abstraction: cell -> tissue -> organ, modularity etc) but the fundamentals are different (deterministic CS vs probabilistic biomed)