4 ms·
Not getting a CS education was my biggest mistake. I got most of a Finance degree, then dropped out when I ran out of money and found out people would pay dece
by suresk 14y ago
Not getting a CS education was my biggest mistake.
I got most of a Finance degree, then dropped out when I ran out of money and found out people would pay decent money to a relatively inexperienced programmer. I'm happy with the way things have turned out for me career-wise - I think I'm a pretty competent developer and have a decent income and good future prospects - but I feel like there are opportunities that I'm much less likely to be able to take advantage of because I've mostly learned things as I've needed them.
Yes, I can (and am) independently learn everything you would in a CS program, but it is much more difficult, and the piece of paper is sometimes useful, too. Yes, plenty of folks get by without one, but I hope people don't get the idea that because they can teach themselves to throw together a website, they won't learn anything from a CS program - when I was 18, I had this idea that CS degrees taught outdated and relatively useless information, which I now believe to be false.
Even beyond the core CS curriculum, there are a lot of benefits to attending college - I feel like I at least got some of those by completing most of a degree.
It is certainly valid for some people to skip college, and that's fine, I just hope that all of this anti-college sentiment we've seen recently isn't just going to create another generation of people like me who regret thinking they didn't need the formal CS education.
- marknutter 14y agoI'm fine with anti-college sentiment as long as it's not anti-learning sentiment. College and structured, traditional, classroom based learning works for some people and it slows others down. All of the material learn in a CS degree can't be learned independently outside of college. Any benefit college gives to a person is going to be subjective and highly anecdotal, like "professor interaction" or being around like-minded peers as though people can't learn from others without being at college. Often times, if those concepts are learned outside of college they are learned out of necessity and immediately applied, rather than pushed to the back of one's mind on the off chance they might come in handy sometime down the road. The OP's beef wasn't with college - it was with the false belief that college is the only way to become successful in life.
- slurgfest 14y agoI don't know that anyone says it is the "only" way. The real claim is that college offers a significant advantage which it would be foolish to turn down. Hard to say how most High School students would be able to accurately gauge that college would be useless for them ahead of time, except if they already couldn't handle academics.
- marknutter 14y ago"The real claim is that college offers a significant advantage which it would be foolish to turn down." That sure makes it sound like it's the only way.
- slurgfest 14y agoOf course not, because it is not implied that it is impossible to do without, only that it is an advantage and that it is prudent to take all the advantages you can afford.
- cantankerous 14y agoCollege is also too much for some people who have very specific goals that don't include a well-rounded education.
- slurgfest 14y agoCollege isn't necessarily about well-roundedness at all. If your very specific goal is to become (say) a doctor, lawyer or professional engineer then you don't have much of an option of avoiding school (though you can certainly take a pass on a liberal arts degree, that isn't college in general).