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Would a CS Degree Be Good for Someone Over 30?
mbuckingham asks: "I'm 39 and have been programming for 20 years. By 'programming', I'm talking about the usual business applications type of stuff. Easy stuff really. I went to college for a while, but never got my degree. It bugs me that I've never completed my degree, but since I've always had decent jobs, it hasn't really mattered too much. I'm really bored with what I do every day, and I'm thinking about going back and getting the degree, because I think it will make it possible to move towards doing some more advanced, system-level type stuff. I know I don't want a MIS degree, because that would be rehashing everything I'm already bored with. Does this make sense? Would a CS degree or a Computer Engineering degree be better?"
And I went & did my CS degree.
And it does lead to more interesting job offers.
The trouble is, moving from doing business logic type boring stuff to interesting CS type stuff is that you have to take a $40k a year paycut. (and that's after you've had no income for the time it takes to complete your degree).
Its worth thinking about how important money is for you. In the end, I have my CS degree (and I feel good about it, dont mistake me), but am doing the same work mostly.
But I don't mind doing boring work for 6-9 months a year if I can take another 3 months to travel / do charity work / etc.
I think - honestly - that a CS degree at your time in life is worthless for the most part. I am in a similar situation, in that I have a degree in International Politics. Yet, I've been programming since age 11 and working professionally as a programmer, project manager and systems development manger since 1993. Many of my staff have CS degrees. However, I find that a CS degree does little for ensuring a person is well-suited for the task of developing software and/or running systems.
:P
I have hired staff members with CS degrees who would be better off as real-estate sales staff. Conversely, I have one programmer with a history degree who is excellent at his job.
I am thirtysomething as well, and have no plans to go back to school for a CS, MIS or even a MSIS degree. In my opinion, the degree just gets you "in the door" as it were. Once you've got some (hopefully good) experience behind you, the degree becomes less important.
Keep in mind, too, that even as a manager, I get to write queries against SQL databases with 140M records - that impresses some of the young'uns.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I have been hands on with machines since about the age of 7 and found the classes boring (the teacher tried to tell us how an ip address is exactly like a phone number, and would not hear how its not really that much like a phone number more like a street address.... he said I was crazy)
He should have said you were fucking stupid. And then he should have told you to shut up.
There's no point in wasting his time and your classmate's time with such pathetic, petty "debate". A phone number is a much better analogy, especially when considering mobile phones (which is the only phone that many people have today).
Unlike a street address, but like a phone number, IP addresses are not fixed based on location. On an internal network, you can use whatever IP addresses you want, regardless of where your devices are, or where they might happen to move.
We could go on, but I don't know if you'd really understand such concepts. I mean, you couldn't even make it past your second year of undergraduate studies.
When I studied CS in Ireland back in the 1980s, we had a term for people like you: cockbaiters.
No, the 'cock' portion of that word does not refer to penis. It refers to your cockiness. You know, the way you always think you're correct, when actually you're a fucking moron.
The 'baiter' part refers to how you, driven by your endless supply of cock and a need for attention, must constantly harass professors when they make straightforward analogies. You try to bait them into a debate, which in turn only wastes everyone's time.
Such people rarely lasted past their first year, and were surely gone by the end of their second year. I see that was the case with you. You came into the institution with all the cock in the world, and then reality smacked your sorry ass down, and you become a pathetic drop out.