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I'm surprised to hear about comp sci students who feel their experience was low value, especially on this website, where you presumably work in the industry. W

I'm surprised to hear about comp sci students who feel their experience was low value, especially on this website, where you presumably work in the industry. While I picked up very few resume bullet point skills from college, I tend to find that having a comp sci background raises my game. Training in algorithms, complexity, plt and networking has given me a solid footing through my career that lets me tackle the hardest parts of the job. Stack overflow and youtube mostly help with the easy stuff.

plumeria 5y ago
Not sure if "ComSci" refers to "Computer Science" or "Communication Science".
rizzaxc 5y ago
yeah I'm very thankful I got to be in college for CS. I can't imagine learning all the deep weeds in algo, network and security in a bootcamp or youtube - way too shallow and unstructured. like how could you possibly learn all the things I learned but in 10% of the time
bmhin 5y ago
My take here is that it is too easy to look back on what was learned in college and what you use today in comparison to it's source and conclude you've picked up way more on the job and use comparatively little from the formal education. Therefore the value is low. Could you likely have learned everything that you got from your degree on your own while cutting out some of the less practical parts? Almost definitely. Would the person who isn't looking back with 20/20 hindsight know what to cut? I think that is less likely. Would a person without the formal structure of a degree actually gone out and learned all those same things with the same commitment? Some might be able to, but I suspect most would lose interest. Sure your career might have ended up never touching a single networking component that you learned about in school. But maybe you loved that part and if left to your own devices would have forsaken other parts of the education to just deep dive on it. Would that be fine? Maybe. Or maybe you quite like working in the role that you find yourself in. A role that you might have shut the door to very early on without some structure. So I think a mix of hindsight and overestimating a person's ability to just stick with a rigorous learning process that can take months and months (or years) without the benefits of peers, teachers, structure, and accountability leads to this belief. I should mention though that as we are speaking about "value", the ROI on college in America is pretty rough. Even with all those benefits laid out, it is hard to make it too rosey in the face of a hundred thousand dollars of potential debt. Extra so due to the fact that you can acquire a portion of that debt and not even come out the other side with a degree.
gizmo686 5y ago
I took classes in CompSci, Math, and Linguistics; the first two being major, and the latter being a minor. Most of the CompSci classes I took were completly useless. The only exceptions being Operating Systems and Compilers. Most of the CS classes I took were complete jokes. In contrast, every Math and Ling class I took was very educational.
- plumeria 5y ago
  Can you share some examples of classes you found useless?
  - VLM 5y ago
    I'm not OP but I am 16 years post graduation and here's the classes I found useless over the last 16 years: It had a different title but was "provide helpdesk support for Excel 2003 to businesspeople". What are the exact keystrokes required to change a background color of a cell or create a pivot table in Excel 2003, such that you could explain it over the phone to a non-technical person. Yeah... I get it... some of us grads would end up on a help desk and learning how to read a manual and explain parts of it to completely untrained people is a skill, and why not Excel? But I found it quite useless. We had some intro to programming classes that presumed to teach non-programmers how to program in the sense of decompose and arrange a problem then re-encode it using an alternative language (assembly, C++, lisp/scheme...). By increasing the workload it operated as a filter not a learning experience. If you already had the knack and had been screwing around with BASIC and home computers since you were 6, it was an easy 'A' low labor class and if you entered the program without programming experience you would drown in the workload and flunk. Pointless. If you want an English degree they do not start the curriculum assuming someone who has never seen written language could get a degree, much like if you enter the math degree path they assume you can already count from 1 to 10 and do not falsely advertise that someone who can not count to ten at entry can later graduate the program. Just put in a pre-req that to enter the CS degree path you must already have written at least one successful piece of code and skip the "how to program" intro class. Hey cobol programmers made bank on the Y2K thing, lets offer two semesters of cobol. Yeah, I took that because I already knew C++ and thought it would be fun to learn cobol. It was fun and interesting to poke around on an AS/400, but it was quite useless. Assembly programming on a motorola 68hc11 microcontroller... The teacher didn't seem to know if he was teaching "lets learn how to program" or "assembly techniques and strategies in general" or "lets just memorize the programmers model of the 68hc11 processor so at least you know one typical machine model and learning your second will be easier". The first part was useless to me, the second was shortchanged and not enough, and the latter part was useless both then and now.
NikolaNovak 5y ago
>>I'm surprised to hear about comp sci students who feel their experience was low value I guess I could be more explicit; I meant to say that, for 5 years of my life invested, for X amount of money invested, for the effort and work and given my inherent and specific desire to learn, it was an extremely inefficient method of learning. All throughout my years, I always had the feeling that learning was not the primary priority for most of the students, teaching was not the primary priority for most of the professors, and instilling knowledge was not the primary priority for most of the staff. They tell me that this changes post-grad; I cannot speak for that. But I've attended University of Manitoba and University of Toronto, and that was my personal experience. It is shared by several of my best friends who are also in the IT industry (I was a sysadmin, one is Java developer, one is a VMWare architect - all boring Enterprise Stuff compared to HN interests, but still a good cross section) I enjoyed all the learning and knowledge that I gained in university and put high value on it! I think we agree on that 100%. But I guess what I'm calling for is a reform (which I think is very much happening:) to increase the efficiency and focus on that learning and knowledge.

plumeria 5y ago

Not sure if "ComSci" refers to "Computer Science" or "Communication Science".

rizzaxc 5y ago

yeah I'm very thankful I got to be in college for CS. I can't imagine learning all the deep weeds in algo, network and security in a bootcamp or youtube - way too shallow and unstructured. like how could you possibly learn all the things I learned but in 10% of the time

bmhin 5y ago

My take here is that it is too easy to look back on what was learned in college and what you use today in comparison to it's source and conclude you've picked up way more on the job and use comparatively little from the formal education. Therefore the value is low. Could you likely have learned everything that you got from your degree on your own while cutting out some of the less practical parts? Almost definitely. Would the person who isn't looking back with 20/20 hindsight know what to cut? I think that is less likely. Would a person without the formal structure of a degree actually gone out and learned all those same things with the same commitment? Some might be able to, but I suspect most would lose interest. Sure your career might have ended up never touching a single networking component that you learned about in school. But maybe you loved that part and if left to your own devices would have forsaken other parts of the education to just deep dive on it. Would that be fine? Maybe. Or maybe you quite like working in the role that you find yourself in. A role that you might have shut the door to very early on without some structure. So I think a mix of hindsight and overestimating a person's ability to just stick with a rigorous learning process that can take months and months (or years) without the benefits of peers, teachers, structure, and accountability leads to this belief. I should mention though that as we are speaking about "value", the ROI on college in America is pretty rough. Even with all those benefits laid out, it is hard to make it too rosey in the face of a hundred thousand dollars of potential debt. Extra so due to the fact that you can acquire a portion of that debt and not even come out the other side with a degree.

gizmo686 5y ago

I took classes in CompSci, Math, and Linguistics; the first two being major, and the latter being a minor. Most of the CompSci classes I took were completly useless. The only exceptions being Operating Systems and Compilers. Most of the CS classes I took were complete jokes. In contrast, every Math and Ling class I took was very educational.

plumeria 5y ago
Can you share some examples of classes you found useless?
- VLM 5y ago
  I'm not OP but I am 16 years post graduation and here's the classes I found useless over the last 16 years: It had a different title but was "provide helpdesk support for Excel 2003 to businesspeople". What are the exact keystrokes required to change a background color of a cell or create a pivot table in Excel 2003, such that you could explain it over the phone to a non-technical person. Yeah... I get it... some of us grads would end up on a help desk and learning how to read a manual and explain parts of it to completely untrained people is a skill, and why not Excel? But I found it quite useless. We had some intro to programming classes that presumed to teach non-programmers how to program in the sense of decompose and arrange a problem then re-encode it using an alternative language (assembly, C++, lisp/scheme...). By increasing the workload it operated as a filter not a learning experience. If you already had the knack and had been screwing around with BASIC and home computers since you were 6, it was an easy 'A' low labor class and if you entered the program without programming experience you would drown in the workload and flunk. Pointless. If you want an English degree they do not start the curriculum assuming someone who has never seen written language could get a degree, much like if you enter the math degree path they assume you can already count from 1 to 10 and do not falsely advertise that someone who can not count to ten at entry can later graduate the program. Just put in a pre-req that to enter the CS degree path you must already have written at least one successful piece of code and skip the "how to program" intro class. Hey cobol programmers made bank on the Y2K thing, lets offer two semesters of cobol. Yeah, I took that because I already knew C++ and thought it would be fun to learn cobol. It was fun and interesting to poke around on an AS/400, but it was quite useless. Assembly programming on a motorola 68hc11 microcontroller... The teacher didn't seem to know if he was teaching "lets learn how to program" or "assembly techniques and strategies in general" or "lets just memorize the programmers model of the 68hc11 processor so at least you know one typical machine model and learning your second will be easier". The first part was useless to me, the second was shortchanged and not enough, and the latter part was useless both then and now.

NikolaNovak 5y ago

>>I'm surprised to hear about comp sci students who feel their experience was low value I guess I could be more explicit; I meant to say that, for 5 years of my life invested, for X amount of money invested, for the effort and work and given my inherent and specific desire to learn, it was an extremely inefficient method of learning. All throughout my years, I always had the feeling that learning was not the primary priority for most of the students, teaching was not the primary priority for most of the professors, and instilling knowledge was not the primary priority for most of the staff. They tell me that this changes post-grad; I cannot speak for that. But I've attended University of Manitoba and University of Toronto, and that was my personal experience. It is shared by several of my best friends who are also in the IT industry (I was a sysadmin, one is Java developer, one is a VMWare architect - all boring Enterprise Stuff compared to HN interests, but still a good cross section) I enjoyed all the learning and knowledge that I gained in university and put high value on it! I think we agree on that 100%. But I guess what I'm calling for is a reform (which I think is very much happening:) to increase the efficiency and focus on that learning and knowledge.