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Huh. I first learned programming as an undergrad. Why do you think it is too late? [Edit] Anyway, I think that depends on whether said CS major applied himself
by donaq 17y ago
Huh. I first learned programming as an undergrad. Why do you think it is too late?
[Edit] Anyway, I think that depends on whether said CS major applied himself in college, don't you? I do have friends who graduated out of CS (well, actually we were in CE, but it's close enough) without knowing, or later forgetting, the difference between a class and a function (true story, that. he asked me that question about a year after working in the industry as a "consultant". the bugger works in a big IT consulting firm you've probably heard of). On the other hand, I discovered programming in university, got interested, and kept pushing. I don't claim to be a programming god or anything, but I do at least know how to do fizzbuzz. :)
It also depends on what sort of programming you're doing. If you're talking about typical web apps, then yes, I would agree with you that experience rules. Knowledge of the tools used in that trade are more important than anything a CS course could teach you. However, let's say you do crypto, or write 3D animation software, or any serious number-crunching/algorithmic app. That's an entirely different ball game. I'm sure there are hackers out there who are autodidacts in advanced algorithms, but CS training helps.
Should have made this shorter. In summary, it's never too late and formal CS training helps (if you have interest).
- silentbicycle 17y agoIt's not impossible - many older hackers learned to program in college because computers were inaccessible to the public - but the people who haven't tried to learn on their own are years behind, and (perhaps worse) less curious/motivated/used to teaching themselves.
- Locke1689 17y agoHowever, let's say you do crypto, or write 3D animation software, or any serious number-crunching/algorithmic app. That's an entirely different ball game. I'm sure there are hackers out there who are autodidacts in advanced algorithms, but CS training helps. Hmmm, I got nothing. That was perfectly said; I agree completely. I am actually a huge proponent of a CS degree simply for the algorithms and data structures courses. You don't want to know how many times I have seen people doing linear search on a large set of sorted data because they were never paying attention when they got taught binary search. I am actually a CS/physics major, so I would say that a degree is extremely useful for many of the things that I've seen. One of my projects was writing an elementary OpenGL physics engine that offloaded most of its processing to the graphics card. I can't tell you how much my computer architecture and physics modeling courses helped with this.