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Re:How I came to find Linux by paublyrne on Tuesday August 18, 2015 @07:47AM (#10078659)
If you spend as much of your free time programming as you say, you'll probably be spending more time programming than many CS students I've come across who have no interest in computing, and you'll probably be much better at programming than many CS graduates I've come across, who have hardly any interest in computing.

Your passion will take you further than your college programme.

Re:How I came to find Linux by chucksmash on Tuesday August 18, 2015 @09:10PM (#10083178)
This was my experience as a hobbyist with a business degree who went back to school several years later for CS.

My second semester, we worked in groups of four for an elective Robotics course. Our group was composed of 3 seniors and me. One was super competent, I noobed hard but contributed working code and the other two were very eager to do the write-ups.

Re:How I came to find Linux by pjmlp on Tuesday August 18, 2015 @01:47PM (#10080822)
That wouldn't work at my university, unless it changed a lot on the last 20 years.
Re:How I came to find Linux by paublyrne on Wednesday August 19, 2015 @05:05AM (#10084376)
A lot of people fail CS, but I have friends who go through without having a real passion for it, and just doing enough to get through it.

And in the workplace there are plenty of people who know enough to do their programming jobs, but don't have a real interest in it, don't code at home, etc.

People with passion for it will shine eventually, whatever road they take.

Re:How I came to find Linux by walshemj on Tuesday August 18, 2015 @03:43PM (#10081660)
Must be a minority then you know they built the raspberry pi to try and get kids to have some programing experience at GCSE and A level (15-18)

This was so they didn't have to teach the basics on CS and EE courses

Re:How I came to find Linux by pjmlp on Tuesday August 18, 2015 @03:58PM (#10081746)
You are talking about UK.

On my Portuguese university, we got to code in standard Pascal, C, C++, Prolog, Smalltalk, Caml Light, PL/SQL, 80x86 and MIPS Assembly, Java.

Many of the lectures were composed by exam + mini-project.

Anyone that made it without much coding was getting a ride in workgroups, on single projects it was either code or fail.