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The anti-education bias of HN simply fascinates me.

by enjo 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rfnslyr 13y ago
It's strictly from a code monkey perspective. If you want to be a coder, you really don't need to go to school. If you want to take it to the next level and learn the theory behind what you are doing, get a degree. I dropped out, or semi-dropped out because I wanted to be a frontend/UI guy and learning shit like C++ and basic C/PERL/PHP <3 (seriously) for two years, while paying 10k/year, was super pointless. I'm saving now for a proper degree, and the rent to go along with it. Probably going to do electrical or computer engineering, because that, you can't really learn online like you can HTML/CSS/JS.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  A "proper degree" is ridiculously inefficient. If you've already established a feasible career path, there is little reason to learn these things by following the standard curricular programs available at most educational institutions. Find good online communities and resources, buy textbooks and other primary informational sources, and hire a good private tutor to help fill in the blanks or answer questions and you can get the same stuff down much better in a fraction of the time it'd take with generalized mass schooling, i.e., universities. University is an outdated model that's never really been applicable to the "real work" that needs to occur in an economy. Not sure why everyone decided it needed to become a general thing after WWII.
  - enjo 13y ago
    Only if you view a degree as skills training. The idea that it is inefficient is what I find so interesting, because from my point of view it's entirely the opposite. For most people a degree will greatly improve their ability to learn new things. It will expose them to a whole host of thoughts, ideas, and areas of exploration that they would otherwise never touch. The thing is, I don't have a degree. I have a LOT of one (well two actually). I feel that it's ok, because the last 30 hours or so that I'm missing are basically all computer science. That's the stuff I've been able to learn. Still I can't imagine not having the college education that I do have. I use what I learned in psychology almost every day (absolutely essential for anyone trying to run a company). I use the lessons learned in history and literature to guide my decision making. Philosophy has greatly influenced HOW I interact with others and informs the type of team that I want to have. College made me a much better entrepreneur and it did it only four years! Give me that experience every day over someone who skipped college. Now, can you get all of that elsewhere? Of course. You can learn to program. That's easy. You can read every day. Of course. But unless you are a remarkable human being (and they do exist), you'll never achieve the breadth of knowledge that comes with a degree. Hell I'm all for restructuring how we think about education. The answer isn't to eliminate it. Instead lets decouple the skills training aspect. Liberal arts degrees for everyone!
    - kansface 13y ago
      "Liberal arts degrees for everyone!" strikes me about the same as "Engineering degrees for everyone!".
- criley2 13y ago
  It's not just code monkey. Who do you want to run your company? A guy with no MBA but a 6 year history as CEO of a successful company, or a guy with 6 years of academic training and a MBA, but no history of ever running a company? Same for coders. What do you want, the guy who has coded in a similar environment for 6 years, or the guy who spent 6 years in academia being taught to code with no experience on any project outside of academics?
  - enjo 13y ago
    I want both.
kyro 13y ago
But code-slingers are world-changers.
vondur 13y ago
I don't think one would need an MBA to figure out getting paying customers is the number one priority. They had a tough job ahead of them, lots of free competitors, so they felt that they had to make a vastly superior product to differentiate themselves. It's not a bad assumption, it's just a tough market to compete in.
emn13 13y ago
Yeah, it's weird. And for all it's inefficiency, there are absolutely brilliant things to be learnt that you'd never come up with it all. I'm not sure it's specific to programming, but I find it dismaying to see how many solved problems we still need to fight with every day just because the people that originally wrote the code never paused to think enough about the theory behind it all.

The anti-education bias of HN simply fascinates me.

by enjo 13y ago

The anti-education bias of HN simply fascinates me.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

rfnslyr 13y ago

It's strictly from a code monkey perspective. If you want to be a coder, you really don't need to go to school. If you want to take it to the next level and learn the theory behind what you are doing, get a degree. I dropped out, or semi-dropped out because I wanted to be a frontend/UI guy and learning shit like C++ and basic C/PERL/PHP <3 (seriously) for two years, while paying 10k/year, was super pointless. I'm saving now for a proper degree, and the rent to go along with it. Probably going to do electrical or computer engineering, because that, you can't really learn online like you can HTML/CSS/JS.

cookiecaper 13y ago
A "proper degree" is ridiculously inefficient. If you've already established a feasible career path, there is little reason to learn these things by following the standard curricular programs available at most educational institutions. Find good online communities and resources, buy textbooks and other primary informational sources, and hire a good private tutor to help fill in the blanks or answer questions and you can get the same stuff down much better in a fraction of the time it'd take with generalized mass schooling, i.e., universities. University is an outdated model that's never really been applicable to the "real work" that needs to occur in an economy. Not sure why everyone decided it needed to become a general thing after WWII.
- enjo 13y ago
  Only if you view a degree as skills training. The idea that it is inefficient is what I find so interesting, because from my point of view it's entirely the opposite. For most people a degree will greatly improve their ability to learn new things. It will expose them to a whole host of thoughts, ideas, and areas of exploration that they would otherwise never touch. The thing is, I don't have a degree. I have a LOT of one (well two actually). I feel that it's ok, because the last 30 hours or so that I'm missing are basically all computer science. That's the stuff I've been able to learn. Still I can't imagine not having the college education that I do have. I use what I learned in psychology almost every day (absolutely essential for anyone trying to run a company). I use the lessons learned in history and literature to guide my decision making. Philosophy has greatly influenced HOW I interact with others and informs the type of team that I want to have. College made me a much better entrepreneur and it did it only four years! Give me that experience every day over someone who skipped college. Now, can you get all of that elsewhere? Of course. You can learn to program. That's easy. You can read every day. Of course. But unless you are a remarkable human being (and they do exist), you'll never achieve the breadth of knowledge that comes with a degree. Hell I'm all for restructuring how we think about education. The answer isn't to eliminate it. Instead lets decouple the skills training aspect. Liberal arts degrees for everyone!
  - kansface 13y ago
    "Liberal arts degrees for everyone!" strikes me about the same as "Engineering degrees for everyone!".
criley2 13y ago
It's not just code monkey. Who do you want to run your company? A guy with no MBA but a 6 year history as CEO of a successful company, or a guy with 6 years of academic training and a MBA, but no history of ever running a company? Same for coders. What do you want, the guy who has coded in a similar environment for 6 years, or the guy who spent 6 years in academia being taught to code with no experience on any project outside of academics?
- enjo 13y ago
  I want both.

kyro 13y ago

But code-slingers are world-changers.

vondur 13y ago

I don't think one would need an MBA to figure out getting paying customers is the number one priority. They had a tough job ahead of them, lots of free competitors, so they felt that they had to make a vastly superior product to differentiate themselves. It's not a bad assumption, it's just a tough market to compete in.

emn13 13y ago

Yeah, it's weird. And for all it's inefficiency, there are absolutely brilliant things to be learnt that you'd never come up with it all. I'm not sure it's specific to programming, but I find it dismaying to see how many solved problems we still need to fight with every day just because the people that originally wrote the code never paused to think enough about the theory behind it all.