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>engineer College isn't generally worth it for engineering either, unless you really want to work for something government or government adjacent where there i

>engineer College isn't generally worth it for engineering either, unless you really want to work for something government or government adjacent where there is an explicit requirement for a degree. Learning to code can be done on your own time, and you can get a job without a degree, and software development is applicable to all engineering, with more and more of the "expertise" of other fields being moved into computer software.

nudgeee 3y ago
Engineering = mechanical/aerospace/chemical/electrical/biomedical/material, etc.
piva00 3y ago
You can't be a civil, mechanical, aerospace, marine, chemical, etc. engineer through software... Software is just a tool for engineering disciplines, not everyone wants to be writing software instead of designing and building physical things.
- ActorNightly 3y ago
  >You can't be a civil, mechanical, aerospace, marine, chemical, etc. engineer through software.. Civil is the oddball in that list, because of PE certification, but the rest you absolutely can. Having a Masters in Aerospace Engineering and having switched to software later, 95% of the work that I did over the 10 years in aerospace involved software packages. 60% of it was matlab, either data processing or analysis, and 30% of it was CAD, which is essentially programming. Knowing what I know now, if I wanted to get into Aerospace through software, I would work on open source projects for autopilot or some aerospace analysis software, teach myself CAD, and with that portfolio I would absolutely get hired entry level into the companies I worked at, and would learn all the same stuff I learned while working, and the total level of effort to do this would be less than going to a 4 year college. And the only cost would be a decent laptop that can run CAD software.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
>Learning to code can be done on your own time, and you can get a job without a degree, In a vacuum, yes. In reality, I'm not sure I would have gotten past courses in stuff like Systems, compilers, and networks without being able to poke at peers and professors alike in order to get my head around them. Maybe some curated masterclasses could do the same thing for cheaper ("hundreds" instead of thousands), but those are a much more recent phenomenon; certainly not something widely known nor available a decade ago when I started school. It's also a matter of "you don't know what you dont know". There are all kinds of stories of prodigies who were tinkering with code since they were 10. Meanwhile, I'm a graphics engineer, and I didn't even know what DirectX was until my 2nd year of college. It's an affordance that is increasingly less of an option, but the ability to see and dabble in different domains really helped me shape what I enjoyed or didn't. Without that experimentation, I saw myself freshman year working as an Android app developer. That changed quickly. There's a lot of factors to take into account.

nudgeee 3y ago

Engineering = mechanical/aerospace/chemical/electrical/biomedical/material, etc.

piva00 3y ago

You can't be a civil, mechanical, aerospace, marine, chemical, etc. engineer through software... Software is just a tool for engineering disciplines, not everyone wants to be writing software instead of designing and building physical things.

ActorNightly 3y ago
>You can't be a civil, mechanical, aerospace, marine, chemical, etc. engineer through software.. Civil is the oddball in that list, because of PE certification, but the rest you absolutely can. Having a Masters in Aerospace Engineering and having switched to software later, 95% of the work that I did over the 10 years in aerospace involved software packages. 60% of it was matlab, either data processing or analysis, and 30% of it was CAD, which is essentially programming. Knowing what I know now, if I wanted to get into Aerospace through software, I would work on open source projects for autopilot or some aerospace analysis software, teach myself CAD, and with that portfolio I would absolutely get hired entry level into the companies I worked at, and would learn all the same stuff I learned while working, and the total level of effort to do this would be less than going to a 4 year college. And the only cost would be a decent laptop that can run CAD software.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

>Learning to code can be done on your own time, and you can get a job without a degree, In a vacuum, yes. In reality, I'm not sure I would have gotten past courses in stuff like Systems, compilers, and networks without being able to poke at peers and professors alike in order to get my head around them. Maybe some curated masterclasses could do the same thing for cheaper ("hundreds" instead of thousands), but those are a much more recent phenomenon; certainly not something widely known nor available a decade ago when I started school. It's also a matter of "you don't know what you dont know". There are all kinds of stories of prodigies who were tinkering with code since they were 10. Meanwhile, I'm a graphics engineer, and I didn't even know what DirectX was until my 2nd year of college. It's an affordance that is increasingly less of an option, but the ability to see and dabble in different domains really helped me shape what I enjoyed or didn't. Without that experimentation, I saw myself freshman year working as an Android app developer. That changed quickly. There's a lot of factors to take into account.