No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers

Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers by Zaskoda on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @12:14PM (#20507855)

The CS program taught me the history and context for Computer Science. It taught me the fundamental physics that make a gate work and how to put those gates together to make a logic circuit. It then built on this one step at a time, walking us through each layer from how machine code manipulates bits to how to properly evaluate the run time of a complex algorithm. CS told me the comprehensive story.

Earning my BS and then my MS did not increase the amount of money people were willing to pay me to build things. However, I can generally tell when I'm working with someone who is entirely self taught and I assume others with degrees can tell also.

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Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers by neilv on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @12:22PM (#20507920)

I'm imagining a funny verification process:

1. "I can just tell that person is self-taught." (No, they went to a contemporary dotcom feeder vocational CS program, and spent all their time adding the latest framework keywords, and drilling for the leetcode whiteboard interview.)

2. "It hasn't occurred to me that other person might be self-taught." (Yes, they are.)

3. "100% so far."

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Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers by umanwizard on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @02:33PM (#20509055)

I am absolutely confident that you couldn’t tell I’m self-taught if you worked with me.

All the stuff that your CS degree taught you is also possible to learn by reading books.

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Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers by cloverich on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @02:48PM (#20509158)

Further, the book on which the curriculum is based. Diligently going through them will often teach you more than the structured class based on them. When coursera first came out I was very excited to take CS classes from top universities. Then... I was surprised at how generally poor quality the lectures and material were. Outside a few standouts, I think you are vastly better off reading quality, well reviewed books / papers than taking a course / watching lectures. (Unsurprisingly this felt true of my actual degree's as well).

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Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers by Zaskoda on Tuesday July 30, 2019 @03:21PM (#20568220)

Do you consider yourself the rule or the exception?

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