5 ms·

I'm inclined to disagree. The converse -- what skills does a programmer who has never left academia lack? -- strikes me as perfectly valid. And surely there mus

I'm inclined to disagree. The converse -- what skills does a programmer who has never left academia lack? -- strikes me as perfectly valid. And surely there must be some benefit to taking four (or more) years out of your productive life to the study of programming? But I say this as a self-taught programmer, so perhaps it's just that I'm envious of those who've had the benefit of a formal CS education.

danilocampos 16y ago
I feel the same. Inferiority complexes for the self-taught?
- silentbicycle 16y ago
  It's called "imposter syndrome", and you are not alone. It's a powerful motivation, but don't let it make you suffer.
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    Yeah, it's comforting to have a label for it. I had a bit of a catharsis with imposter syndrome in this blog post I wrote for my esteemed employer: http://blog.hipmunk.com/hipmunk-for-iphone-post-mortem http://blog.hipmunk.com/hipmunk-for-iphone-post-mortem
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    I didn't know you were self-taught — I wasn't projecting, but literally confessing my agreement toward the bias you described. As to the parent, envy is typically felt from a position of disadvantage or inferiority.
    - jedsmith 16y ago
      Missed the connection between your reply and the second paragraph of your parent on first read. I responded initially to your combination of comments with that oversight in mind -- connected inferiority to inclined to disagree to me -- so I owe you an apology. Forgive me.
      - danilocampos 16y ago
        No worries, thanks for talking it out with me.
- wtn 16y ago
  Look to someone like Aaron Patterson. He studied CS at university but he did not really understand programming. Out of school, he took a job where he wrote bad Perl. After many years of experience and a lot of dedication—he expended much effort reading CS books on different topics—he came to be a solid practitioner and now is a leader in the Ruby community.
  - anacrolix 16y ago
    Haha. Bad programmer uses Perl and becomes inventor of Ruby. Why does this not surprise me?
- Jgrubb 16y ago
  None here. I'm pretty proud of how much I suck.
- singular 16y ago
  I, for one, feel incredibly inadequate for lacking the stuff that you'd get on a CS course which I think actually matters - stuff like algos, operating systems architecture, etc. I think lack of confidence is a huge factor and it's one that's plagued me for a long time, though I don't want to project my issues with it onto all self-taught programmers. <oversharing> I had a somewhat unique situation when it came to choosing my degree course - having been brought up in a new-age spiritual belief system, I was pressured into asking a woman in Indonesia what I ought to pursue (yeah seriously :-S), and ended up doing civil engineering despite having no interest in it. I had grown up coding from age 9, and that along with maths were my passions. I had the added pleasure of having a vast family crisis occur during the degree which caused me to fail a year and end up with, though a good grade (a british 2:1), nowhere near the performance I could have achieved had the shit not been going on. So I've got a degree in the wrong subject, and have had to work from scratch into some sort of development career, and now I'm in an internal job working on CRUD apps. </oversharing> The really frustrating thing is that many (though thankfully not all) potential good employers seem convinced that you must have a computer science degree or otherwise you're not worth considering (and yeah, I'm looking at you google and microsoft), I know I can learn the things I'm missing and contribute to oss, etc. to become a viable coder at a good place, but if you are basically turned away at the door because you lack the right degree it just doesn't matter. Obviously for me personally, my degree was plagued with problems which weren't my fault, another way in which I can potentially be deselected from the hiring pool. To end on a positive note - I am working on fixing these things by filling in the gaps and contributing to OSS - a good solution for people who feel similarly inadequate I feel.
  - shadowfiend 16y ago
    And look at startups. Many startups are a lot more flexible in this regard.
rottendevice 16y ago
They lack the sense of urgency brought about by the working world. Also known as making deadline.
yxhuvud 16y ago
The ability to get shit done.
- bad_user 16y ago
  I don't think you can come up with a stereotype for that. I've seen just as many people with real-world experience that have trouble "getting shit done" -- because getting shirt done is hard for every human being on this planet. That said, many people coming from academia do suffer from disappointment with the state of the industry, where boring projects are the ones that generate immediate revenue.
- paganel 16y ago
  And the ability of seeing the bigger picture (I know it sounds enterprisey, but that's how I see it). I can still remember our 1st year Physics professor telling us, a class of nerdy CS kids, about how familiarity and a deeper understanding of the field you're writing your programs for is way more important than pointers, data structures etc.
colomon 16y ago
Speaking as someone who was self-taught, spent four years getting a formal CS education, and then has 16 years post-college professional experience, I don't think you probably missed much. I think the only really practical thing I learned in school was big-O notation, and you can probably pick up the essentials of that in about one day of moderate studying. I can't recall ever learning a data structure more complicated than an AVL tree in school, and I think that was in an extra directed-study class. (If you've not heard of an AVL tree, that's not because they're terribly tricky -- it's because they're now nearly obsolete.) Mind you, a lot of the stuff I learned studying CS at college was interesting. It just hasn't been particularly relevant to my career. My math classes (I had a double major in CS and math) have actually been much more professionally useful.
- ori_b 16y ago
  I agree with you about the math class. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I ended up doing a minor in CS (which comes out to about 6 courses). I focused these courses on the more theoretical/mathy options, and that has definitely served me well.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

danilocampos 16y ago

I feel the same. Inferiority complexes for the self-taught?

silentbicycle 16y ago
It's called "imposter syndrome", and you are not alone. It's a powerful motivation, but don't let it make you suffer.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Yeah, it's comforting to have a label for it. I had a bit of a catharsis with imposter syndrome in this blog post I wrote for my esteemed employer: http://blog.hipmunk.com/hipmunk-for-iphone-post-mortem http://blog.hipmunk.com/hipmunk-for-iphone-post-mortem
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- danilocampos 16y ago
  I didn't know you were self-taught — I wasn't projecting, but literally confessing my agreement toward the bias you described. As to the parent, envy is typically felt from a position of disadvantage or inferiority.
  - jedsmith 16y ago
    Missed the connection between your reply and the second paragraph of your parent on first read. I responded initially to your combination of comments with that oversight in mind -- connected inferiority to inclined to disagree to me -- so I owe you an apology. Forgive me.
    - danilocampos 16y ago
      No worries, thanks for talking it out with me.
wtn 16y ago
Look to someone like Aaron Patterson. He studied CS at university but he did not really understand programming. Out of school, he took a job where he wrote bad Perl. After many years of experience and a lot of dedication—he expended much effort reading CS books on different topics—he came to be a solid practitioner and now is a leader in the Ruby community.
- anacrolix 16y ago
  Haha. Bad programmer uses Perl and becomes inventor of Ruby. Why does this not surprise me?
Jgrubb 16y ago
None here. I'm pretty proud of how much I suck.
singular 16y ago
I, for one, feel incredibly inadequate for lacking the stuff that you'd get on a CS course which I think actually matters - stuff like algos, operating systems architecture, etc. I think lack of confidence is a huge factor and it's one that's plagued me for a long time, though I don't want to project my issues with it onto all self-taught programmers. <oversharing> I had a somewhat unique situation when it came to choosing my degree course - having been brought up in a new-age spiritual belief system, I was pressured into asking a woman in Indonesia what I ought to pursue (yeah seriously :-S), and ended up doing civil engineering despite having no interest in it. I had grown up coding from age 9, and that along with maths were my passions. I had the added pleasure of having a vast family crisis occur during the degree which caused me to fail a year and end up with, though a good grade (a british 2:1), nowhere near the performance I could have achieved had the shit not been going on. So I've got a degree in the wrong subject, and have had to work from scratch into some sort of development career, and now I'm in an internal job working on CRUD apps. </oversharing> The really frustrating thing is that many (though thankfully not all) potential good employers seem convinced that you must have a computer science degree or otherwise you're not worth considering (and yeah, I'm looking at you google and microsoft), I know I can learn the things I'm missing and contribute to oss, etc. to become a viable coder at a good place, but if you are basically turned away at the door because you lack the right degree it just doesn't matter. Obviously for me personally, my degree was plagued with problems which weren't my fault, another way in which I can potentially be deselected from the hiring pool. To end on a positive note - I am working on fixing these things by filling in the gaps and contributing to OSS - a good solution for people who feel similarly inadequate I feel.
- shadowfiend 16y ago
  And look at startups. Many startups are a lot more flexible in this regard.

rottendevice 16y ago

They lack the sense of urgency brought about by the working world. Also known as making deadline.

yxhuvud 16y ago

The ability to get shit done.

bad_user 16y ago
I don't think you can come up with a stereotype for that. I've seen just as many people with real-world experience that have trouble "getting shit done" -- because getting shirt done is hard for every human being on this planet. That said, many people coming from academia do suffer from disappointment with the state of the industry, where boring projects are the ones that generate immediate revenue.
paganel 16y ago
And the ability of seeing the bigger picture (I know it sounds enterprisey, but that's how I see it). I can still remember our 1st year Physics professor telling us, a class of nerdy CS kids, about how familiarity and a deeper understanding of the field you're writing your programs for is way more important than pointers, data structures etc.

colomon 16y ago

Speaking as someone who was self-taught, spent four years getting a formal CS education, and then has 16 years post-college professional experience, I don't think you probably missed much. I think the only really practical thing I learned in school was big-O notation, and you can probably pick up the essentials of that in about one day of moderate studying. I can't recall ever learning a data structure more complicated than an AVL tree in school, and I think that was in an extra directed-study class. (If you've not heard of an AVL tree, that's not because they're terribly tricky -- it's because they're now nearly obsolete.) Mind you, a lot of the stuff I learned studying CS at college was interesting. It just hasn't been particularly relevant to my career. My math classes (I had a double major in CS and math) have actually been much more professionally useful.

ori_b 16y ago
I agree with you about the math class. As I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, I ended up doing a minor in CS (which comes out to about 6 courses). I focused these courses on the more theoretical/mathy options, and that has definitely served me well.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]