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Pretty much the truth, isn't it? The other strand of this thinking is from Taleb: wealth leads to degrees, not the other way round. That could perhaps qualify a

Pretty much the truth, isn't it? The other strand of this thinking is from Taleb: wealth leads to degrees, not the other way round. That could perhaps qualify as a hot take. What did you learn at university that you actually use on the job, in the form that is usable on the job? I did a tiny bit of programming, but I couldn't code properly until I was working. I could do calculus, but you don't actually use that as a derivatives trader, you just internalize a few results and that's it. I coded up a model that needed a Bessel function once, but that was a small project. Generally you don't solve new equations every day at work (you apply the same ones over and over), but somehow that's what you do at uni. I don't think I learned anything at uni that I needed at work, in academic terms. I'm pretty sure I could have just jumped straight to working after high school. My first boss didn't do uni and he did just fine. Uni was maturation, and the last chance to see a few of the wonders of human knowledge. Materials, electromagnetism, computation, fluids, structures, and so on. But really just a tour of those things. None of these things is what you do at work, where the real skill is grinding, networking, and understanding how some business works.

sebstefan 3y ago
I had been coding for a long time before joining university and I still learned a ton. This is what I consider that helps me daily on the job Algorithms, data structures, functional programming, object oriented programming, dynamic programming, compilers, shell, basic front-end web development, android apps, systems programming, concurrency, distributed software, hadoop, UI/UX, testing, information theory, cryptography, security, networks, configuring switches, embedded software development, databases, linear algebra, assembly, computer architecture, graph theory, statistics, complexity theory, automata theory, discrete mathematics I did not get classes on electromagnetism, fluid dynamics or engineering topics like you seem to have had I've excluded things I don't use as much such as Prolog, algorithm provers (COQ/Promella), advanced calculus, lambda calculus, lots of common-sense classes related to soft-skills like communication and project management Also I didn't enroll in the graphics programming classes and I regret it a lot
- lordnacho 3y ago
  Perhaps it was worth adding the caveat that people who did a CS course actually do seem to use it directly. Practical things like Git and Linux commands are the real thing. CS is somewhat unique in that you actually do what you do at a job, with the same exact tools. You don't use a toy version of a c++ compiler or a version control system, and your computer is as powerful as the one you get at work. Everyone else at uni does things that are not the same thing at all, with the exception of medics who are sent to the hospitals. I built a 1m model of a bridge, and a radio that was fixed to one AM station. I used Cadence for a week to build a CPU with a few thousand transistors. Don't get me started on Economics and Management.

sebstefan 3y ago

I had been coding for a long time before joining university and I still learned a ton. This is what I consider that helps me daily on the job Algorithms, data structures, functional programming, object oriented programming, dynamic programming, compilers, shell, basic front-end web development, android apps, systems programming, concurrency, distributed software, hadoop, UI/UX, testing, information theory, cryptography, security, networks, configuring switches, embedded software development, databases, linear algebra, assembly, computer architecture, graph theory, statistics, complexity theory, automata theory, discrete mathematics I did not get classes on electromagnetism, fluid dynamics or engineering topics like you seem to have had I've excluded things I don't use as much such as Prolog, algorithm provers (COQ/Promella), advanced calculus, lambda calculus, lots of common-sense classes related to soft-skills like communication and project management Also I didn't enroll in the graphics programming classes and I regret it a lot

lordnacho 3y ago
Perhaps it was worth adding the caveat that people who did a CS course actually do seem to use it directly. Practical things like Git and Linux commands are the real thing. CS is somewhat unique in that you actually do what you do at a job, with the same exact tools. You don't use a toy version of a c++ compiler or a version control system, and your computer is as powerful as the one you get at work. Everyone else at uni does things that are not the same thing at all, with the exception of medics who are sent to the hospitals. I built a 1m model of a bridge, and a radio that was fixed to one AM station. I used Cadence for a week to build a CPU with a few thousand transistors. Don't get me started on Economics and Management.