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The problem is that the value of certain computer science concepts, such as big-Oh notation, may not be immediately obvious for someone self-educating. They can

by whughes 18y ago

The problem is that the value of certain computer science concepts, such as big-Oh notation, may not be immediately obvious for someone self-educating. They can skip over these mathematical/CS concepts in favor of more 'practical' software engineering study. You don't need to know lambda calculus or even basic sorting algorithms to write business logic apps -- and so these things get ignored.

Alex3917 18y ago
I love how big-Oh notation is the default example of what you need college for in every single Reddit/HN discussion of education.
- smokinn 18y ago
  It's happened more than once that I've seen (and had to explain) why putting while loops inside while loops (once saw a one code snippet with 4 nested whiles!) is going to run fine on your dev box with 5 rows in the database but is going to be excruciatingly slow if you move it to production and data starts pouring in. Granted, in some of the cases the person did have a college degree and should've known how big-Oh applied here but must've been asleep in class.
  - tokenadult 18y ago
    in some of the cases the person did have a college degree and should've known how big-Oh applied This would serve as a counterexample to the idea that college is uniquely suitable for learning some important subjects, right?
    - smokinn 18y ago
      Technically, no, it wouldn't. Not as you stated it. College being uniquely suitable for learning a subject does not ensure that someone will learn it if they go to college. You can say that to learn x you must go to college. If you went to college though the fact that you did or did not learn x says nothing about whether you need to go to college or not to learn it. You get drilled with exactly this type of logic problem a LOT in discrete math courses. Stuff there's no way the extreme vast majority of working programmers would study on their own just because. That's being pedantic though, I imagine you're saying that it doesn't matter whether you go to college or not since you can make the same kind of mistakes when you get out. The latter part of which is true. But there's no doubt in my mind that had the guy that did go to college would be a lot worse had he not gone. He'd most probably not be able to write code that worked at all rather than code that works but not as optimally as it could.
tokenadult 18y ago
Agreeing with you that many "theoretical" topics are more practically important than learners of many domains realize at first, why should I be convinced that college is a uniquely good environment for thoroughly learning important subjects such as lambda calculus or analysis of algorithms?
billswift 18y ago
These kinds of claims are common; G Harry Stine in his "The Hopeful Future" wrote, "A self-taught person is usually deficient in one or more areas of his learning expertise." There are several problems with the claim, but the most important is that if a self-taught person discovers he or she needs to know something that they missed earlier, they simply need to go find it out, since they have avoided becoming dependent on others to tell them what to learn and when.

by whughes 18y ago

Alex3917 18y ago

I love how big-Oh notation is the default example of what you need college for in every single Reddit/HN discussion of education.

smokinn 18y ago
It's happened more than once that I've seen (and had to explain) why putting while loops inside while loops (once saw a one code snippet with 4 nested whiles!) is going to run fine on your dev box with 5 rows in the database but is going to be excruciatingly slow if you move it to production and data starts pouring in. Granted, in some of the cases the person did have a college degree and should've known how big-Oh applied here but must've been asleep in class.
- tokenadult 18y ago
  in some of the cases the person did have a college degree and should've known how big-Oh applied This would serve as a counterexample to the idea that college is uniquely suitable for learning some important subjects, right?
  - smokinn 18y ago
    Technically, no, it wouldn't. Not as you stated it. College being uniquely suitable for learning a subject does not ensure that someone will learn it if they go to college. You can say that to learn x you must go to college. If you went to college though the fact that you did or did not learn x says nothing about whether you need to go to college or not to learn it. You get drilled with exactly this type of logic problem a LOT in discrete math courses. Stuff there's no way the extreme vast majority of working programmers would study on their own just because. That's being pedantic though, I imagine you're saying that it doesn't matter whether you go to college or not since you can make the same kind of mistakes when you get out. The latter part of which is true. But there's no doubt in my mind that had the guy that did go to college would be a lot worse had he not gone. He'd most probably not be able to write code that worked at all rather than code that works but not as optimally as it could.

tokenadult 18y ago

Agreeing with you that many "theoretical" topics are more practically important than learners of many domains realize at first, why should I be convinced that college is a uniquely good environment for thoroughly learning important subjects such as lambda calculus or analysis of algorithms?

billswift 18y ago

These kinds of claims are common; G Harry Stine in his "The Hopeful Future" wrote, "A self-taught person is usually deficient in one or more areas of his learning expertise." There are several problems with the claim, but the most important is that if a self-taught person discovers he or she needs to know something that they missed earlier, they simply need to go find it out, since they have avoided becoming dependent on others to tell them what to learn and when.