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This is just wrong. I have a degree in Psychology and went into tech in the mid 90's. I had to learn everything on my own. Is it possible? Of course it is.

by kemiller2002 5y ago

This is just wrong. I have a degree in Psychology and went into tech in the mid 90's. I had to learn everything on my own. Is it possible? Of course it is. But the amount of stuff I had to learn on my own was incredible. It is easy to learn how to write a little React program. It is however NOT easy to learn how to write a compiler without anyone to ask when you don't understand something. Everyone always says, "You never use that in the 'real world'" What's funny is that the people who say that are the people who don't know they should use those concepts to solve some problems. That's what the real separation is between having one and not having one. Trying to explain, say, a discreet system to someone who has never even heard of it is hard. There is so much people who haven't gone through a cs program don't know. I hope to think this, because I'm in this camp, but people without cs degrees can be good programmers. They just have to realize that it's not "Ha ha sucker, you spent 4 years learning something I did in 12 weeks." It's "I have to spend my nights and weekends for years learning what you concentrated in on college."

david38 5y ago
I majored in computer science and minored in math and psychology. I have to say, I loved my psychology classes, but in no way were they a replacement for my computer science classes. You are 100% right.
svenvendetta 5y ago
+1 for this comment. I started as more of a "multi-media" guy in the 2000's and eventually out of necessity moved into the developer space. Sure, I could brute force learning things and regularly would challenge myself to sit in a chair until I could figure it out watching many sunrises on the way. The web sucked back then and resources like stack overflow were barren and mostly full of trash. I had few peers to ask questions or advice and the tiny usergroups that did exist might yield you a hint here or there. It sucked. Then I got to work with and eventually hire people who had the CS degrees and not only did my knowledge explode, work got done way faster with higher quality. I'm sure it's a whole new ballgame with the wealth of resources out there but when you have time, space, and support to become a true practitioner it's got to be an advantage if not confidence builder.
deleted 5y ago
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intpx 5y ago
I'm in the same boat, but didn't come to tech until the mid 2000s, mostly on the operations side. I think what I'm missing (or had to learn on my own) from not having a CS degree is all of the table stakes stuff-- the theory. Being a good programmer is not about learning the syntax of a language, its about algorithms, data structures, logic, computational complexity theory etc etc etc. Boot camps, as author endorses, teach you how to source a whole bunch of libraries you don't understand and know nothing about, save the one feature you've been taught to source it for. This makes for bad, unscalable, insecure and unmaintainable code. (disclaimer-- many libraries and frameworks are fantastic and make it possible and reasonable to write code that is maintainable, scalable and secure. There are also some languages where its really easy to string a bunch of really crappy libraries together and get something that 'works') I'm in the position now where I am trying to enumerate all of my known unknowns and learn dive into so I can be the kind of programmer who can actually write good, performant, scalable code, more or less from the ground up.
zozbot234 5y ago
> ... That's what the real separation is between having one and not having one. > Trying to explain, say, a discreet system to someone who has never even heard of it is hard. Well, that's because discreet systems are inconspicuous and don't stand out much. Totally normal.

david38 5y ago

I majored in computer science and minored in math and psychology. I have to say, I loved my psychology classes, but in no way were they a replacement for my computer science classes. You are 100% right.

svenvendetta 5y ago

+1 for this comment. I started as more of a "multi-media" guy in the 2000's and eventually out of necessity moved into the developer space. Sure, I could brute force learning things and regularly would challenge myself to sit in a chair until I could figure it out watching many sunrises on the way. The web sucked back then and resources like stack overflow were barren and mostly full of trash. I had few peers to ask questions or advice and the tiny usergroups that did exist might yield you a hint here or there. It sucked. Then I got to work with and eventually hire people who had the CS degrees and not only did my knowledge explode, work got done way faster with higher quality. I'm sure it's a whole new ballgame with the wealth of resources out there but when you have time, space, and support to become a true practitioner it's got to be an advantage if not confidence builder.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

intpx 5y ago

I'm in the same boat, but didn't come to tech until the mid 2000s, mostly on the operations side. I think what I'm missing (or had to learn on my own) from not having a CS degree is all of the table stakes stuff-- the theory. Being a good programmer is not about learning the syntax of a language, its about algorithms, data structures, logic, computational complexity theory etc etc etc. Boot camps, as author endorses, teach you how to source a whole bunch of libraries you don't understand and know nothing about, save the one feature you've been taught to source it for. This makes for bad, unscalable, insecure and unmaintainable code. (disclaimer-- many libraries and frameworks are fantastic and make it possible and reasonable to write code that is maintainable, scalable and secure. There are also some languages where its really easy to string a bunch of really crappy libraries together and get something that 'works') I'm in the position now where I am trying to enumerate all of my known unknowns and learn dive into so I can be the kind of programmer who can actually write good, performant, scalable code, more or less from the ground up.

zozbot234 5y ago

> ... That's what the real separation is between having one and not having one. > Trying to explain, say, a discreet system to someone who has never even heard of it is hard. Well, that's because discreet systems are inconspicuous and don't stand out much. Totally normal.