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> But solving problems that nobody has solved before is the kind of job that's usually filled by senior developers > By the time you have 5-10 years of work ex
by nmrm2 11y ago
> But solving problems that nobody has solved before is the kind of job that's usually filled by senior developers
> By the time you have 5-10 years of work experience, the things you learned during your working career probably play a much more important role than the stuff you learned in college
I submit these two quotes are not contradictions, but are at least in tension.
In general, 5 years hacking out code doesn't prepare you to write code that's mathematics heavy or design systems that require careful mathematical analysis.
> If I've spent the last ten years actually designing distributed systems, why does it matter whether I've gone to college or not?
It doesn't. But I bet I can pay a fresh CMU/MIT grad less, and that they'll be able to figure things out.
- greenyoda 11y ago"But I bet I can pay a fresh CMU/MIT grad less, and that they'll be able to figure things out." Sure, but it could take them much longer to figure it out. College work doesn't really prepare people to work on cutting-edge problems that nobody has solved before. Problems assigned to undergrad CS majors are generally straightforward applications of what was taught in the course, and the professors already know the solutions and how much work they involve (e.g., an assignment due in two weeks is known to be possible to complete in two weeks of effort). "In general, 5 years hacking out code doesn't prepare you to write code that's mathematics heavy or design systems that require careful mathematical analysis." How many CS grads have had experience with mathematically oriented code? The only math I remember doing in my CS classes was in theoretical courses like Algorithms, and that mostly involved proving things rather than writing code.