7 ms·

> I'm not an idiot. Yes, I am an idiot in those terms. My point was, I'm not just making a mindless decision. And to some my reasoning may be off by scores,

> I'm not an idiot. Yes, I am an idiot in those terms. My point was, I'm not just making a mindless decision. And to some my reasoning may be off by scores, but it's still a choice that I have made after hours of thinking hard and research.

edwinnathaniel 15y ago
It's great that you put a lot of thought into this (maybe, or it could be just as easy as seeing what in front of you, who knows right? some people think for the long-term some people thought they think for the long-term based on a recent, possibly anomaly, trend). If you can be successful one day that's great. Having said that, I'm a little bit ... sad for the upcoming generation of people in the IT industry (yes, I'm putting you in IT field in general). Less barrier to enter means commoditization. Soon enough people of your kind will be pay lower and lower and lower. Let me play the devil's advocate: Why should I pay people like you big dollars if anybody, dime a dozen, can do it? Good luck to you.
- joshmlewis 15y ago
  Everyone 'a dime a dozen' can't do it. I want to be the best. There's only a small percentile of people that have a strong design sense and can also program, and do it well. That is my goal.
  - edwinnathaniel 15y ago
    I think you're on the right, niche, track in a way: design and program. You're missing something else too: Operational Support (i.e.: Sys-Admin, Net-Admin). These days people are looking for a creature by the type of "DevOps": can program and do operational support. The future is definitely a little bit bleaker for coder generalist because the current trend is leaning toward making sure everybody can code to some degree (which surprisingly is led by Microsoft Sharepoint, InfoPath, Access, VBA, Excel, LightSwitch and not Rails + JavaScript) because let's face the fact: hiring is expensive, hiring a software developer is even more expensive. Soon the requirement would probably be: to design (UI), to program, to test, to maintain, to support operation, and to understand business. Maybe you should explore the market a little bit further than the two skill set you mentioned because of 2 things: 1) There is a possibility that one day that making a good looking software is not as hard as it used to be once people catalogue the patterns and best practices. Once these patterns, best practices, and the tools exist, suddenly the bar of creating good looking UI and decent usability becomes lower and cheaper. 2) Not everyone wants to pay premium on good UI. These days, programmers can come up with a decent workflow and minimal UI and people are OK with that as long as it solves their business problem.
  - koko775 15y ago
    I suggest you audit CS classes at Berkeley or Stanford if at all possible. I'm also a very practical programmer, but being exposed to the ides and theory are important, if for no other reason than you are aware they exist and gain an expanded ability to conceive of what is possible.
pron 15y ago
You've made a decision to shut yourself off from knowledge and insight that are hard to come by any other way. Spending a few years in college is the easiest, shortest route to some pretty profound insights, and you say, "nah". I'm not saying that you won't have a fulfilling life, and I'm certainly not saying that going to college could influence its outcome. I'm just saying that you've made your decisions based on some very stupid assumptions. It would have been better to say, "I'm not going to college because I don't feel like it, and I want to see where life takes me". I can actually respect that. But making such a decision, or any decision for that matter, based on false assumptions - actually, criminally negligent and outrageously stupid assumptions - is just... dumb. Actually, you know what? It probably wouldn't have made a difference. You look at life from such a practical point of view - jobs, "achievements", "lessons" etc. - that it would have been hard for you to really gain much at college, and maybe most people are the same way, even if they do go to college. I can only pity them, because successful as they may become, they lead a pitiful life: the life of the willfully blind.
- orangecat 15y ago
  Spending a few years in college is the easiest, shortest route to some pretty profound insights, and you say, "nah". I strongly disagree that this is a universal truth. As just one example, I'm finding the Stanford and Udacity courses I'm taking more rewarding than any of the courses I took in college, for a fraction of the time investment. But making such a decision, or any decision for that matter, based on false assumptions - actually, criminally negligent and outrageously stupid assumptions - is just... dumb. Really. So college apparently doesn't always effectively teach civility in discourse.
  - sgrove 15y ago
    I felt your comment about civility in discourse to be spot on. What would some of the denser communities of highly-educated people look like if this were hammered on for the first two years of university? I'm certain hn would benefit from it.
- joshmlewis 15y ago
  I don't take it lightly. I don't just say "nah", college is a joke. I respect college, and college is filled with brilliant people. Colleges that have decent programs also cost a decent amount. I don't want to graduate with mounds of debt. I know it's possible to work it off while in school, and financial aid, etc. but the fact of the matter is a lot of people have a lot of college debt. WHO KNOWS, I could participate in a new collegey startup in a couple years, I might decide to go in a couple years, but I wanted to make the point that not going to college doesn't mean automatic couch potato with no opportunity.
peterwwillis 15y ago
It's not really a decision that can be well reasoned when considering how it will affect the rest of your life, because there's so many ways it can affect you. You might meet your wife. You might meet your start-up co-founder. You might learn some nugget of philosophy or history or something that changes how you think, or influences a critical decision later in life. There's no way to know. But not having that exposure will surely not benefit you much at all.
- joshmlewis 15y ago
  But doing other things, you can have even more exposure if you try hard enough. Traveling, talking, networking, and not being confined to one college campus the majority of the time is a benefit. I wanted to go to Boston this week, so I bought a ticket and am going. There are exchanges you make on this path. But each path has it's own shortcomings.
  - mburshteyn 15y ago
    You have more opportunities to travel when you are in college and don't have a full time job. You can go abroad, participate in traveling teams or groups of kids going to competitions. A lot of what you are doing can be done in college. The thing is, college isn't hard, it's easy. That's why for someone like you, it would be a great experience. Your real reason for not going came out in the comments---it's expensive and you don't want debt. With these experiences you've written about, you'll be able to get into a great school and most likely with a scholarship. Your blog post would make a kick-ass admissions essay to Harvard. It seems like you already know there are ways to minimize the cost of college via scholarship, financial aid, and working hard during college. Many people do this. You are really arguing that college isn't worth the effort, yet at the same time you are no stranger to hard work. So, there's really no reason for you not to go to college. Working hard, which you are all about apparently, is all you need to do to ensure it's a net positive decision.
    - joshmlewis 15y ago
      You have to have money to do aforementioned traveling. To this day I don't understand how people can just travel all the time and spend money while they are in college unless they use loan money or have wealthy parents. I don't want to do number one, and number two isn't true. Again, they both have their pros and cons, I just am choosing the lesser tried path.

edwinnathaniel 15y ago

It's great that you put a lot of thought into this (maybe, or it could be just as easy as seeing what in front of you, who knows right? some people think for the long-term some people thought they think for the long-term based on a recent, possibly anomaly, trend). If you can be successful one day that's great. Having said that, I'm a little bit ... sad for the upcoming generation of people in the IT industry (yes, I'm putting you in IT field in general). Less barrier to enter means commoditization. Soon enough people of your kind will be pay lower and lower and lower. Let me play the devil's advocate: Why should I pay people like you big dollars if anybody, dime a dozen, can do it? Good luck to you.

joshmlewis 15y ago
Everyone 'a dime a dozen' can't do it. I want to be the best. There's only a small percentile of people that have a strong design sense and can also program, and do it well. That is my goal.
- edwinnathaniel 15y ago
  I think you're on the right, niche, track in a way: design and program. You're missing something else too: Operational Support (i.e.: Sys-Admin, Net-Admin). These days people are looking for a creature by the type of "DevOps": can program and do operational support. The future is definitely a little bit bleaker for coder generalist because the current trend is leaning toward making sure everybody can code to some degree (which surprisingly is led by Microsoft Sharepoint, InfoPath, Access, VBA, Excel, LightSwitch and not Rails + JavaScript) because let's face the fact: hiring is expensive, hiring a software developer is even more expensive. Soon the requirement would probably be: to design (UI), to program, to test, to maintain, to support operation, and to understand business. Maybe you should explore the market a little bit further than the two skill set you mentioned because of 2 things: 1) There is a possibility that one day that making a good looking software is not as hard as it used to be once people catalogue the patterns and best practices. Once these patterns, best practices, and the tools exist, suddenly the bar of creating good looking UI and decent usability becomes lower and cheaper. 2) Not everyone wants to pay premium on good UI. These days, programmers can come up with a decent workflow and minimal UI and people are OK with that as long as it solves their business problem.
- koko775 15y ago
  I suggest you audit CS classes at Berkeley or Stanford if at all possible. I'm also a very practical programmer, but being exposed to the ides and theory are important, if for no other reason than you are aware they exist and gain an expanded ability to conceive of what is possible.

pron 15y ago

You've made a decision to shut yourself off from knowledge and insight that are hard to come by any other way. Spending a few years in college is the easiest, shortest route to some pretty profound insights, and you say, "nah". I'm not saying that you won't have a fulfilling life, and I'm certainly not saying that going to college could influence its outcome. I'm just saying that you've made your decisions based on some very stupid assumptions. It would have been better to say, "I'm not going to college because I don't feel like it, and I want to see where life takes me". I can actually respect that. But making such a decision, or any decision for that matter, based on false assumptions - actually, criminally negligent and outrageously stupid assumptions - is just... dumb. Actually, you know what? It probably wouldn't have made a difference. You look at life from such a practical point of view - jobs, "achievements", "lessons" etc. - that it would have been hard for you to really gain much at college, and maybe most people are the same way, even if they do go to college. I can only pity them, because successful as they may become, they lead a pitiful life: the life of the willfully blind.

orangecat 15y ago
Spending a few years in college is the easiest, shortest route to some pretty profound insights, and you say, "nah". I strongly disagree that this is a universal truth. As just one example, I'm finding the Stanford and Udacity courses I'm taking more rewarding than any of the courses I took in college, for a fraction of the time investment. But making such a decision, or any decision for that matter, based on false assumptions - actually, criminally negligent and outrageously stupid assumptions - is just... dumb. Really. So college apparently doesn't always effectively teach civility in discourse.
- sgrove 15y ago
  I felt your comment about civility in discourse to be spot on. What would some of the denser communities of highly-educated people look like if this were hammered on for the first two years of university? I'm certain hn would benefit from it.
joshmlewis 15y ago
I don't take it lightly. I don't just say "nah", college is a joke. I respect college, and college is filled with brilliant people. Colleges that have decent programs also cost a decent amount. I don't want to graduate with mounds of debt. I know it's possible to work it off while in school, and financial aid, etc. but the fact of the matter is a lot of people have a lot of college debt. WHO KNOWS, I could participate in a new collegey startup in a couple years, I might decide to go in a couple years, but I wanted to make the point that not going to college doesn't mean automatic couch potato with no opportunity.

peterwwillis 15y ago

It's not really a decision that can be well reasoned when considering how it will affect the rest of your life, because there's so many ways it can affect you. You might meet your wife. You might meet your start-up co-founder. You might learn some nugget of philosophy or history or something that changes how you think, or influences a critical decision later in life. There's no way to know. But not having that exposure will surely not benefit you much at all.

joshmlewis 15y ago
But doing other things, you can have even more exposure if you try hard enough. Traveling, talking, networking, and not being confined to one college campus the majority of the time is a benefit. I wanted to go to Boston this week, so I bought a ticket and am going. There are exchanges you make on this path. But each path has it's own shortcomings.
- mburshteyn 15y ago
  You have more opportunities to travel when you are in college and don't have a full time job. You can go abroad, participate in traveling teams or groups of kids going to competitions. A lot of what you are doing can be done in college. The thing is, college isn't hard, it's easy. That's why for someone like you, it would be a great experience. Your real reason for not going came out in the comments---it's expensive and you don't want debt. With these experiences you've written about, you'll be able to get into a great school and most likely with a scholarship. Your blog post would make a kick-ass admissions essay to Harvard. It seems like you already know there are ways to minimize the cost of college via scholarship, financial aid, and working hard during college. Many people do this. You are really arguing that college isn't worth the effort, yet at the same time you are no stranger to hard work. So, there's really no reason for you not to go to college. Working hard, which you are all about apparently, is all you need to do to ensure it's a net positive decision.
  - joshmlewis 15y ago
    You have to have money to do aforementioned traveling. To this day I don't understand how people can just travel all the time and spend money while they are in college unless they use loan money or have wealthy parents. I don't want to do number one, and number two isn't true. Again, they both have their pros and cons, I just am choosing the lesser tried path.