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Wrong, wrong wrong wrong. It's so easy to forget how much we had to learn to build websites. It's incredibly easy to forget how much time getting the event loo

Wrong, wrong wrong wrong. It's so easy to forget how much we had to learn to build websites. It's incredibly easy to forget how much time getting the event loop or even MVC to click took. It's easy to fail to remember how hard it was to learn the 5 different languages required to build the app we made in a couple of weeks over the summer. But those are skills, as challenging to learn as algorithms and big data. As someone who has had to learn data warehousing very quickly, before being shown the joy of such things as MapReduce, before being slung into serious number crunching performance eeking territory, I can say with absolute certainty that, as "web scripters" or entrepreneurs, we have a huge advantage - we're the people who taught ourselves how to make things instead of regurgitating what a CS program teaches us. I started a CS program at a decent university. While I think it's true that ivy league and extremely competitive programs might force one to think about this stuff the right way, State University absolutely do not. Most of the kids coming out of there will not be as qualified as someone who has taught themselves how to build a business. Most importantly, If you're coming out of college, there is approximately a 0% chance the folks hiring you will have any expectation that you will be useful for several weeks while you get up to speed, which is plenty of time to become competent enough to be dangerous.

dshipper 15y ago
I'm by no means suggesting that a CS degree is the only way to get good at this stuff. In fact, I think that most of the best programmers I know didn't graduate. The difference is concentrating on being an entrepreneur vs concentrating on being a coder. This part is reposted from another comment because I think it's important to your point: As far as the meaning of the article, I wasn't trying to prove a point as much as elucidate something I was thinking about yesterday: the skills you pick up through entrepreneurship. For the past 4-5 years of my life (starting in high school and continuing through college) I've been concentrating a lot of my time learning how to be a better entrepreneur. That's to the detriment of almost everything else in my life. And it's worth it to me because I love it. Even better still, it seems like a pretty safe bet because worse comes to worse and I completely fail over the next few years I'll still be able to get a job as a coder somewhere. But the thing about being an entrepreneur is that it encourages you to get marginally good at a wide range of skills instead of REALLY good at one area. And so something I was thinking about is the potential consequences of this decision on my life. This is what I came up with.
- csomar 15y ago
  Well, my opinion is that the Internet will just get bigger than ever. Opportunities made up by huge platforms (like Kick Starter) will mean that you'll have the advantage of making money faster and more than anyone else. You'll be able to leverage your entrepreneurial knowledge with such platforms. Think of Facebook, Twitter and the AppStore. How many times they made it easier to make money starting extremely small and almost at no cost.
Drbble 15y ago
Yes. It's amazing how I can quick pick up my new job's random DSL and special secret sauce algorithm and know house toolchain, and fix bugs in them immediately, whereas 10 years ago I was mindblown for weeks trying to understand how he Y Combinator and call/cc where even theoretically possible. Same with pointers before that, and the whole concept of a computer program drawing a picture on the screen before that.
InclinedPlane 15y ago
It's really the same sort of difference of perspective as between industrial engineering and residential construction. If you've every seen someone build an ordinary home you know how much it looks like silly bullshit sometimes. Everything is wood nailed into other wood, and there's a lot more seat of the pants planning than you think should be necessary, and there's a lot more shimming and toe-nailing and adapting and whatnot than a lot of people would be comfortable with. And then compare that to a world where everything is planned out meticulously in autocad and everything is built out of reinforced concrete and bolted together pre-manufactured giant hunks of steel. They are very different worlds, much as "hard" systems programming and "soft" high level "web dev" are. And it's tempting to look from one to the other and imagine that it's only a passing fad, but it's not. As far as CS degrees, my experience is the same. I've interviewed a fair number of dev. candidates in my career (in addition to working alongside coworkers of various educational levels), and a CS degree on a resume has never had any correlation in my experience with a higher quality developer skillset. And this is down to a basic almost fizzbuzzian level too. From a few colleges a CS degree may mean something, from most it seems to be pretty worthless.

dshipper 15y ago

I'm by no means suggesting that a CS degree is the only way to get good at this stuff. In fact, I think that most of the best programmers I know didn't graduate. The difference is concentrating on being an entrepreneur vs concentrating on being a coder. This part is reposted from another comment because I think it's important to your point: As far as the meaning of the article, I wasn't trying to prove a point as much as elucidate something I was thinking about yesterday: the skills you pick up through entrepreneurship. For the past 4-5 years of my life (starting in high school and continuing through college) I've been concentrating a lot of my time learning how to be a better entrepreneur. That's to the detriment of almost everything else in my life. And it's worth it to me because I love it. Even better still, it seems like a pretty safe bet because worse comes to worse and I completely fail over the next few years I'll still be able to get a job as a coder somewhere. But the thing about being an entrepreneur is that it encourages you to get marginally good at a wide range of skills instead of REALLY good at one area. And so something I was thinking about is the potential consequences of this decision on my life. This is what I came up with.

csomar 15y ago
Well, my opinion is that the Internet will just get bigger than ever. Opportunities made up by huge platforms (like Kick Starter) will mean that you'll have the advantage of making money faster and more than anyone else. You'll be able to leverage your entrepreneurial knowledge with such platforms. Think of Facebook, Twitter and the AppStore. How many times they made it easier to make money starting extremely small and almost at no cost.

Drbble 15y ago

Yes. It's amazing how I can quick pick up my new job's random DSL and special secret sauce algorithm and know house toolchain, and fix bugs in them immediately, whereas 10 years ago I was mindblown for weeks trying to understand how he Y Combinator and call/cc where even theoretically possible. Same with pointers before that, and the whole concept of a computer program drawing a picture on the screen before that.

InclinedPlane 15y ago

It's really the same sort of difference of perspective as between industrial engineering and residential construction. If you've every seen someone build an ordinary home you know how much it looks like silly bullshit sometimes. Everything is wood nailed into other wood, and there's a lot more seat of the pants planning than you think should be necessary, and there's a lot more shimming and toe-nailing and adapting and whatnot than a lot of people would be comfortable with. And then compare that to a world where everything is planned out meticulously in autocad and everything is built out of reinforced concrete and bolted together pre-manufactured giant hunks of steel. They are very different worlds, much as "hard" systems programming and "soft" high level "web dev" are. And it's tempting to look from one to the other and imagine that it's only a passing fad, but it's not. As far as CS degrees, my experience is the same. I've interviewed a fair number of dev. candidates in my career (in addition to working alongside coworkers of various educational levels), and a CS degree on a resume has never had any correlation in my experience with a higher quality developer skillset. And this is down to a basic almost fizzbuzzian level too. From a few colleges a CS degree may mean something, from most it seems to be pretty worthless.