Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
by scifi6546 on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @07:29PM
(#20521170)
At the same time people who are self taught typically have more time and energy to attack things in more depth. My cs classes are pretty 'standard' and on my free time I can go on long tangents where I really learn. I learned about assembly programming and the bacics of how cpu's work from self learning rather than getting a very simplified understanding from a class. There are many things in cs that can not be learned in 1 semester and people who are self taught have the ability to take things at their own pace and jump to different topics, something that busy college studens have little time to do
Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
by ColanR on Tuesday July 23, 2019 @02:19PM
(#20508929)
It sounds like you're speaking for yourself more than for anybody else.
Re:No CS Degree – Interviews with self-taught developers
by jhall1468 on Thursday July 25, 2019 @03:34PM
(#20528687)
No, I'm speaking about human nature. Most people don't learn things they dislike because it fills a knowledge gap. How many people do you know with hobbies they hate?
It's natural to gravitate towards things that interest you. Some people are driven by gaps and learn things regardless, most people do not. That's not even controversial.
Learning to think outside the box and learning about specific specialties that you don't find interesting aren't even remotely the same thing. If you read what I wrote, you'll notice the example areas I gave. None of them were "thinking outside of the box", they were fields that didn't interest me.
The value they bring is that I learned a common language. I can talk to ML engineers or Compiler Engineers in a common language because I have experience in those fields that I wouldn't had I taken a different route. That isn't even remotely a requirement for my field. It's just useful for discussions with other people.
Maybe you'll spend hours and hours learning compiler design and implementation so you can have a friendly conversation with a colleague at lunch, but I'm not going to. Formal education forced that on me. That's been healthy for my professional networking, but that's about it. I still consider it useful, but had I skipped the CS degree I wouldn't do it. Nor would most people.