Slashdot Mirror
Do Geeks Need College?
Manuka writes
"Salon has a neat article
debating the issue of whether college is worth bothering with
for geeks." The article references
an old Slashdot thread
and throws out some interesting comments and statistics
on the subject.
Techs should definitely go to college - in order to learn something about non-techy stuff. It's precisely the kind of people who learned how to program when they were 8 who most need to go to college.
Interact with people who have different interests, interact with people of the opposite sex. Oh, and some of that complexity theory stuff is kinda interesting and you are not likely to learn it on the job.
It's kind of ironic. College is a chance to take a few years out from being a total geek - at the same time as earning the piece of paper you need in order to get an interesting tech job.
I wouldn't have been considered for my line of
work (embedded system engineer @ a major computer
and peripherals company) without a college degree.
From my point of view, we'll always need people
with advanced technical education to make the technological tools for people without advanced
technical education to use.
This article will generate nothing but a variation of two replies:
;)
1) I don't need college. I'm too smart for that. (Insert list of people who didn't go to college, but make "Millions of Dollars(tm)")
and
2) College is important. It helps you become well-rounded. It provides the opportunity to learn new ideas and work on your discipline. There is much more to life than just bits and bytes. (Insert description of shallow bit-oriented geeks who let life pass them by).
There, that should about cover it. Why don't you save bandwidth and post to another article that covers _new_ ground --like KDE vs. Gnome
will be the buzzword of the next decade.
Get SOME school first, even a BSCS if you can stand it, but don't be afraid to get out there and do something because you are now expected to be on the razor's edge of technology at all times.
Amazingly enough, it was the US Air Force that taught me this paradigm. It was weird seeing senior officers and NCO's that were STILL going to school! I'll be over 30 by the time I get around to finishing my BSCS, but I'll also have kept up with technology and have almost ten years experience in software engineering......
College made me learn loads of stuff i didn't have any interest in at first. I learned databases, i learned how to do analysis. I learned how people can be stupid at times. At first i tought the majority of people working in computers were computer-lovers like me... But no! A lot of the people in my class (and where i work now too) were there mostly for the money... The point of this is it made me understand that many people don't understand that much about computers... College gave me a lot of non-computer related classes that i hated to have back then. Now i realize that i needed them. Everybody needs to know how to write good texts so everybody can read them and understand what you mean. I could go on forever like this. I always thought computer geeks could do without much school... But the more i think now, the more i realize it helps to get a broader range of knowledge... ;)
If you don't agree, please explain clearly and stay calm
happy303
(thinking helps!)
Of course not! We also don't need any other organized education. I'm all for complete ignorance myself.
This article seems more focused on the "web industry", but if you're talking about more "serious" geek pursuits, such as computer engineering and cs theory, college is indispensible. It gives you a solid grounding in theory, contacts with professors and fellow students that will be invaluable, as well as one thing often overlooked, a general education including more than just "geek stuff".
I think that the formal programming training I got in college did make some difference in my programming capabilities, but I ultimately lost interest and dropped out. I found that in general college did not offer the newest neat technologies and was often YEARS outdated.
I would be far more inclined to hire someone with a few years of real world experience and no degree over someone fresh out of college with a degree. Most of the people I've talked to have stated similar sentiments.
This is not meant as a generalization, but is just my case. In my experience college graduates tend to have the less 'fun' holes in CS knowledge filled. These holes are a common annoyance, especially at the white-board level of design, when dealing with non-college people.
However, in the bulk of the CS field this is just an annoyance that is usually not a long term hinderence. The real problem in my experience with college skippers is in two main areas.
1. Design Discipline and Skill. I am sometimes shocked at the gross short sightedness in design of some modules spit out by the HS grads. Granted, the college grads are sometimes weak here too, but statisticly speaking college helps.
2. Math. Let me repeat, Math. Our most critical work is only done by college grads mainly due to the requisite math skill. Engineering, even software engineering, NEEDS math. A formal treatment of many math concepts that does not come from self taught approaches is indespensible.
Oh yeah, we prefer engineering grads over CS grads. Both design and math are usually stronger
in an engineering degree than a CS degree.
I don't have a degree, but I went to a state college for about 4 years. During that time I learned a lot of things that I would probably not have taken the time for otherwise (I ranged over a lot of topics, to the detriment of my degree
You can learn on the job/hack your way to doing a 95% job. Most of your time spent learning esoteric stuff is to get what you use the last 5% of the time on a daily basis. If you're really motivated (I somewhat fall into this category) you can go off and read/bludgeon yourself through all the textbooks anyway (Knuth's The Art Of Computer Programming, etc), but this is highly unlikely without some structure to follow. I also may not have studied higher math (that was my major), which I have ended up using a surprisingly large number of times since then.
In the last "5%" I've had to debug crashes of embedded OSes, predict how Windows NT low-level primitives work (the documentation certainly didn't help in some cases), grub through executables byte by byte to figure out where a complier went wrong, and (for the heck of it) debug why Linux was crashing on a new chipsset and stabilize it's SMP in the early days, just to name a few.
Frankly, the history, literature, psychology, etc. help in other ways too, even if they were simple classes... it got me to think about why I didn't agree with the writers of the textbooks, if nothing else. It gives perspective that may not come otherwise.
Erich Boleyn
Go design your pretty little webpages.
When there are no more CPU designers, what are you going to do?
Go to college atleast for the beer. What's 4 years of your life anyway? Maybe you'll learn something.
well comparing the "cost" of higher education
and what the financial yield of that education
with investing a similar amount in stocks is
so typicaly american that it sounds like a parody
to me.
How does this reasoning applies in countries where
higher education is free ?
I suppose that Slashdot sysadmins are idiots since
they could make more money running a porn site.
And what about investing the money they spend
on hardware and bandwidth in MSFT stock ? Have
they run a simulation to find out whether they
would be better off ?
The example they give is reductive. Designing
a web site is not the essence of "high tech" jobs,
especially if it does not comprise the implementation and administration chores.
And the fact that BG is a college drop out tells
us exactly how he makes money : from the inovations of others.
Certaintly if your doing any kind of Numerical computational work you will need some formal education. However math and physics seem to be the least popular technologies right now. The point is that it depends on what your doing.
"you dont have a degree" is one more excuse
people can use to shit on you.
its like having money, or having
status, or the right friends. it means nothing
in and of itself, but the way society is set
up means that it does mean something.
without a degree you are more likely to get held up at border crossings, audited by the IRS, taken advantage of by businesses, bureaucracies, etc.
you are more likely to not get promoted while the
sex harassing asshole in the next cubicle does.
Sure, you don't need a college education to make money in the computer science field, every one knows that. So why go to college? Personally, I went to college to broaden my knowledge and learn some critical thinking skills that I can apply to life. I didn't go to college with the expectations that I would be trained for a job. You can go to a trade school for that.
My first degree was in Sociology, and I learned more about myself than I ever would have learned if I went the CS route. A broad liberal arts background helped shape who I am today by giving me a different viewpoint about the world than what they "teach" in high school. It also opened up a lot of experiences that I probably wouldn't have had if I didn't go to college (e.g. travelling abroad, meeting new people, etc...)
Yeah, I know that it is possible to sleep your way through 4 years of college and still earn that piece of paper that will get you a job. I think that is the real problem with the system today. A college education is turning into what a high school education used to be. But it is still possible, if you want to do the work, to get a lot out of college. You never know, it may even change your life.
OK, sometimes in some jobs with certain requirements, I agree. BUT the real leading edge of science and engineering (from which everything else blossoms) depends on math. Formal thoroughly understood math of many disciplines. You will be hard pressed to get that anywhere but the classroom.
Sure, you can play in many business driven domains just fine without hard core math (although that is not always true either), but for me the real rewards come from pushing the science envelope.
I bet in twenty years that more you learned in 6 months will be mostly irrelevent, while much of the 4 years will have proven more valuable. Too many people overlook the foundation.
Lucky??? I don't consider myself Lucky at all, I have busted my ass for the last 11 years out of High School to get the $175,000.00 a year I make now. I was writing mission critical Main Frame apps, while you were pumping a keg. I have never lucked into a job. The fact is I have quality skills that are high in demand. A college degree would not have taught me about SAP or Oracle8, but working in a High tech industry surrounded by people who are just as talented as me if not more has taught be a bunch.
It seems you need to take English 101 over again.
Formal training and education in Theoretical and Open Systems and Standards provides a far better platform to build on.
When I started hacking at school(14 - 16), my knowledge was sketchy - I learnt the basics there and went to college (16-18yrs old) where I had the gaps filled in. There I reached a rounded intermediate level with knowledge of formal methods, design, and basics of OO, JSP, C, COBOL, etc.
At University (after I took a year out in the Shetland Isles north of Scotland)I got even sounder teaching and was introduced to great academic and research authors like K&R and ADT.
My University lectures have with a couple of small exceptions been really useful and I have got connected over the net and in the labs with some really great people who taught me about as much as my lecturers.
When I talk to people who have taught themselves so thay can get a job they overlook the most basic things and it really shows that they don't have a degree.
My friends who don't have degrees in IT usually head towards SysAdmin roles where experience is much more valuable than theoretical knowledge - ditto tech support.
I certainly wouldn't feel I could rely on somebody who taught themselves coding to develop software. It is done in business (where shockingly it is the norm due to a lack of skills)and in the OSS world (more the exception than the rule tho') but if a project is major or very complex then the hacker attitude doesn't work and you need to be a professional.
Aaron (TheJackal)
The college cs experience introduced me to geeks. Now I am one.
LONG LIVE GEEKS!
It's not what you learn in class - It's all about learning things on your own. If I'd only done class work then I'd only be a crappy c++ programmer.
People seem to forget that sysadmining, web page design, or even hacking does not equal Computer Science. If the above is all that you want to do, you may not get much from college.
But there's much more that you'll be missing. I don't think many people know much about the Theory of Computation, operating systems theory, etc. without going to college.
Our teacher told us that the majority of embedded systems are 68k processors. So if your into embedded systems...
We didnt do 68k ASM, but did this teaching assembly flavor in the Hennessy architecture book.
Talk about not being directly applicable to industry usage since there is not an actual chip that runs it (its emulated on many machines).
However, it is probably the best CS class (except maybe the simple but infinitely applicable concept-wise OS theory class) I have taken.
I must add that the most valuable classes (moreso than any CS class) are my math classes. Now that is pure power. The math will be relevent forever.
I went to Military College (le College Militaire Royale de St. Jean, in St. Jean Quebec) and it was the smartest thing I ever did - even if my initial reasons for going were all wrong headed.
:)
- I'm from Northern B.C. and moving to Quebec at 17 taught me a lot about dealing with other cultures - and about what it's like to be a minority.
- It taught me to speak fluent French, and got me addicted to poutine.
- It thwacked me upside the head with a thunderous clue stick. I went in as the arrogant, self-important, whiny alpha-geek from a small population, and suddenly I was surrounded by people as smart or smarter than I was. All of a sudden, I _had_ to think and work harder than I ever had to before in my life just to stay afloat, instead of being able to coast along on a minimum of effort like I had in high school.
I came out much more humble, much more open-minded, much more patient, and much more determined to succeed at whatever it was I was doing at the time.
Thanks to CMR (and the subsequent military career) nothing fazes me anymore. The worst that life can throw at me is now just another problem to overcome, not a world-ending catastrophe - 'cause I've seen (and dealt with) much worse before.
I spent a lot of time during my stint at CMR desperately unhappy (mostly of my own creation, I fought the system tooth and nail instead of listening to what it was trying to teach me) but in the end, I'm a much better and happier person for it.
"Iron sharpens iron" - if you go through life without ever having to work for anything or without being really tested, then you're nowhere near the person you could be.
If I could, I'd round up every slacker script kiddie I could and send them to a similar institution for a while. It'd make the world - and them - much happier.
Verite, devoir, valliance
Hmm, Heaven Help us if someone wants to be a meager SysAdmin and pass on the theoretical knowledge that seems to make so many college graduates better than everyone else.
I bet you turn your nose up at the garbage man who takes your trash away every week too.
the problem is, sometimes you need college to help you determine if you're in the top 1%.
The school of engineering was 98% men at my school. But even the most stringent engineering cirriculums have at least a few free electives it allows its students to take. Use 'em to take art classes and to be with the babes.
at Our school COBOL is a required class. So what? I can get out of college and land a Y2K job with a big future???
Most of my friends do SysAdmin and Tech Support - and they usually know a lot more than the developers and consultants I have to work with.
;) - I have done worse jobs myself anyway like cleaning geriatric wards of hospitals and cleaning bars (and their loo's) to pay my way thru uni.
I have a friend who dropped out of the degree we both started after a year, he was a natural and while he is currently coding for banks he is being interviewed for some nice high end graphics coding.
Doing a degree would probably help a sysadmin, but not as much as it would a developer. A sysadmin has more firefighting and support to do, solving a stream of different small(obviously not always) problems while development involves planning, design and solving bigger problems.
Most sysadmins can hack together the necessary cgi in perl and c to manage your average website and then code some lisp and more perl to handle some admin tasks automatically.
Developers have to produce products and develop products that require more theoretical knowledge, knowledge of FSD's, DFDs and normalisation make a real difference in the quality and speed of development.
and no I don't turn my nose up at the binman - I don't usually get up in time
Aaron (TheJackal)
Hey you miss my point
Point is a Degree makes you a better hacker - ie a better hacker than you would be if you hadn't have taken the degree (asumming it is a decent degree and that you don't already have a concrete foundation and already have loads of like-minded peers who know as much and more than you do - which is a lot more often than not!)
Besides hacking is by nature (ie use and definition in the jargon file) about experimentation, duct tape, and tinkering rather than more formal and robust techniques.
Most of the people I work with are self-taught but they aren't hackers - they just don't know or care much. Those that have degrees tend to be the more hackerly.
The fact I am in the UK probably reflects the situation more as in The UK most hackers a degree educated as that is where most get their first access to the net and like minded people. In the UK phone and net access has always been a steep hurdle - and also Higher Education is Free or at least subsidised.
Aaron (TheJackal)
Too bad it didn't teach you how to spell.
Beuracracy?
Maybe I'm just lazy, but I'm not too keen on getting a job outside of academia. This computational theory and semiconductor and EMF theory stuff is great! The worst part is probably those few pesky required programming-oriented courses. I mean, that stuff's for hobbies.
Anyone else feel this way?
As far as advancing a tech degree? No, just about every CS major I knew learned most (90%) of what they know from their own exploration and from each other. The education formalizes a lot of that, and gives some discipline, but I don't think the particular degree matters as much as the person's innate ability.
But that's not why you go to college.
You go to college to grow up. You go to college to get out of your parent's basement. You go to college to learn about all the stuff you didn't think you'd like untill you tried it. You go to college to make mistakes and be able to live to tell about it. You go to college to have sex. You go to college to learn how to balance your Id and your Ego. You go to college to live life before the rat race grinds you down. You go to college to push yourself to your limits. You go to college to work your ass off. You go to college to experience the energy of youth. You go to college to make friends and enemies, to build memories, and to make the final transition from being a child to being an adult.
I feel sad for those who vehmently insist you don't need college. You don't need beer either, but life wouldn't be nearly as fun without it. To break down a major life experience into a cost/benifit ratio is like creating a spreadsheet to see how much falling in love will affect your stock options. You have an entire lifetime of being a good drone bee, working for the hive. Why not spend a few years getting a better sense of what that hive is all about?
Anyway... I'm considering going back to grad school for my MS in CS (currently have a Math BA with CS minor). Would it be worth it?
At my college I am forced to take numerous math classes to be CS... I get A's in my CS classes, but I fail my calc classes. Oh well. Just thought I'd share.
If you take initiative, they should be more than happy to let you skip courses by just taking their final exams. Maybe even get credit without taking (or paying for) the lower courses.
... just stay away from Italian college. That is a real challange. Only those who manage to give up any form of critic thinking and learn all by hearth will succede! a real challange.
Telecomunication majors in major university in italy get out with top grades without knowing what IP is...
WORK HARDER.
College is not for everyone but if you can afford it or your parents will foot the bill why not? I went to school wanting to be a CS major and was really into 6502 assembly and Dos 3.3 I knew stuff about microcomputers that the mainframe priest of academia were clueless about. However, as most of us do, my interests changed and I eventually graduated a Philosophy Major with a commision in the US Army as a 2nd Lt. Army Intelligence.
The army let me see more of the world in an international sense that by the time I left I applied to grad school at Harvard and thereafter went to live in the Russia and Asia as a financial analysts before coming home to the US.
The point being is you have no idea when you're 18 what you'll really like in the future. If I didn't go to college, the opportunities would definitely have been shut out for me. 10-20 years ago a college degree was not that important. Now it's become like another HS diploma. You know why the US economy is booming and the rest of the world is slowing? Because our educational system allows more people to go to college than any other country our size. For Americans, take advantage of it or compete with other bright from India, China, Russia and Israel who'll be willing to work harder for less pay and are clamoring for visas to work in the US.
Its our education and language which gices us a slight edge so far.
And the really sad part is that there's a real handy reference only one URL away: www.m-w.com.
College is two sided. College does make you jump through hoops and make you take classes that you don't even want or care about. People who don't have degrees are just as smart or even smarter with ones that do. I believe that being in the computer field, i.e. programmers, sysadmin, netadmins, engineers, etc. experience is the key. I would rather hire some man or woman with experience than someone with a degree/out of college. College cannot teach live everyday work situations/stress/crisis/disaster/etc.
College does help with fundamentals. You do the same things everyday at work that you do in a classroom. Work involves doing things you like and doing things you hate. Just like taking classes you like and hate. Social interacting is a big key in life especially with people in your career field. College will help enormously in this area if you let it. College also allows you to understand other degrees, cultures, the world, etc. Who cares if it doesn't relate to computers. I would rather be educated in many areas and be more multi-dimensional and interesting than be one dimensional and just sit at home, look at the screen and have the ablilty to talk to others only about computers. For some, they love it. To me, that is really not living. Anyway, I would not change my college days for anything. I have a loans to repay also, but it was worth it. I had the best time of my life and met many people who have changed my life forever. The old cliche' saying is true: "College is what you make of it."
Boy,I really think an article like this is a big disservice to the geek community. Sure, things right now are really hot. Anybody who can point and click can get a tech job. The stock market is over 10,000. Yadda yadda yadda.
Guess what - nobody has outlawed the business cycle. Technologies change, and sometime very rapidly. When the next recession comes, who do you think is going to get laid off? The CS major from MIT with a 4.0 cum? Or the sysadmin with no college at all? The fact is that cycles in various technology areas will be with us for a long time; those with strong credentials are those more likely to find and keep jobs.
There are other aspects of college two that I think are very valuable - socialization with people from a wide range of academic disciplines is perhaps the biggest. Sure, you don't need to know who Daniel Dennet is to be able to hack HTTP. But there is more to life than HTTP.
$500,000 sounds big right now, but remember inflation - by the time you are 50 years old, that $500,000 will be worth a LOT less than you think.
Besides hacking is by nature (ie use and definition in the jargon file) about experimentation, duct tape, and tinkering rather than more formal and robust techniques.
Are you referring to the robust techniques that brought us Microsoft Windows? And all that tinkering really must have been a problem for the founders of Apple Computer, neither of which had a degree.
College is for technicians - it will NOT teach you how to be a visionary.
Shuddup and eat yer puddin!
As a computer engineer (electrical engineering + comp sci) an easy way to get an extra grade point or two in CS classes was to change your timetable so that you were in a class full of CS rather than engineering students. CS's who wandered into a class full of engineers were quickly had their GPAs destroyed. The engineering math just plain made you sharper.
In the work world too I have never come across a CS who could keep up with an engineer.
HTML is a language, but not a programming language. Web monkeys are not programmers. Real programming languages have the basic ability to assign variables and to loop. (lisp does have these capabilities, whether or not you theoretical lispers out there use them is beside the point) SQL = structured query language, but its not a programming language.
How about doing a little research into the College that you are going to attend before attending? Sure, some colleges are better than others, and you can't expect to get a good expereince unless you do a little shopping around before you apply. Don't whine about getting a bad experinece because you are the dude that enrolled. You would not want to go to a college famed for its law or pre-med program if you want to be a programmer. Most people put "College" into a broad generalization and forget that they are DIFFERENT!
My personal experience is that without the help of some professors, it would have been much more difficult to find a good job.
The key here is to benifit from programs set up by the university and not to just sit in class like a boob. Be a part of you own success, don't expect success to be handed down from upon-high.
Your life and your college experience comes from what you put into it, and if you chose the wrong path, for God's sake transfer, or become active instead of Passive. There is no point in going somewhere where you think you are wasting your time.
All of you self-protentious jerks that think you are so much smarter and so much better than everyone at your college or in all of your classes should realize that you are the only one preventing yourself from going to a place where you are not such a self-proclaimed hot-shot. You can't be serious when you say that nothing challenges you, you selfish cowards, if you are, why are you here with so much spare time, debating things like why you fail with women, and bickering endlessly about such mundane things as which graphics card to buy, or what kind of pop you drink. Challenging indeed.
BR14
Finally somebody else here recognizes direct educational value. Most of the other pro-college comments are backed by side-effect benefit arguments (teamwork, social stuff, liberal arts, etc). Our bodies live in a math & physics domain, not a virtual one. Real math and physics will always matter. Isnt any geek here interested in breaking the point one barrier?
Here's the truth: Do I need a college degree to put food on the table? 1.) Depending on your intended profession you need at least an AA or AS degree to be secure in the long run. You WILL start off in an entry level position. Your profession doesn't matter. A degree is the best way to just get started. Do you think a surgeon can go to a community college and take a certifcation class on human anatomy and demand a high paying salary performing his/her deeds? How about those Cisco, MCSE, Unix certificaton classes? I see employment ads posting as high as 90K/year! I also see people who have demanded that figure just by getting certified. 2.) The truth is unless you've been in the workforce for a number of years the certification classes can only get you an entry level job. Such as customer service or tech support. From there you can work your only way up will take you a number of years to get the high paying salary you eagerly demand so you can finally buy that Porsche 944 you've always dreamed of. By the same token you can get an AA or AS degree in some community college and start only start off in an entry level job. In the long run you're a lot more hireable than your certification counterpart. A lot has to do with your education. Your employer will look at the other guy's resume and yours and will take yours mainly because you're willing to put up 1 or 2 years of extra crap just to be successful. So imagine what a B.S. in Business or Computer Science can do for you! Well I did try to go to college, but I was learning more from my part time job at Safeway than the majors I was taking in college. 3.) So you decide to drop out of college. (Let me remind you the waste of money you've had to spend on college). 5 years later you decide to get a "REAL" job and try out for that customer service position at Sun Microsystems. Then you see your college counterpart walking in with her 4 year degree in Biology and wonder why didn't get the job. Go figure! Okay, but I'm the type who doesn't need a lot of greens to live a happy life. And I'm happy with my job at work. 4.) But do you REALLY love your job? Yeah I thought not. -Anonymous Coward, Life, Liberty and proud to be a happy coward.
I believe people should succeed based on their merits, not their affiliation with a university.
If someone asks for a degree I usually just laugh at them and ask if they want a good software developer or a professor. They usually see the point, and if not so be it, there's 10 better places to work around the corner.
The truth is, like many other professions, either you got it, or you don't. No amount of formal education will make you a good designer/programmer; only a will to succeed and raw ability will do that.
Graduated from college in '78, BSME. Programmed some in Fortran and and toy languages (IITran!). Typed them on punch cards, fed into Univac 1108. My senior year saw some CRTs show up. In '85 bought a PC, a C compiler and a C book and taught myself some coding. Within a year I was full-time programming, and have done so since (consulting, etc.) in various languages and fields.
So what? Two lessons:
1) Engineering school, at least, will teach you to think logically. Your programming skills will be years out of date (probably), but you will learn a very logical mindset.
2) You might get clues that programming isn't the only thing in life. In many ways, it is just another technical job. Ask yourself: if you won one of those $100MM prizes, would you still spend 40+ hours/wk. coding? It's a fun career but generally not a life in itself.
Besides warping your mind in other, not necessarily good, ways, and besides being hideously expensive, college can help you think.
If anyone does go, please don't merely take engineering courses! I did that (by and large), and regret not taking more philosophy, logic, etc., many years later.
I've sat through more than one class where I've helped my fellow students do their homework for the class only to have them get an A and find myself receiving a B or C. Getting good grades means you are a good test taker, nothing more. Frankly some people just learn differently than others do. Why on earth you're not allowed to use notes on ALL tests is beyond me. Where in the real world are you going to be denied access to available resources like books and notes just because someone CAN deny it? I've learned far more in my real world job than I ever have sitting in classes. For me personally, hands on experience is a far better teaching tool than sitting listening to a boring lecture trying to memorize notes for an exam!
yeah and then I throw some advanced discrete mathematics questions at you and all you engineers start crying. face it, engineers study lots of continuous mathetmatics, like calculus, diff equations... cs majors study discrete math, graph theory, etc.
don't be ignorant.
Babes in the artsy classes?
Men with views like that don't go far---
you end up taking an engineering position with me
as your boss- all woman, extremely attractive and a determined, strong engineer. You feel stupid, frustrated and intimidated. Not a good life.
I feel sorry for you.
Not only is web design not programming, but programming is not (necessarily) engineering. The fact that making a VCR do something is called programming and making a computer do something is also called programming is not unrelated. Programming in and of itself is just skill, whatever the language.
Software engineering/architecting/etc is a discipline/art/science of which programming is one of many requisite skills.
Software/Computer Scientist researches and explores the bounds of the science itself. Unfortunately, CS degrees tend to be watered down software/computer engineering degrees, not really a good foundation for true CS.
Other engineering and sciences also heavily use the tools provided by the above. HTML is like a monkey wrench in the engineering toolbox (that analogy works in many ways).
College teaches that there are more things in life than money.
Really? I do both. I guess that's what happens when you do CS in an engineering college.
Sorry, if I could have a lump sum of $500k saved up over 4 or 5 years (not counting living expenses) I think you'd be quite set for retirement depending on how it is invested. Even sticking it in the bank for 40 years should get you enough to comfortable retire and live the rest of your life in luxury. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm going to college as well. Sometimes I don't know why since I'm making more than I would if I would have just concentrated on classes full time and worked at Burger King or a part time job for 4 years. Eventually I assume my part time night class-taking ass will find a degree handy I suppose. If nothing else it gives you a good reason to stare at the hot college chicks in the humanities classes.
This kind of cocky response typically signinfies
the attitude of non-college educated types. In
my *humble* 8 years of experience I have worked
alongside both those with the parchment and
without. A few things I have noticed:
-Non-college educated are far more often poor
communicators then those that are college
educated.
-Non-college educated more often than not work
poorly with other people.
-Non-college educated folks more often then not
view thier jobs simply as *jobs* not careers.
-I have never, ever had or seen a college educated
employee do anything malicious upon termination
or resignation. I have known two out of a dozen
non-college educated fellow workers destroy their
and others work after such an event.
-College educated employees much more often
then non-parchment types seem to understand
that there are certain simple rules that govern
a mature, professional workplace.
-College educated employees I have also worked
with more likely will work on a project that may
not be most interesting to them, but they still
will finish it and perform well (a lot less "this
sucks I don't wanna do it so I am gonna quit"
mentality.
Graduationform college (regardless of degree)
demonstrates to me that a person has taken the
effort to work toward a goal and work with and
for other people in order to acheive something.
That they can more often then not learn, and
learn material that they may not be the most
interested in and finish a project with quality.
Not neccessarily that they know this or that.
Now that I am in a position to hire people there
is little chance that I would hire a non-degreed
person. Sure I might interview a non-degreed
applicant, but hire one? My past experience tells
me NO!
"Lifelong Learning" is already a fact of life for most of us. The only question is the *level* of the courses you take. Do you want to prepare for renewal MSCE exams, or would you prefer to focus on more abstract concepts that are far more inclusive... but also far more abstract?
It's certainly possible to teach yourself the advanced material, but it's hard. But without that advanced material, at most you'll learn a few scattered islands well, but never learn how to see the archipelego as a whole.
Haven't you ever heard it's not what you know that is important but WHO you know? If you are good at networking with other people you will find that obscure job you were interested in that is available but they never got around to posting it in the paper yet. If you network properly then a recommendation from someone can go just as far as a degree would. Granted, it helps to show you're at least attempting college.. perhaps taking a few classes a semester.
Unfortunately it seems most GOOD colleges are tens of thousands of dollars a year. Since 50% of the people in the world are average that cuts out a lot of opportunities for people that are interested in IT careers but didn't necessarily get that huge scholarship from high school. These people end up going to the $5000/year state schools where classes are generally boring, useless, and the professors are inadequately trained in any technology newer than the early 1980's. That doesn't mean these people should be doomed to a life of burger flipping. Just because you're not a good student doesn't mean you're not going to be an excellent IT worker.
Where are the geeks who fancy themselves Renaissance men?
Are no geeks out there interested in philosophy, logic, history, economics, the arts, music, MATHETMATICS, etc?
I dropped out of high school to go to college early. Before my first college class, I already knew 10 programming languages and had written 10,000 lines a code.
Did I care at all that my CS professors couldn't write Perl as good as me, or didn't know what a socket was?
No, because my professors taught me Complex Analysis, Algorithm Analysis, Abstract Algebra, Graph Theory, Combinatorics, Coding Theory, and so on.
I took speech class, music class, painting class (even though I suck), read history, studied economics, all too expose myself to new things.
Maybe I'm not great at any of them, but I feel
I have breadth and depth (atleast in CS)
I get the feeling that a vast number of Slashdot users are fulfilling the geek stereotype: Losers sitting in their rooms all day doing nothing but coding with not much interest in other subjects or the outside world.
If you had went to college, they would have forced you to take an arts, politics, history, economics or cultural class to get you out of your normal routine.
I guess that depends on where you go to high school. I would imagine some high schools are much more diverse than a preppy ivy-league school. I don't imagine there are many stoners or satanists in Harvard. ;-)
Exactly. Sure, the school sucks (I cry extenuating circumstances as to how I got here)...but you have time and (maybe) a little money to explore. I'm an b.a. student in art, but this is how I discovered computers. I think college is a huge scam, but I got what I needed out of it. Dunno, I'm ambivalent.
I guess it depends on what your goals are.
But learning to play "the game" may not seem
all that important at the beginning of you career,
however it helps you advance along up the ladder.
There is more PHB mentality out there then there
are those with mentalities like ours. Its how
they think and for a large part its their game.
If you learn to emulate thinking like them you
may also climb the ladder to a point where you can
actually make a difference. You need to climb the
ladder somtime in your life.
You can try to be a programmer or sysadmin all
your life, but honestly, when you hit mid-40's
or later. The deck will be *signifigantly* stacked
against you. College educatd or not, younger
workers are cheaper. They can work longer hours.
Their health insurance is cheaper (thank the bean
counters for that one). Their knowledge is more
current. They are more flexible in almost every
way. Moneywise, timewise, and in almost every aspect younger workers come across as a better value.
I am not talking neccessarily freshouts, but
given a 30 to 35 year old with 7 to 15 years experience VS a 45 year old with 25+ there is a
point of diminishing returns.
Furthermore an applicant who has 20+ years of
experience and no supervisory or project
lead experience on a resume has a signifigant
stigma attached to it.
Questions get asked like "What is wrong with this
person that they can't run a project or work with
(younger) people"? In some cases a HR department
will trashcan the resume after 20 seconds.
You can go the contracting route, but you better
be damn good, damn specialized, and have a quality
of professionalism that is above an beyond. Your
reputation will get around to potential people
who will be offering your next contract.
The world pretty much is a corporate environment
nowadays and you need to understand you it to
survive.
And college is a good place to do that.
I'm sure you'll do well in grad school, then. It's really different.
We are all stuck in a tight spot as far as college goes. Some people need to learn the stuff. Great, they should go. For those of us that know it, there's no testing procedure. Funny that someone who had to learn it can get a piece of paper saying so that sets them above those who already knew it and cannot get a piece of paper saying so. Sure, you can get your CNE, MSCE, etc, but those don't hold the same as a college degree. There needs to be testing developed where we can earn the equivelence of a college degree with less time and money required. Remember, all the time we spend sitting around rehashing what we know we are missing the new developments in the field, which basically devalues us. But alas, hiring decisions are usually made by people who don't know the job, they need a little piece of people to tell them we can do it.
Now that we have established the fact that we need to go to college, what shall we take. Well, most colleges have two major classifications, Computer Science and Computer Engineering. Those who choose Computer Engineering will take mostly engineering classes, spending long hours in labs, doing stuff that requires equip,ent and parts. They are the people building the hardware, and this is no easy task to learn at home before college. Yes, for this degree college is very much worth it.
Now, on to the other degree, that which most of us here will be doing/are doing/have done, Computer Science. Is this really a science? I'm not quite sure, yes we experiment, but do we make discoveries, follow the scientific method, etc? I think the answer to that is no. Is it wrong to be doing it our way? No, I think that would be a waste of time for what we do. Notice now that it often falls under the broader subject of math. But wait, didn't we just name it a sciene? Oh, but of course, we just established it isn't a science like the traditional three. So then what makes it math? There are many math courses required for the degree, many more than many of us want/need for the jobs we want to do and probably already can do. Then what subject does this fall under? We already elimated math and science as it crosses both but doesn't all fit under either of those. It definitely part of the humanities. It isn't a langiage in the traditional sense, we do have our languages, but more than just those are involved. Woah, that excludes us from the traditional four core areas. Do we get stuck out with electives as some meaningless subject of fun and little or no value? Most certainly not! How then do we classify the degree of Computer Science?
The first step is to fix the bloody name! We can't just have Computer, we need something to replace te Science. Maybe computing? No, thats just math. It is the study of computers, so it should rightfully be called Computerology. Hmmm... thats a funny word you say? Well, I just made it up, a new word for a new field. Yes, we have a fifth core subject. An overview class should be neccessary in high school. This class should cover the basics and of course use PCs, not Macintoshes. It never, ever made sense to me as to why the Macintosh is used in primary and secondary level schools so much. The business world uses PCs and mainframes, and Mac are not easy to deal with, believe me, they are the quirkiest little shits, so much so that my high school employeed me to care for their Macs because the job was too much for the number of school staff dedicated to it. Seeing as how this is an overview class for everyone, except those advanced students that test out and take advanced classes on the subject, the PC shall be the main focus because that is what everyone needs to know how to deal with. In college, an overview class should also be required of everyone not majoring in the subject to make sure that everyone knows what's up. Now for the good part. Maintaining computer labs and keeping current in technology is expensive. Most dorms for Computerology students would be runnig 10baseT, if anything, at existing universities. I propose colleges dedicatd to the subject of Computerology. The degrees under the subject would be more specific and practical for the field we wish to be employed in. Degree of Programming, Network Administration, etc make sense for majors. Programming seems to fit better than Software Engineering I think. Yes, software is designed and engineering is designing, but mathematitions aren't called equation engineers and programmers shouldn't be called software engineers. In a university situation, the School of Computerology there could offer minors for people taking business classes that wish to be managers over people with Computerology majors. Managers for departments of such would be required to have such a minor so they have a clue what is going on. Of course someone with a major is what we'd like to see for a manager, but from a business viewpoint, be realistic, the business wants someone with a business degree there and those a step above fail to understand the importance of managers with techincal knowledge.
This sounds great to me. I'd say e-mail me for responses, but looking at the volume of messages, I'd probably get WAY to many responses, both good and bad, and of course the mandatory flame. Just continue the thread here and if anyone reading this is in any position to actually make a change, please do so. I don't have any impractical goal of changing the educational system of our country. I'd like to change health care, telco regulations, and much more. Its rediculous to think I can cause such a huge difference, but in the freak occurance someone who can reads this, then they should think about what I've said here. I'll save topics of health care, telco regulations, etc for when the topics they fit under appear here. If you have hit the end here, thank you for reading through this long message, as I know there are MANY to read here and most people probable skip the postings altogether.
College is as expensive as you make it. If you plan on going to MIT for 7 years to get your Ph.D its going to wind up costing you 35k/year. However, you don't have to go to MIT to get a college education and you don't have to pay 30k/year either. You can go to a State funded institution and still get a pretty good education for a decent price. The state university here (Rutgers) is only 6k a year if you live at home. If you work moderately hard in high school, you can get a scholarship and basically get a free ride. (I got offered a 5k/per year scholarship). That comes out to 1k a year, I think a college education is worth the $4000 it could cost me (haven't decided where I'm going yet, GOD DAMN CMU waitlisted me to SCS).
Saying college education is a rip off is an unfoudnded allegation. You can
The difference in quality of education between home schooling and formal (college) schooling is insignificant at this point, because of the new and growing support by home schooling companies and the Internet.
It's sad but true, most class instructors have below average teaching skills because of the shortage of good teachers and the high demand in the educational field to fill positions. Thus, there is less of an incentive to attend formal schooling if you are looking for high quality teachers. This lack of supply of good teachers is present in ALL formal schooling instituitions.
It's nice that we have alternative choices to college to fit the needs of varying individuals. You have to decide which choice is best for you and your life.
I went to college for 1.5 years till this january, taking about 4 CS classes. I did some cool things like get a background in C++, work with some "advanced" topics, and other stuff. Aside from that, the rest of college was useless, so I left. I now am making $60,000/yr and am quite content. Pretty much, I say college is just as usefull as 2 weekends reading a few books. And every weekend thereafter is your masters and so on. I can only dream of how people will respond to this!
Some geeks need to attend a college where they are taught how to bathe, exercise and appreciate other people. There are too many stinky, overweight a**holes on this planet! ;-)
Nan desu fuck?! Recursion rocks nads!
>I'd recommend hiring a sharp woman and back her all the way.
I'd recommend highering whoever is most qualified for the job. Starting a employee search with preconceptions of what that person should is a recipe for litigation.
College is good for some people, not good for others.
... like what that one post said about the geeks needing to go outside ... I have to say, that is true. There are lots of people that have the skills required to get a good job and make decent money, but just don't have the communication skills to talk to another person.
I left college after one semester because I found it too goddamn boring. I was learning stuff that I already knew, and I didn't see it getting more interesting later on down the road. I was just lucky that I could get a decent job after leaving school.
For some people though, college is _necessary_
It completely depends on the person. After being exposed to the corperate world, I've met people that have college degrees, yet they are fucking morons, and then you meet people with nothing and they are brilliant.
Not to say that you don't learn anything in college. There are some areas of IT that are very difficult to get into without having gone to college.
Anyhow, I'm happy at 19 years old with my high school diploma making $55k/year, while my friends are in their first year of university.
stereo
>you end up taking an engineering position with me as your boss- all woman, extremely attractive and a determined, strong engineer.
You describe yourself as 'all woman, extremely attractive' first, and as a strong engineer last. You are part of the problem that prepetuates the "woman's place is in the home" attitude. You must also not place much pride in your abilities and suffer from low self-esteem. As for not getting very far, I think my wife and 7-year-old daughter would disagree with you.
Puh-lease, the ACs who scream the loudest and claim to own a mansion and a yacht without a college degree are almost always ones who are not well off and are the most jealous.
Some people do... Some do not.. It's not possible (IMHO) to tell ahead of time which one you are.. So perhaps it's best to play it safe.
I graduated high school at the age of sixteen. Now I'm nineteen and making more then twice my age. ($51,250) Some people say that I'll get stuck and not be employable in 10 years. I dont know if this is true or not, but I know that it doesn't matter: I'm saving around $14,000 a year (already have over 30k) and by that time I will have saved enough that I could live the rest of my life off the earnings (barring a market crash). So, it comes down to the fact that life is a gamble and it's an individual choice.
To be honest, I think Basic Training and general Military training prepare people for this kind of work better than any Academic endeavor could.
What is important, as has been noted before, is the ability to keep learning, or as I like to phrase it "to improvise, adapt, and overcome".
I'm a small business owner, and I would sooner hire someone with 4 years military experience than a 4 year college degree.
These individuals simply function better in the working environment. The skills that they dont have, they pick up in short order. And in my business (setting up small office LANs) they have a tendency to leap way beyond the academics ability to perform after just a short time on the job.
I've also run into a few "hackers" with this trait as well.
I say that a good education is "where its at."
ProFile
And you call yourself a geek. Look, knowing how to be a technician on [box x] may be _useful_, but it's sure as hell not _important_. If you want to actually _know_ something, take yer maths, boy.
Actually, that's MIPS, e.g. what's used in real SGIs and Playstations.
I truly care about things aside from computers. I am loving the government class I am taking right now. I really enjoyed my psychology class last year. etc. The main point in going to college is getting an education, i.e., becoming an *educated person*. This involves a lot more than learning a few computer skills. And then there's the social side -- so very important.
Yeah, and furthermore, Computer Science != programming. I'm really getting bored of the latter after about 8 years. But not the former.
Oh no, I'm quite sure there are-- I know some who went there.
Transfer mayhaps? The CS department at this public university is great.
Nice to see that Biggotry and Stero Types are still out there.
I disagree. Getting the job done is not all that counts, and college is not only a place to get training and knowledge. I love being here -- not only for the knowledge I'm getting, but for the experience. I am surrounded by people of all types that are in my age range. I am living in a dorm, which is an experience unlike any other (good and bad). I have the opportunity to meet some of the top people in the field (OK, so this only happens at a top University.) Yes, I could read some books and make lots of money -- but why? I want to sit in a classroom, talk to people around me, hear the prof. make things more interesting than a book ever could. I agree that this isn't for everyone. Some people have great social lives and experiences without an environment like this. But for the rest of us, college is that environment -- not just one way to get some training. Not to mention a diverse curriculum, and freedom. If I weren't at school, I'd be living with my parents.
Frankly, I'd take this over the "real world" any day. Wish I could stay here for a few more years. Of course, that would require a few more $ :-). If it weren't for the fact that I know I'd make a terrible lecturer, I'd probably go into academia.
If you want to be a ``Web worker'' then of course you don't `need' an real education. If you want to be a good ``Web worker'', I guess you should go to some art school and take graphic design.
there was a time when it was hard to find people with *the* degree, since there weren't many CS or CE or IS programs. So companies were more willing to give people with no degree or an unrelated degree a chance.
hireing someone is a *big* investment and people are far less likey to risk that investment on someone who never got a degree.
if you are getting good jobs w/out a degree now, then you may want to get your employer to help you get a degree, rather than bet on being more employable than the next guy in the 2015 job market.
I agree that if you go to a good school, you will feel it is worthwhile, and if you go to a bad one, it will be a waste of time. Too bad more good schools weren't cheaper so everyone could have that opportunity.
Thats a load of crap. If you are a dynamic person who knows his stuff you can have almost any job you want.
--A non-college grad 4 years in as Cheif Network Eng. $55,400.
My experience with the college world was that the curriculum was not really in touch with what is going on in the real world -- professors just don't seem to be keeping up on the latest technology, so your best education will come from experiences outside of school. HOWEVER, walking across that stage and grabbing that diploma was one of the proudest experiences of my life. It may not have proved that I had great or worthwhile technical skills, but it did prove that I could bust my butt (and Calc 4 definitely busted it) to complete something.
So maybe school teaches you only a fraction of what you learn on your own or on a job, but it does teach you. There's a place for those who see a great opportunity and drop out to pursue it, but I for one am glad that I struggled for a couple of extra years and finished up what I started before heading out to the real world and doing some of the things I love doing.
I'm coming up on my 20th year programming, and without a degree (although I do have some years of college) I have done quite well. I have more than once been called on in judgment of potential programmer hires with degrees. However, I am also well aware of how not having a degree has blocked me from some of my long term goals (Just *TRY* to get a job in Japan without a degree. You can't even get a _working visa_).
Degrees open corporate doors. Rightly or wrongly, that is true. You can have a highly successful career without a degree - but some doors will without question be closed to you. Not because you are a poor programmer or because degrees guarantee that the proud owners are good programmers - but because that is just the way it is.
Those particular doors may not matter to you. Or they may. But without a degree they *are* closed.
Looks like what you wanted was a technical school. I myself wouldn't be able to stand it if I was taking nothing but CS courses. I love CS, and math, too, but enough is enough. Plus, there are so many other things still to be learned. Yes, you get a lot of the basics in high school, but even in English, history, etc., it's good to go beyond the basics. Plus, if you go to a good school, you will be taught by some real experts, if you're lucky. One of the best classes I've ever taken is a government class I am taking this semester. It has changed the way I watch the news and think about what our government does. It is a class on Constitutional Interpretation and I wouldn't trade it for all the technical courses in the world. I feel *educated* when I watch the news and can relate it to the things I've learned in class. It has taught me how to think. That's what going to a *university* is all about.
I totally agree. About a year ago I was offered a position at a company. When he told me I'd make 10K more just because I had that piece of paper, I was amazed. You mean, spend $100K or more for college and make 10k more a year, what a joke. Now, 14 months later, I'm making just under what that company would have started me out at with the college degree, minus the $100K for college.
I don't want anybody to get me wrong though. I definitely would never put a person down for going to college and trying to better their education. And I totally disagree with people that do put these people down. I just don't agree that a college degree is needed or you won't survive. It is your willingness to sit down here at this PC every night and every day and learn everything there is to learn about it. Even with the college degree, this is something you need to do.
" And in my business (setting up small office LANs) they have a tendency to leap way beyond the academics ability to perform after just a short time on the job. "
No offence, but setting up small office lans hardly takes a college level education. I'm sure that most college/university level grads would be quite bored doing that kind of work...
Setting up lans seems to be a first-internship type "mick" job at my college.
" I'm seeing more and more people, especially folks who are bright, but don't have the financial means or inclination, turn to alternative means to get that "piece of paper". Myself included, I went to a technical school. It was mainly loser-bait there, and I could hold my breath and get a 4.0. Same goes for my friends. However, it got me a piece of paper, which got me in the door to a first job. Within a few years, I had the big
earning job I wanted. And I did it all in less time it would have taken somebody to get through a 4-year school, and HUGELY less expensive.
Also, tech schools tend to be, in my experience, more oriented to gettting you a job after you graduate, and scheduling things so that you can have a real job while you go to school.... I guess that comes from having teachers who are employees and do nothing but teach... go figure. "
You've pretty much summed it up correctly.
If you want a job quickly and cheaply immediately after you graduate then a technical college is the best bet. That's their mission after all.
But be careful. Technology moves quickly, and the so called "relevant tools" stressed in tech colleges, and so oft complained as missing from university/college are tools of the moment. In a decade will those skills be relevant? 15 years? 30 years? The skills stressed in university are those that will give a lifetime's worth of use. When people trained at tech schools are stuck later in life because they have very specific knowledge, the breadth of a university education will become obvious to them. Unfortunately at that point most of them cannot go back to university since they have kids, or bills, or other commitments...
Dude.. If i never went to college I would have missed out on about 1000000000 or so Deathmatches of Quake and Quake 2 on the blazing fast 10 base T ethernet thing we gots up here. Sure 10mbps isnt all that fast but it beats the shit outta a 28.8
Can't win. Don't try.
Who's gonna get laid off, the sysadmin or the MIT suma? Who's producing and who's not? THAT'S what managers care about. I'm a some-college-non-grad- self-taught-programmer that works with two higher paid college grad programmers. *I* wrote the system in 6 months that they've taken over 3 YEARS to rewrite. (beta coming out ANY day now :))
My old clunky DOS based system is still running the company fine at 150% of its designed capacity.
But hey, GOTTA HAVE WINDOZZZZZ and SQL. (ROFL)
Who's worried about their job? Not me.
The two things i got outta 100+ credit hours:
1. COBOL - taught me to code good reports.
2. THE ILLIAD. good book, i doubt i'd ever have picked it up for a weekend read. Too bad it doesn't come up in conversation much.
Then I COULD tell the story of the college grad VP of Sales that saw some flowers on a secretary's desk.... (This is absolutely true)
"Wow that's a lot of roses. How many did you get?"
"Two Dozen."
"Thirty roses! Somebody must like you!"
Somebody please explain the utility of this genius' diploma to me.
Some people just don't do well in a structured learning environment. Give us a book, a compiler, and a weekend free and we'll learn more in those 2 days than 3 weeks of class time.
I thought College was suppose to open your mind to new ways of thinking. In your case it appears that College has closed your mind.
So based on your comments I can assume the following:
You will not hire a non college grad, because of things you have seen other non college employees do.
Hmm. So with this logic, can we then assume that you would not hire a Black person because one got caught steeling in your neighborhood.
or you would not hire a gay person, because one did not behave profesional at a past job.
I think you need to stop lumping people in to large groups, and accept people for what they are and what they know. College education or not I would NEVER hire you after reading these comments of yours.
I learned more in first 6 months of work than in 4 yrs of school.
You must have gone to a pretty shitty school if that is the case. In the two years since I graduated work hasn't taught me anything that school hadn't already.
For me it was stimulating beyond belief.
I got lucky a got a full scholarship to MIT.
Just being around people of equal and greater IQs
all the time pushes you. Even though the InterNet
has gone a long way in democratizing technology
in the 1990s, there is still something to be
gained being around all those people.
I never struck it rich with a startup, although
many classmates did. Also never lacked for a
stimulating and moderately reward job either.
So really what this test gauges is people's ability to write hackish code in two minutes without using references.
Funny but that situation never comes up where I've worked. We always have references, we always have more than two minutes to write a piece of code, and we can always ask around and talk to other people to get their opinions and advice.
What exactly is the point of the test? Or do people honestly believe that someone's ability to print an octal number in any way is reflective of their ability to contribute to a meaningful software development project?
Ummm...rather than testing their ability to write arbitrary and, frankly, worthless and stupid code (printing octals is a solved problem), why not test their ability to do something useful? Like, maybe write a fault-tolerant router, or an optimizing compiler, or whatever it is your company does?
I have no idea how someone's ability to write "printoct" means they can help me with my carrier class switch (hint, if we need to print octals there are library functions for it).
Hmm, can someone show me this mansion, cause it sure as hell aint in the Silicon Valley. Unless a $500,000.00 3BD 2bath shack in Mountain View, CA is now consireded a Mansion.
College can be a waste of time, or it can be enlightening and informative.
Those who already have the right tools may not learn critical job skills in school, but I bet they learn something. Those who don't have all of the right tools may develop them. Going to university/college does not guarantee anything. Everyone can find examples of stupid people with degrees and smart people without. Of course, you also know very intelligent people with dgrees and dumb people without...
Even if the courses themselves are not up to par, I bet there are others attending the college with similar interests. I think that at the very least, it provides you with an opportunity to learn. What you do with that opportunity is your decision.
I guess your right. But then again...I've never known OS/3 and Supercomputers to be an especially easy to deal with type of network.
Really...we get hired to wire up labs for CAT machines and Mainframes. Never done any Wide Area stuff though...but this pays well enough.
ProFile
The point is that if they can't do a *SIMPLE* programming task - how in heck would they be able to do a *COMPLEX* one?
I have to say, based on both my college experience and working with those who do not have a degree, that there are advantages to going to school.
First and formost, let me say, that college ain't worth a thing if you don't actively seek to take something from it. That said, I have to say that the most valuable thing I took from college was discipline. The discipline to use proper style, even when inconvenient, the discipline to fully analyze the problem before hacking out some code, and the discipline to work under deadlines.
Second thing I learned was to deal with hundreds of different people with differing educational backgrounds and communication abilities. I've had the pleasure of working with people from around the world, and of a diverse set of talents. It helps when I need to communicate with my coworkers or customers.
Finally, I learned to do more than analytical thinking... I learned why it is necessary. I learned why you would use a particular algorithm, not just that you should.
Now, don't get me wrong. Not everybody needs to go to college, but it helps. I started programming in BASIC on an Apple IIc when I was 7, and was writing C and assembler before I graduated high school. I could easily have gotten a programming job earning what I make now without going to college. However, I'm happier that I did because my understanding of what I do is far greater than if I had just read a book.
Not to mention, I met my wife in college, but that is a whole other can of worms.
Hey, there are 12 years olds out there who make most college grads look like amatures. They can crank out code faster than you can blink.
But there is a problem with being just a good coder. In fact a problem with being just the world's best coder.
The problem is that, you simply don't have the skills to be anything more. I know, I was an amazing coder going into college... but I learned to do things that I would have never picked up on my own.
After all, coding is a completely mechanical process. We have tools that do it for us. It is solving the problems that is hard, not coding.
To truly be able to analyze and solve problems efficiently, it is a great benefit to have access to 5000+ years of problem solving knowledge and people who can deliver it all into your brain.
I would also add that in additional to these things, I truly feel I am benefitting from my classes -- both my geek AND non-geek classes.
Gee - maybe the idea is to test the persons problem solving abilities - specifically as it relates to programming tasks. It seems like converting a number to octal format is a perfectly reasonable hypothetical problem to solve. I mean, I don't think I've ever had a reason to use octal notation but I can see where writing a quick routine to do this conversion requires that you actually think. Though personally, I would not allow the use of printf formatting codes - I would be much more impressed with someone who can actually write a routine from scratch.
printf interprets `\0ooo' as a an octal number (`ooo' is 0
;)
to 3 digits) specifying a character to
Damn and no college education
Sooooooooooo TRUE!
=)
"The point is how to learn how to learn, and how to learn how to communicate."
Gee, should we add another meta-level to that?
The "point" is we should be evaluating knowledge and one's ability to learn (acquire new knowledge) for the long-term. IMO, a track record of success on the job over the long haul is FAR MORE important than any certification or degree obtained years ago. The myth is that only though a formal (4-year-degree required otherwise ANY/ALL undergraduate courses taken count for naught) education is such ability acquired.
A few of the degree-happy project managers around here may be able to discuss the ins and outs of assorted searching algorithms they had in CS ages ago. I know for sure they can no longer differentiate or integrate worth a shit, despite their college education. He also doesn't know, for example, the difference between object-oriented programming and component-based programming, if Java uses pointers or not, or, in C++ land, why anyone would want to declare a member variable as static. Yet down on the grunt level (engineers actually cranking out real world code) I have seen non-degreed engineers easily hold their own, and, in not all that uncommon cases, surpass the real-world programming abilities of their fellow "paper wavers". I am employed in the area of medical electronics instrumentation. Our code saves lives and monitors critical patient parameters in real-time. A track-record of performance is what counts (or at least what should count), not some certificate obtained ages ago.
I acknowledge that getting one's foot in the door often depends on submitting to the "credentialist" mentality so prevalent in today's society. Ultimately it comes down to the old management and personnel department excuse of needing a filter -- if no degree, shit-can the incoming resume! Rarely does a well-qualified but non-degreed applicant actually talk to an engineer ON THE TEAM with whom she would be working. Only then can a real assessment of knowledge and attitude be made. It is the larger companies that most typically have this problem. Bureaucracy rules. Even the technical managers become buried in paperwork, meetings, and administrative chores. They have no hope of
staying technically current. Therefore they too must rely on some form of outside certification since they themselves are incapable of assessing the applicant's expertise.
Given the parent post, you may find this amazing...
I graduated with a two year associate of applied science degree from a technical college in Wisconsin in 1981. This place was teaching hands-on 8085 and 6800 assembly language programming. Intel and Motorola development systems were used, not just those singleboard evaluation kits. Two full semesters worth. At the time, no four year university in the area had a clue. Maybe at the graduate level, but nothing until you put your four years in.
I was hired on-the-spot after graduation back in 1981, at $25k (not bad back then). I have never regretted my decision. Sure, I have since taken all the usual undergrad calculus courses. Even a bit of thermodynamics, circuit analysis, and plenty of C, C++. But I never got that 4-year degree. If the degree issue is brought up, I specifically ask the interviewer which technical areas he is concerned about, and to go to any level of detail he wants.
I've since moved on to project management and have 10 engineers working for me. It comes down to attitude and initiative. It's not about jumping through hoops. It's about learning, adapting and attaining your goals. I refuse to accept that a 4-year-degree is a prerequisite to technical, or for that matter, ANY, professional success. Ask Lincoln, Einstein, Andreesen, Dell, Gates, etc, etc. Let me borrow a quote... "Think different."
I'm in college right now... I get free internet access. I get a paper when I graduate. Wow... That's not the important parts. I think it's important (or at least benificial) to go to a liberal arts college. It helps you to think in a more broad, open way. Rather than being so focused on just computer science you can rely on your understanding of psychology, history, science, etc. I really think that college can help a person to be a better, well rounded problem solver. Maybe it isn't necessary but it's helpful.
This article will generate two kinds of replies:
;)
1) I don't need college. I'm too smart for that. (Insert list of people who didn't go to college, but make "Millions of Dollars(tm)")
and
2) College is important. It helps you become well-rounded. It provides the opportunity to learn new ideas and work on your discipline. There is much more to life than just bits and bytes. (Insert description of shallow bit-oriented geeks who let life pass them by).
There, that should about cover it. Why don't you save bandwidth and post to another article that covers _new_ ground --like KDE vs. Gnome
I think this article affirms that the most important part of college, with respect to the IT industry especially, is the emphasis on the learning process. I believe that college is useful (thus the reason I plan to someday finish the degree I started before I dropped out and became a sysadmin ), but not for the common reason. The experience I gained while studying chinese lang & lit is more useful in my everyday work than my IS related classes were, because it was learning a new way to look at things and an indirect emphasis on how to learn.
College is useful for learning other perspectives, be they language, art, music or interior design related, as long as the student studied the process of how to create music or whatever, not just rote memorization of the traits thereof.
That must be why I like PBS.. I don't particularly care for a lot of the classes at my University (the professors are getting worse -- pathetic..)
I personally went to college to learn more about computer stuff and I'm getting tired of the other stuff (IMO, I have to do way too much math.. I'd probably prefer being forced to take more history and whatnot..)
I guess I probably just should have gone to a tech college (but they way those ads go, they sound like they teach people that don't know anything about computers how to use them.. Besides, I'd rather be learning about UNIX at a University than NT at a tech school..)
Absolutely. I learned a hell of a lot more (at least I felt that way) in high school, with teachers that were getting paid far less than they were worth. I had to start paying for school to see how bad things could really get..
I went on college because I wanted to learn more about programming and computers. My high school didn't have much in the way of computer courses -- 'Computer Applications' was the only one. That was the class where the first week was spent telling you how to select text in a word processor. By going to college, I was hoping to understand more about what was going on 'under the hood'.
It doesn't seem to be happening.
Probably my greatest shock in college has been how bad the professors are. Many of them can't speak english very well at all (I wouldn't complain if the accents were slight enough so I could actually understand them, but I can't), and the Teaching Assistants are even worse! Even American Profs and TAs really teach very well -- I'd rather be back in high school!
I didn't come to college to drink, either. It's the most common form of social activity around here -- I'm sorry, I never got into that, and I probably never will. Yet, the social (drinking) part of college is one thing that people hold up on a pedestal.
College should be a place where people go to learn how to change the world, not become accustomed to the awful parts of it (drugs, bureaucracy, violence, rampant stupidity, etc.).
College has a great potential to do good, but it's not doing that (at least not where I am). Students and their families put forth good money so that the students can learn, but we're not learning.
I am still in college, but I'm definitely feeling stuck. I want to change how things are going on this campus, but I don't know how (and I'm only one person). I'm not sure how things will go for me in the near future -- maybe I'll actually manage to change something..
The average sysadmin salary in the United States, as mentioned in an article posted earlier today on this very site, is $62K. You're saying an 18-year-old could conceivably make more than double that -- nearly triple that -- with little to no actual experience or college education? Do you have any evidence to back up that claim?
- A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
As to my "assumptions", the SGI admin example was just that -- it was by no means the only type of work an 18-year-old could never hope to secure.
As for the age I chose (18), that's generally the year most people in the U.S. graduate from high-school and either go to college or begin their working careers.
At any rate, I find it next to impossible to believe that the opportunity cost of going to college in lieu of working could possibly be $600K for anyone, and even less believable that someone could take this to be the status quo.
-A.P.
--
"One World, One Web, One Program" - Microsoft Promotional Ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
I left high school and managed to get a great job at an ISP as a programmer and sysadmin based on my UNIX knowledge (which I'd not have had Linux and FreeBSD not existed at the time). I'm sure a diploma will probably mean something some day, but I'm currently too busy making money to even worry about it.
I really am surprised to see the article present the unquestioned assumption that the reason for college is to enable you to succeed in a particular career. This is a technical/vocational school vision of college that I do not agree with.
I was a finance major, and that degree helped land me my first job. So from a voc-tech perspective, college helped me wonderfully. My first employer would never have considered me without a degree. For a more pure programming role, having a "resume" that includes hacking accomplishments in high school might be enough to get your foot in the door. Once you've been in the work force any period of time, the college degree drops off the recruiting radar scope. Some employers probably care that you do have one, but few care what it is in or where it is from. Even for one that wants you to have a degree, you can save money by getting it part time at a local college instead of spending big bucks on a full time four year program at a prestigous university.
But I am not satified with the voc-tech view of school. I very much have a vision of the university providing a undergraduate with a classical liberal arts education that enriches the mind, imparts a basic body of knowledge all educated people should have, and prepares the person for a lifetime of continued learning. I wish I had been more oriented towards this when I was in school. Fortunately I am an extremely strong self learner and so today I am able to educate myself despite not getting the best general preparation for it in school. I would like to see this more emphasized than the "learn these skills and you can get a job" curriculum the Salon article seems to be talking about.
This gets into my idea of home schooling vs public/private schooling:
There's more to school than just an education.
Social interaction with others is one thing. Some of this interaction (SOs, drinking buddies, etc) is good and can last for many years. Other interaction is bad, but you learn how to deal with that interaction. If I didn't go to college, I would not have many of the experiences Ihave now, and I would be less prepared for what the world has to offer.
There's also things like internet connections, access to hardware and software you may not be aware of (we used AIX for a while), dealing with deadlines and timetables, and the general well-rouding of education that you can't get anywhere else. As an example, I've taken a bit of interest in the Civil War due to an elective I took. It's now a bit of a hobby for me.
Where I went cost a lot of money and I'll be paying it off at about $500/mo for the next 5 years, but no matter how much my checking account scrapes bottom to pay it, I do not regret it for a minute.
Posted by fatdragon:
If you look at the backgrounds of German and Swiss managers, you will notice that many don't have college degrees but yet get promoted to senior positions in management and IT. The reason being is that in these countries, the university system is really more like 6 years of a BA and an MA combined learning academic topics like art, philosophy and such along the line of training future academicians.
Many people in Europe undergo apprentice programs where out of high school they work for a company and given an equivalent but focused education in what they will need to know in banking, IT, technology etc.
That's OK, but if you look at the background of senior managers and fast track techs, you will see they are adopting the US model of hiring college educated people to fill their ranks. In fact, foreigners come to the US because are colleges are so much better.
Sure as a talented engineer you can code brilliant programs or draft elegant designs but chances are you will always be a member of the drone class unless you have a management degree of some sort to show that you can work with more than code but also with people.
If you want to start your own company, banks are more willing to loan you capital if you show that you have a degree and have a plan. College also allows you to develop networks of friends, colleagues, and future contacts that might come in handy one day.
If you just want to be a tech then Devry and Chubb gives great specialized knowledge and skills. However, if you want to do bigger things than you will need the credentials as a stepping stone to be given more responsibility within a shorter span of time.
A college education doesn't guarantee success, watch Reality bites for a view of the real world, but without it you are making your life more difficult.
Posted by Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters:
:-).
A few other posters have gotten at some points I think are important, but there seem to be a couple others not yet addressed.
I would agree with the notion that schools come in different types; or most especially, that students come in different types. Probably more than just the two (good versus bad) that have been suggested. I would suggest at least three:
1) Schools (and students) that are devoted to sex, drugs and parties.
2) Schools (and students) that are diploma mills, and merely glorified technical training.
3) Schools (and students) that have a genuine interest in learning, thinking and understanding.
These are not discrete categories, but they *are* trends. The same schools, and the same students, can be more than one to different degrees.
The point of dividing it this way is obviously to emphasize the virtues of number 3. Learning--really learning and thinking--about art, history, philosophy, social sciences, nature and physical sciences, language, literature, and lots of other things that have little to do with programming and IT give a person a better life. That is the bottom line for me; it doesn't matter how nearly so much you get paid, or how good a programmer/designer you are.
Number 1 is not a terrible thing either, although I guess I would have found it so if not for the number 3 bit. Being mid-30's I feel positively old in this context, so I hope I can be avuncular in my advice here
There are two things I would like to add, one of which others have written, more-or-less, the other that I really have not seen mentioned.
On the first thing, I really do think that knowing about literature, linguistics, philosphy, history, and other humanistic areas makes me do a much better job in IT than most people who have been narrowly technically focussed. Not just me, but whoever is broad in her knowledge. I probably cannot pound out code, or memorize APIs as fast as a lot of technical people... but I am a lot more likely to understand organizational dynamics, collaborative processes, the real uses of software systems, how to write documents people can read, the trends that are likely to happen in IT, and a lot of more "human" aspects of IT. Again, not just me, despite the first-person tone, but anyone with broad humanist learning. I do not think the best use if a college education is learning the specific technical skills you'll need for a job, and will change in a few years anyway. The best use is learning all the stuff you WILL NOT learn, if not in college/university.
The thing I have not seen pointed out in this thread is the shocking degree to which the possibility of obtaining a humanistic education has diminished HUGELY and RAPIDLY in the last decade. (That's the whole old-fart-at-34 thing). Increasingly, universities and colleges have turned themselves into "profit-centers" that operate as degree mills, and/or extensions of corporations to provide adequately trained monkeys to perform narrow technical tasks. Humanities faculties, funding, and enrollments have shrunk enormously... except in a very few very expensive colleges aimed at the very rich.
At the start of the 1980s, when I started college, all the "University of ----" schools in the US states mostly provided decent, broadly humanistic educations (at least for those who sought them out). By now, someone starting a college/university who doesn't have enormous family wealth to spend $30k a year, will have a hell of a lot harder time finding that sort of thing. It is sad and tragic... and I really do not know what the best option for someone turning 18 today would be. "Be born rich" is always good advice... but that turns out to be too late for most people. I guess the second best is "shop around for one of the few remaining good public universities."
Yours, Lulu...
That being said, the largest reason I see anybody getting a college degree is to potentially make more money. No one gives a hoot anymore about doing a job they love as much as a job they can hopefully tolerate and get paid a good wage for. Why do you think there are so many truly unqualified people with good paying positions out there -- especially in tech-related fields?
Computer technology is the boom at the moment. It is very profitable, and every schmuck out there with enough dough to get into a college or university that offers even the barest hint of a CS/IT/[insert current acronym] program wants to cash in on it. That is very saddening as I am someone who can't really afford to attend the school I would like (there's some truth to that saying, "it takes money to make money") and who actually loves technology and science enough that I spend most, if not all, of my free time learning and absorbing everything that I can. And from some of the people I've known, I'm doing a better job at teaching myself than many colleges out there are teaching their students.
I love this stuff. I'm never going to worry about not having that piece of paper as long as I can do what I love to do because chances are, if I'm that driven by it, I'll do something with it anyway. College degree be damned; I can be successful in all the ways that matter by doing it my way.
Of course, I could just be suffering from acute over-confidence and megalomania. :)
To take this one step further (and assuming you want to go into CS), it can be important to know which college the CS department is associated with. If it is with engineering and all you want to do is program, you're probably going to end up with a bunch of classes you don't want to take. At my school, CS was part of the college of science, which made them rather independent, since CS has few practical similarities with the other sciences.
Personally, I thought school was quite worthwhile. The classes were okay....sometimes I learned something useful, and other times I didn't really learn anything at all. There were a few things (mostly computer theory) I thought I would never use, and since then have found some of these things quite useful. I would have been happy to skip some of the non-computer classes, but many of them turned out to be rather helpful as well.
But the most worthwhile part of college was the things outside of class. I think college teaches you a lot about people, and yourself, that you don't get nearly as easily from the workplace.
As somebody else already mentioned, you can't expect school to make you a good programmer. They can teach you the techniques, but they can't give you the desire or talent necessary, just like no amount of art school could possibly make me an artist. Programming is an art of its own.
You'll have (hopefully) 40 years to make big bucks in the workplace....taking 4-5 years for college won't hurt. And (if you're going to the right school, etc) it will be some of the most enjoyable years you have.
GET THIS STRAIGHT PEOPLE: WEB DESIGN IS NOT PROGRAMING!
I wonder if I should emphasize that a little more... Web design is a mix of art and tarditional design. (come to think of it, art is redundant, tarditional design is based on art)
I find no surprize that an interior designer made the transition to web design, since those fields have a lot more in common then web design and computer science. Designers (interior and otherwise) are trained to recignise the humon facotrs that make things both useable and nice, comptuer science people are trained in making a computer work. Web design is not a programing task. Not that interior design will give you everything you need to know about web design, but the underlying theorys are the same even if they are applied much differently, while the underliying theory of programing is not the same.
I have two views.
One I think it would be sad if we lost all those bright College students that work on some of the more cutting edge projects. These are the guys that make new technolgy.
However.... I have noticed that alot of programmers coming out of college have no idea how to really write code. They seem to have a better understanding of how to use a IDE. I have a friend that is going to the same college that I sorta went too. He has told me that you don't have to take ASM, Pascal or C anymore. Those course were replaced by Microsoft Visual Basic. Seems that the course completion rate was too low with the Pascal and C classes. So instead they moved the IS dept to teach VB since Students had a better completion rate.
I have to wonder where this will take software when Students come out of school only knowing how to use one kind of product.
Last one in jail is a fascist.
I worked and went to school at the same time, as many students do, and I lived on my own. I worked 8 hours a day and went to school for about 5 a day. School just bored me, while work fascinated me. So, after a year of college, I quit (for now...will need a degree later is suppose) and have just worked since. My stress level has dropped a LOT, and I have more free time to spend time with my girlfriend and work on programming projects. Why do things that dont make you happy? Its stupid; life is too short.
my 2 shillings and 3 crowns
There IS a place i was contemplating going to...its a real college, not like a DeVry-like thing :P its called Cogswell and for anyone in the Silicon Valley or wants to live here, and can afford it (4-year uni tuition costs :), you get a REAL degree, and learn lots of RELEVANT things. You take calc, and learn OOP and how to write compilers and technical writing. Its small but they have lots of good teachers there. There are many technical tracks to choose from, and you can get a degree faster. The only part you miss out on is the keg fests and weed-induced stupors, which i really dont care for ANYWAY :P ...check it out if ur interrested :)
www.cogswell.edu
awww come on...calc is FUN :) was one of the few things i enjoyed in hi school and college
Im sorry man... I dont want to belittle anything you have done. Im sure you have worked your ass off at all of youre jobs and I have no doubt that you are quite skilled
but anyone who makes that kind of money and doesnt consider themselves lucky for it might just want to take another look...
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I got an excellent, well-rounded liberal arts education because I went to a small liberal arts school, and because I took the time to better myself as a person, not just as a computer geek. I took courses in philosophy, religious studies, sociology, and (human) languages in addition to science and math.
Then I went to grad school. The place had a great computer reputation, but for undergrads it was a horrible place to try to grow into a living, feeling person. But you could get your BS or BE, and you could get "C++" on your resume even if you were an EE because that kind of buzzwordism drove the undergrad required course list. It wouldn't have been too much better than that for me as a grad student, if I hadn't taught low-level programming courses (fundamentals!) and if I hadn't done a project leading to a thesis.
It helped--and still helps--that I can write well. But spending my college years growing, and the crystalizing experience of doing that project and thesis, got me where I am.
In "the arts", soul and style are more important. You know (by now) how to be exact and specific when programming, but that exactitude doesn't help you design or code well or cleanly. Your education should not give you much concrete experience, though you should get yourself some while you're there. It should not waste time teaching you ephemera like Solaris administration GUIs or MySQL syntax when it can teach you operating system and database concepts, and let you figure out the particulars of Solaris or MySQL on your own...or not, if you wind up in an AIX/Oracle environment. Heck, I learned SunOS administration from using Linux and paying attention, and now look how different Solaris administration is!
I would also submit that a pure administration job doesn't demand what they'll teach you in a good CS program. Web application development (not just pages, but the stuff that gets content into a database and from the database onto the page), they can teach you useful principles for. Designing a web server from scratch, they can teach you the basics and you can research (gasp, horrors, a library!) the details you need.
Or you can just fake it, peek at the Apache source when you get frustrated, and generate an unmaintainable mound of garbage that may sort of work, but not well. There is good business value, as well as good hair preservation value, in knowing what you're doing before you do it.
True, none of the knowledge I use in my software programming job was gained from any of the classes I took while getting my degree.
But that is not the only way to measure the worth of college. I think the overall experience, personal development, and *gasp* gen. eds. were overall worth every penny I paid.
And the only reasons to take Computer Science over some other (right-brained, say) major is if 1) you like the classes (like me), or 2) feel the need to convince an employer that you know computer stuff.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
True, none of the knowledge I use in my software programming job was gained from any of the classes I took while getting my degree.
But that is not the only way to measure the worth of college. I think the overall experience, personal development, and *gasp* gen. eds. were overall worth every penny I paid.
And the only reasons to take Computer Science over some other (right-brained, say) major is if 1) you like the classes (like me), or 2) feel the need to convince an employer that you know computer stuff.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
True, none of the knowledge I use in my software programming job was gained from any of the classes I took while getting my degree.
But that is not the only way to measure the worth of college. I think the overall experience, personal development, and *gasp* gen. eds. were overall worth every penny I paid.
And the only reasons to take Computer Science over some other (right-brained, say) major is if 1) you like the classes (like me), or 2) feel the need to convince an employer that you know computer stuff.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
The CS program at the college I graduated from did a much better job at preparing sutdents for real-world software development than it did for academic persuits. ...which is either a positive or a negative depending on what you want to do.
--Chouser
--Chouser
"To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods." -LL
I attended college for three years before being forced to drop out because of an illness in the family. I was forced to go to work full-time. Today, now five years later, I earn wages at the top of my field, being flown from city to city because my computer skills are in such high demand. Where did I get those skills? High School. I had a fantastic High School program that taught me college level programming concepts. I took my Advance Placement test and tested out of two years of college Comp Sci courses. My college degree, however, was in English Literature--not Comp Sci.
So, am I an example of succeeding without a college degree? Yes and no. I had very little "college" training, but my teachers in High School gave me excellent training that was on the level of the first two years of a Comp Sci degree. I also had to literally work my way up from the mail room to high-level consulting. It took me five years to get here without the parchment. In those five years, I had to prove myself over and over again. I read book after book, training myself in methodology and then putting it into practice in the real world.
From my perspective, I went to college--self-taught, self-motivated. It wasn't accredited, but then it didn't cost as much either. Not everyone can/should do that. But let's not exagerate college to anything more than it is--learning and limited experience in the field. Some can do without the organized environment that college provides (some actually do better). Some need the structure--not that they can't do it on their own, but that it just works better and faster for them.
From someone who hasn't finished his bachelor's degree, I'd have to acknowledge some hurt feelings on the behalf of the "uneducated" minority. Time and time again, I have had to fight my way through a gate guarded by a degree-bigot. Someone who assumed that I was an untrained underachiever riding the coat-tails of the IT shortage. That's annoying and demeaning--especially since many times my experience is equal to or better than their experience.
A college degree would have made my life a lot easier in some ways. It would have given me good experience in a diverse range of areas. But I've done that on my own now. Granted, it was probably harder this way. But I have read the same books Comp Sci students have read, and I have applied it in the workplace. So, one way or another, I received the valuable experience needed to do my job.
I just did it a little differently than most. As I do all things.
Point? Look for the experience and the training. This can come through college, college and work experience, or work experience alone. What counts is the ability to get the job done--and that ability does not solely depend on college training. There are many ways to get the training and knowledge. College is one of many, and for many, it is the easiest and best way. And that's all it is.
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs."
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
I would again caution against over generalizations. People mature at their own rates. Many mature in college. Some mature before college. Some mature much later. A college education is not the key to becoming a diverse and well-rounded individual.
I agree that college provides many diverse opportunities for self-improvement. However, the process of becoming your true self should not stop in college, either--and therefore, college is not a requirement to personal growth. It is one of many tools/paths that help in each person's journey of growth and life.
Many people are forced through a death march of studying and test taking in college. Their only free time is often taken up with simply trying to relax and decompress. So while being exposed to so many opportunities for growth, many college students are unable to take advantage of these opportunities. They take courses on philosophy, but barely remember or comprehend them. They are asked to read some of the greatest literary works, and they can only find the time to skip around to prepare for an exam. So, some opportunities are taken advantage of. Some are only half-realized. Others are completely missed.
Let's not denounce the non-college course in an attempt to prevent others from making stupid mistakes (i.e. dropping out when college is a good thing for them at that time). For many, there have been very rewarding and paradigm-shifting experiences outside out of college. Reading the classics on your own is also a great "poor-man" method to attaining the college intellectual experience. In many ways, it can also be superior, allowing you an opportunity to think for yourself and come to your own conclusions.
College is a good "thing". But it is not a required "thing". It is a huge decision that requires careful thought and evaluation. But then life is full of huge decisions. You will make a mistake eventually. The important thing is to learn, learn, learn through everything you do.
Then again, if you want an experience that will help you grow personally and learn responsibility, you could always try marriage ;-)
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs."
"Doubt your doubts and believe your beliefs." -- Switchfoot, Ode to Chin
Speaking as a geek who didn't go to college "because it wasn't necessary", I think it is necessary unless you want to be restricted in your choice of jobs and pay scale.
;)
It reminds me of how black people would tell their kids "You have to be 3 times as good as white people to get the same pay|respect|etc".
Except, without a degree, it's probably more like 5-10 times as good.
Anyone can code and everyone does, just like basketweeving.
First off, I want to second Chris Thomas' comments about college.. there really ARE two types, and even though most type 2 universities aren't always perfect [mine isn't], it's better than everything else out there.
..however, I see every reason behind the course curriculum, and see what I can benefit out if it - usually concepts I wouldn't have the time or energy to learn on my own w/o assistance.
Now.. I enjoy university a lot, but I tend to have a different perspective towards school than my peers - many of them are in it for the paper and don't see the point of the courses that we take.
I enjoy what I'm learning because I know it *matters*.. if people in school actually remembered the concepts during a concurrency or OS course, they'd be considered expert programmers (compared to the majority).
Of course, the down side to my enjoyment of school is that I tend to get crappy marks in areas that I'm less passionate about.. CS. I love CS. I ace CS all the time... Math. I like math, but I'm not good at it, and it's pulling me down. So I'm faced with the threat every term of being bumped out of my honours degree to a general degree e... The question is: do I really need MORE CS courses, or have I learned enough that I can just take the easier degree & get out?
I really like higher education, but I think it always comes down to personal choice.. if you want to have a career doing web development, don't go to college. But don't cry if the economy turns sour and you wind up unemployed. If you want to be an expert programmer in enterprise systems, or distributed systems, or graphics, or.. etc, college will do you good, and it provides security.
Soon, having "a job" isn't going to matter as having a "career" and a way of distinguishing yourself from your peers. You have to be able to say - "THIS IS ME, This is why I'm the best at what I do, and this is why I command a high salary." Otherwise your voice will be lost in the herd, and you won't stand out. Contributing free software is uplifting, but not very much so when you're forced to settle for a poor salary because you're just "another C programmer" or another "VB programmer"....
The only way to differentiate yourself is through knowledge - and higher education is one way (not the only way) to get it. I think in future college/univeristy may become obselete because of the rampant incompetence of the majority of them, but that doesn't mean that "higher education" will die - it will just take other forms.
-Stu
definitely.
my degree is in mechanical engineering, which isn't terribly relevant to my job as an rdbms programmer, but the things it taught me about engineering principles, honed my problem solving skills, taught me about rigour and formal proof &c &c.
and of course, the staff and the facilities exposed me to things i'd never have been able to try otherwise.
not to mention the social aspect, and the opportunity to up sticks and move to the city...
if you're wondering whether or not to go to college, my advise is skip the big bucks for a few years (it's not long really) and just learn and enjoy yourself!
Speeking as someone who droped out half way threw a BA, I would say Yes it is. Those first 2 or 3 jobs will be much easer once you have that university time under your belt. Also I found some of the Stuff I learned in classes (Both CS and Physics) has been very useful over the years.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Speeking as someone who droped out half way threw a BA, I would say Yes it is. Those first 2 or 3 jobs will be much easer once you have that university time under your belt. Also I found some of the Stuff I learned in classes (Both CS and Physics) has been very useful over the years.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
It's also a filter used by many employers. If you didn't bother with college, why should the employer bother with you? You, as a non-collegiate are far more likely to be a waste of time for an interview than a college grad. Of course there are exceptions, but no one wants to dig through a pile of rubbish just because there *might* be a gem in there. This might be less of an issue in silicon valley where tech jobs ads make up the bulk of local newspapers, but will certainly hurt you if you ever find yourself in a more discriminating environment where the employer has more luxury to pick and choose.
Don't go to college to learn to be a better geek. Academic computer science won't turn you into a system administrator, Web designer, or Perl hacker. You won't learn how to optimize a kernel configuration, recover files from a crashed disk, build a fast database, or tell your boss nicely that his ideas about information technology are stupid or violate the laws of physics. You may learn a lot of good theory -- but you could pick that up elsewhere, too.
Go to college to learn about culture, or history, or philosophy, or literature. Go to college to sit up late nights screaming at your best friends about what an idiot Rene Descartes was. Go to college to watch your best friends do the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Go to college to find out what the hell this postmodernism thing is that Larry Wall's always on about. Go to college to refute postmodernism, and to be called postmodern for doing it. Go to college to meet people who will be impressed with your intelligence instead of thinking of it as threatening.
Don't go to an easy college, and don't go to a place that lets you get by doing nothing but technical stuff. Go to a place that makes you do a lot of heavy reading and writing. Take tough courses. Learn to write well; not only will it help when your boss asks you to document your project, but it'll also help you sound better on Slashdot and USENET. Don't scorn "well-roundedness" or "communications skills"; the stars of geek culture are no bunch of illiterates.
Study music. Music, as Pythagoras demonstrated, is a form of mathematics, and musicians, like hackers, keep pounding on their work in search of the Right Thing. Study psychology and sociology. They represent our attempts to figure out how the systems called the human mind and human society work, so that we can make them work better.
Read Nietzsche. Refute your parents' religion. Then refute your refutation.
Get into politics. Which politics don't really matter -- be a socialist, or a libertarian, or even a Republican if you have to. Go to activist events. Take politics courses. Insist on bringing up free software in the middle of your classes. Derive the Debian Free Software Guidelines from the works of John Locke.
(Damn. I'm rambling. I sound like that fake Kurt Vonnegut graduation address email forward that whoever-it-was turned into a song. Use sunscreen.)
Regardless the choice has served me well, but I also understand that my education will never be over. Without sounding too much like Frank Ogden, It's a new age (no crystals, but still, a new age) and with that there should be a new way of getting an education.
The future; picking up a formal education as you go, coupled with work experience. How could you beat that? In ten years when I'm hiring, it'll be hard to impres me with fraternity alignments, or even a full diploma. I'd want to see a combination of documented skills and past experience.
Kinda ironic though, since I was hired because my cover-letter was amusing and I suspect for no other reason.
Ok, I'm done.
-- The unsig...
I've been thinking about this a bit. My younger brother dropped out of college arguing that they (college) are hopelessly out of date in CS and that real work experience is more important. Below are some points that came out during our arguments.
What matters -- education or experience?
Education per se
--Artem
do geeks need high school?
If Gates had attended College or got some higher
degree we would in all probably have:
1. Windows more stable and usable.
2. Respect for the Law and other companies
Bully behavior might be successful in the US market place but it surely is not good for the society at large.
AFAIK, I'd still be a Microserf, seeing these CNN stories about linux, and wondering, "what a fad." I wouldn't be reading slashdot. Because I wouldn't have met a friend who was one of two linux users I knew at the time.
tim
Overall, I found the article an interesting read, but it was pretty much a basic top of the surface sort of article. However, the comments about people with non-technical degrees I found especially true.
I guess I can consider myself fortunate when I look at the fact that I was one of those people who had a chance to skip college and go right into the business world two years ago, but I didn't and I think its the best choice that I've ever made. I've also been offered the chance to do a co-op for a semester at some fairly good companies but turned those down.
Why? Would be the obvious question. There is something that most geek don't notice, there is a hell of a lot more to college than simply the studies. In terms of what you learn at college, only about 10% will be from classes. The rest you learn from people.
You will never be more free than the age of 18-23 when you are in college. You have pretty much no one to answer to and its a great time to explore. By passing that up and entering the work force, geeks a missing a lot.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Which is why I appreciate my University course so much now. Yes, it taught me Pascal, C and Unix, but it didn't concentrate on them. They were a means to an end. It could equally well have taught me FORTRAN, Ada and VMS (actually, it did...) and still have achieved the same goal -- I learned how to program. It didn't matter what language or OS were used, we learned platform neutral stuff like general OS theory, compiling techniques, algorithms, cryptography, regular expressions etc. Things that apply irrespective of the OS or language being used.
No, you don't need a University education in computing to get a good IT job. However, I believe it puts you in a much stronger position than those without...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
I just left a $60K/year job to go back for my CS degree and back to eating instant ramen as my only meal of the day. I think it's worth it. Please tell me it's worth it
--
"Reactionaries must be deprived of the right to voice their opinions; only the people have that right." - Mao
Yeah, this sounds vaguely familiar. I used the college as a springboard to obtain access to resources I couldn't have obtained otherwise. Information about programming languages and methodologies that the industry was going towards.
Access to the Internet, and all the information it brought to me.
The only thing of use that I directly got from College and my professors was critical thinking- a couple of them were REAL teachers and taught me to think for myself and how to learn the things I need in life on my own.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Interact with people who have different interests, interact with people of the opposite sex.
That's a joke. When I was working on my engineering degree, I thought the world was 90% men and 10% women, with 0% women taking engineering. Four years. Hell. The bright side was there were few distractions, unless you count the bell curve: all of us were focused. It made the competition brutal.
Learn to get out and experiment with 16oz physics. It made college life more bearable.
you end up taking an engineering position with me as your boss- all woman, extremely attractive and a determined, strong engineer. You feel stupid, frustrated and intimidated. Not a good life.
We have a (black) woman engineering manager at our manufacturing plant who has been with us for a year. The change was dramatic as we now have someone who will tackle all problems and impliment quality solutions. Before, the engineering department was "hard of hearing" and we had rashes of "science experiments" that were creating endless loads of scrap to the huge dumpsters. If you want someone who will listen, I'd recommend hiring a sharp woman and back her all the way.
She is highly determined and works people hard, but never places blame when bugs need to be worked out. Working in an environment like this may be stressful, but very rewarding and fun.
Did I mention we have a woman plant manager? We have 450 employees and the turnover rate is low (most retire or die before they quit.)
Be receptive to a woman boss. They have vision.
I learned more in first 6 months of work than in 4 yrs of school.
I thought the first year of college was not going to teach me much exept how to heat networks of resistors and was quite boring; however, the next few years took full use of what I thought was worthless. Building amplifiers and logic circuits turned into state machines and then 8 bit computers built and programmed from scratch. College gave me the theory and time to become an expert and specialize in the engineering area I was good.
I also worked through college. Work also gave me opportunities, but it was the novelty of my skills I gained from college that opened doors at work. The degree also adds value when things like downsizing take place and they had to score our backgrounds in different areas. Believe me, a college degree really counts!
>Why do you think it will be valuable when you are 45?
Because it taught me an appreciation for a wide variety of things. I read books. I studied Sociology and Anthropology. I debated with others. I met people from widely varying disciplines.
College is an experience, not a means to a finite end. If you want a degree just for bottom-line $$$, you're missing the point. College should teach you to learn, and to love learning because it makes you a better human. I use my degree (chemistry) in my job in the sense that it taught me how to think analytically, and that makes me a good programmer. But I use it more often for the esoteric appreciation of the finer things in life that it gave me. That will still be there when I'm 45, and I'll appreciate even more then.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
Wow, I find the exact opposite. To me, experience is much more important than a degree. *Much* more. A degree is good, of course, and gives you that extra edge in estimating if you know your stuff... but if I see someone with 10 years experience, I assume they learned how to do their job pretty well. If they can show me that in an interview, they get the job.
Of course, I imagine in PHB-land, this may be different. Luckily, the world of CS is vast, and you can avoid PHB-land if you want to. Anyone who hits the glass ceiling can and should give their walking papers. Too many startups out there (like us!) need good people, they can go somewhere that *will* appreciate them.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
>If college were cheap and fun, everyone would be
>doing it.
Whoa, that would be a tragedy. An educated public, how... revolutionary (I mean that in every sense of the word, I feel leftist today ).
*sigh* We need to change our viewpoint. The fact that people consider it a "piece of paper" is pretty sad, because that's not what it's meant to be. But it seems as if that is what it has become in a very real sense.
Why do some of us get MSCE's when we hate Windows NT and know that that cert means nothing? It doesn't make WinNT behave any nicer for us... we get it because jumping through that hoop is a neat trick that impresses some people who don't know what a stupid pet trick it is...
A degree, by itself, has no meaning. It's a tool, you get out of it what you put into it.
If you have a PhD, but you're a schmuck, don't expect me to treat you like anything but Dr. Schmuck, esq.
If you're a hippie with no shoes, but you can hack C and talk to me about Milton and Kuhn, you're a pretty cool guy in my book. I might want to work with you.
Forget about all the rest of it... just try to pursue the goal that makes you a better person. If you're two years into school and still have no idea why you're doing it, drop out. Life is too short to waste...
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
If people knew better how to open doors to the kinds of jobs they want, then your argument doesn't work. The reason why a college degree is needed is because everybody acts the same--like a herd of cattle. They send out resumes (moo!). Not to managers they know, or to managers who know them, but to some faceless HR dept (moooo). Of course a degree is handy then. How else to tell apart the Bovines?
So how to get a job then? How does RedHat hire folks? Do they put ads in local papers. No. They hire people they know. They don't scrummage through thousands of resumes looking for Linux kernel hackers. They turn to their employees, who say "Sure, that blizzard guy knows this stuff. We should hire him". The idea is that they hire people who they know can do the work.
Get good at what you do. Find companies that do what you do. Let them know who you are. Then a degree is just a piece of paper.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
I'd suggest literature with a minor in art history. Perhaps then so many Web pages won't be so ugly and so poorly written.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
There is a very clever recursive solution, but any routine that had a loop got a partial credit.
BTW, the test taker was given a Pascal (or C) manual.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
P.S. My degree is in math.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Hmm... I majored in math, minor CS and music. Currently reading for fun: "Practice of Programming" and "War and Peace".
I suspect that you are misjudging Slashdot posters.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Another problem on the test was to write a routine to find an item to a linked list. Even more college graduates failed this one.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
The test was just a step in a process of interviewing. The ability to write such a function tells us little, but the inability to write one after having gotten a CS diploma tells a lot.
P.S. Last time I used this test about 10 years ago and at the time I was working for a bank.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
You don't need to go to college for most occupations.
But if you skip college, you probably won't be a very well-rounded individual. You probably won't have very good critical thinking skills. You probably won't understand philosophy or history much. You probably won't be able to write well.
A liberal arts education is the most important thing you can get beyond whatever specific skills you need for whatever job you happen to have. If you don't go to college to get this education, you probably won't get it at all. But if you do, then fine, you really don't have a need to go to college, beyond being able to get certain jobs that require it for no good reason.
No, no, not a dropout. I've got a BA in English Lit., some art theory classes under my belt, ten years of freelance & professional graphic design in print (I started in High School) and a thorough knowledge of HTML. Yet i've found it surprisingly difficult to get work in web design. If anyone has something, let me know, hm?
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
College did two things for me. First, it gave me a piece of paper. That's probably not very important in the short term, but when I am 45+ I will probably find it more critical.
Secondly, it gave me free (well, very expensive free) and unlimited internet access, which put me in the way of things like Linux. *That's* where I learned the most.
Oh yeah, college also helped me build up a tolerance to stupidiy and beuracracy. That will be critical as I enter the real world.
Certainly details like GPA don't matter much after the first job. But as I get older and work my way up the line, at a number of companies you can't cross thresholds without the degree. I'm not saying those are the best companies to work for... but they certainly exist. I don't want to be told that I can't become the Senior Software Engineer because I don't have a piece of paper, and that is corporate policy.
;)
Eventually a number of my brain cells will die, and I may have to be put into management. They like paper there
LOL... I already sent Rob a message asking for a spell checker. In an informal environment as such I think we can work around minor misspellings, and focus on the big ones. Like the word millennium. Two L's, two N's.
I agree to some extent, but I think there's a third possibility. I went to a state school that's very good in CS (it's in the top 10). Although on average the courses were useful from a pure intellectual perspective and on the whole interesting (the CS courses anyway, not the core requirements), they were not relevant to the real world and had very little practical applications associated with them. This is fine if you want to do CS research or something similar, but not all that great if you're looking for a professional career outside the educational system.
It's just a personal gripe. I do have a job in the CS field and it's fine, but I believe I got it mostly on the merit of what I did as "hobbies" not as course work. The piece of paper with the official degree on it was useful to the HR dept. of where I work, but that's about it.
Well, as I said, this is merely my opinion, but I'm not sure just what benefits college has for the average geek. I'm currently a freshman at Miami University in southern Ohio, and am majoring in systems analysis. While my courses have helped me to learn more about C++ programming and other useful stuff like that, I've also found that there are a lot of "liberal education" requirements that seem quite useless to me. The common argument for these courses is that they help to "broaden my horizons" by making me study things other than what my major is related to, such as chemistry and psychology. However, I feel that these are the type of things that high school is meant for. I always assumed through my years of schooling that once I got to college I'd be able to focus solely on my major, since I'd taken years and years of English and history and other such courses. However, that is not the case. I'm still forced to take courses that (I feel) don't really benefit me in the long run instead of courses that could be better suited for my major.
Another point that the article makes is that the curriculum has a hard tinme staying current with the day's technology, and I am also finding that to be true. One of the important parts of the curriculum here is COBOL programming. COBOL? While I have little real-world experience, I really don't think COBOL is one of the things that employers are searching for on a college graduate's resume.
I dunno, just my two cents.
-mike kania
college taught me cs history that helped me understand where we've been.
it taught me theory that made java old hat when i first saw it four years later.
it taught me practical things, so that the technical side of developing was easy.
it taught me subjects outside of cs, which sadly included ethics. (sad that it was outside, not that it was something i learned)
it exposed me to other cultures, and other people.
i suppose it would be better to say that "i learned," rather then "it taught." college provided me with access to those things, it was up to me to take them.
it might not be for everyone, but i find it interesting to note that bill gates dropped out and has spent the past 20 years reinventing the wheel badly. linus completed his degree and (due to licensing issues) recreated a well known wheel and used it to sringboard experiments in not very well known wheels: scheduling, memory management (well researched in low memory eras, but not well covered in high memory situations) and smp.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
college taught me cs history that helped me understand where we've been.
it taught me theory that made java old hat when i first saw it four years later.
it taught me practical things, so that the technical side of developing was easy.
it taught me subjects outside of cs, which sadly included ethics. (sad that it was outside, not that it was something i learned)
it exposed me to other cultures, and other people.
i suppose it would be better to say that "i learned," rather then "it taught." college provided me with access to those things, it was up to me to take them.
it might not be for everyone, but i find it interesting to note that bill gates dropped out and has spent the past 20 years reinventing the wheel badly. linus completed his degree and (due to licensing issues) recreated a well known wheel and used it to sringboard experiments in not very well known wheels: scheduling, memory management (well researched in low memory eras, but not well covered in high memory situations) and smp.
US Citizen living abroad? Register to vote!
I've found that the farther you get
away from your early 20's (as oppossed
to away from college for those that
didn't go...) the harder it is to
move from job to job without the piece
of paper.
I've got many friends who didn't go that
can't move to better jobs or other
companies due to the lack of paper.
That isn't to say they aren't great
engineers - just that they have a
harder time commanding decent pay at
new jobs because of the lack of a college
degree.
Your mileage may vary.
Have you compiled your kernel today??
I suppose. Still:
;)
o College is _way_ overpriced and inefficient
o They don't understand customer service
o The most important thing I got out of it was my campus computer lab job and access to the net
I was able to grind my own keys after some time as a locksmith's apprentice, and now I can unlock some pretty sweet doors..
I'm very close to finishing my own degree, and I am determined to finish. It's a sign to potential employers that I have recieved formal instruction over a certain skill set, and that I can finish a big project that I started. Plus, it will open more doors for me than might have been open without the degree.
I loved my college years and I would not trade the time spent there for any 9-5 job.
9-5 = yuck.
Secondly, most of you guys are going for tech degrees which are, frankly, boring in terms of the curriculum you can take; most of those degrees are pretty much mapped out for you with no room for philosophy, music, literature, languages. Technical folks seem to completely ignore the liberal arts curriculum, which is really what an education is all about.
Please read Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind for an excellent analysis of education today. If you hate college, or are a technical person, please read this book.
College is most definitely neccesary. Well, if you are interested in learning anything, anyway. You can certainly learn programming and computers on your own (I did; I didn't study anything computer related in school), but you'll be cheating only yourself without a liberal education.
support gun control: take guns from cops
Weird. I guess I angered the gods of NT. My keyboard stopped working and I couldn't edit the post.
Oh well. Just imagine that the last sentence actually, um, is a sentence.
Russell Ahrens
I was a Classical Civilization (Latin) major as an undergrad. I took very low level and basic 1 computer related course (Electrical Engineering, actually). I then worked for a year at a Talent/Literary Agency. I'm now working as a developer at a defense contractor and simultaneously in a Master's program in CS.
I can't compare myself to someone who did not go to college, since there are none employed here, but I do notice that I grasp certain concepts much faster and sometimes in a different way than some of the straight EE/CS grads, mostly due to my language and Humanities background. It's not all positive, since I do need to work harder to get the initial concepts, but things like requirements, OOAD and algorithms are just clear, logical, and distinct writing -- that is to say, they do not differ drastically from good writing.
I don't think that a discipline -- be it science or humanities -- can advance or make major developments solely from within. New points of view -- wherever they come from -- need to address old problems; someone who is trained in a discipline is also trained in a certain way of looking at problems. It's only when an outsider tries to understand a problem that you get a truly new point of view. That's not to say that EE and CS grads are not useful or productive with respect to advancing CS -- far from it. I am talking more about broadbased interests and experience than education. You can be a CS major, for example, and still enjoy reading Classics, just as you can be a Classics major and enjoy programming; it is this cross-disciplinary approach that leads to revolutions.
So, I guess what I'm saying is that no matter what you major in, or even if you go to college (which I highly recommend), you need to be aware of the big picture of the world, and have interests outside of your work. The worst engineers here are some of the Electrical Engineers who are only concerned about their small component, with little or no concern about how the widget fits in with the
That's all well and good for programmers. One of the things I have always liked about progamming is its accessablility. Got a copy of Turbo C++ when I was 12, a $40 book from B. Dalton, and I was on my way to geek-dom. Now days not only can you get a free compiler, but oodles of source code to look at and play with. So who needs college to tell you how to do that?
Hardware is a different story. Sure, books on IC design are accessible (though generally expensive). But just like reading the camel book doesn't make you a perl hacker, you can only really learn hardware design by designing hardware.
Compilers may be free, but software licenses for things like mentor graphics, cadence, and other cad tools are extremely expensive. Then there's the iron to run them on. That's just for the design. What if you want to fab and test your chip? These are the things that a university's resources can give you.
Then of course there are the benefits of being in an environment with people who know the stuff - professors who hopefully have industry experience, grad students who have worked summers at corporations, etc.
Anyway, the point is hardware design is hard to learn on your own, so its one field where college really does help.
The enemies of Democracy are
I've hired a bunch of computer-oriented employees, and find that many people entering the job market have a slightly skewed perception of their degree's value. They try to find the degree that will give them the maximum number of facts that will overlap with the facts they think they need for a desired job. They don't realize that any job worth doing will not be based on a static pool of facts or abilities. Those are the 7-Eleven jobs. They barely pay anything.
Employers want people who can learn, who are flexible, and who can gracefully handle getting dumped with a bunch of work, when machines are down and customers are screaming. Unfortunately there is no degree in this. There are, however, killer degrees which drown you in work. Employers realize that anyone who made it through this type of degree had to at least perservere in the face of a gigantic mountain of learning, lectures and labs.
Someone who never made it through one of these degrees may do just as well at a job, but it's a bit more of a crap shoot, unless you can find a parallel, concrete achievement that shows their tenacity. Employers often take the easy way out and just insist on the degree.
I sometimes find it troubling that I ghose to take a job I was offered instead of carrying on in school.
But mostly on account of the fact that it's more difficult for a non-grad to obtain working visas, etc.
I spent 3 years studying art and design - covered in charcoal or clay, learning about too many things to count... Chemistry that confused my science major pals, biology that made them wonder, and physics where they couldn't understand the need of it.
More precisely I learned how to learn.
Learning in and of itself is an artform that is all too rarely practiced by a vast majority of "diplomma seekers" who are there simply paying their dues.
School is a fabulous tool, so long as you view it as such. It may not teach you how to code, but look at all it CAN teach you if you let it.
--- http://foo.ca
> It turns out that it's a unary argument. One can
> not make an informed decision about it, since
> you either do or do not have the experience
Not necessarily. I spent three years in college, and left before I got my degree. I therefore know what a college education can do, and the bottom line is it doesn't do anything - that's why I left before I finished my degree. In 3 years in college I never learned anything that I needed at work - everything I ever needed I either learned on the job or taught myself at home. To this day I regret wasting 3 years and $60k+ to find that out the hard way.
As for the "it's hard to get a job without a degree" argument - if an employer is judgemental and shortsighted enough to be more interested in a piece of paper than he is in my knowledge, experience and abilities, I don't want to work for him anyway.
> You should have felt that things were not right after the first semester,
Why is that? Is my opinion that college was a waste invalid because it took me three years to form that opinion? I bought into the whole 'gotta have a degree' philosophy for the first two years, and realized how wrong I was the third. Doesn't mean I'm wrong now because I've changed my mind in the past
> Don't ever admit it to an employer, they'll see
> you as a quitter and as someone who doesn't have
> the guts to follow through with a committment.
I hear that argument again and again, and it's still a load of crap. I didn't leave school because I'm "a quitter" or because I just "couldn't cut it" but because it made no sense to stay. Waste more time and money on something that I get nothing out of (except your precious piece of paper) or get a good paying job and stop wasting money on tuition. That's a simple cost-benefit analysis, not quitting.
> If daddy had given me $60k for school
My daddy never gave me shit. If I wasn't the one paying the $60k I wouldn't have cared who was paying the bill. College was, after all, more fun than working full time.
> it shows a desire to learn, and more importantly it shows fidelity to commitment.
Having a degree doesn't prove anything about your desire to learn, it simply shows a commitment to getting a degree. And neither that commitment or that degree makes you worth _anything_ until you've proven that you can learn on your own, without a professor, and that you can actually _do_ something with that knowledge.
Personally, I don't think college is something that I need. I'm currently running two businesses and doing quite well for myself. I'm not saying that geeks don't need college, though. I know very few people who could just take an idea and turn it into profit. I think that for most, college is a must.
--
.-.--
In Europe (Eastern) where higher education is purely merit based, there is a true tragedy. Many Ph.D's are working as salespeople and plumbers, because anyone can get an education if they want to. Here in the US, if you can't pay, you can';t play, and this acts as a safety valve to curb Graduate overpopulatioon.
That may be true to some extent, however I think you are ignoring the rather important fact that the US economy is booming, whereas Europe isn't doing so great. This, I would suspect, is probably more the cause of the PhDs working low-end jobs than an overpopulation of PhDs is.
Another thought. Which would be better:
1) Everyone who wants to attend college can do so. This presumably creates a highly educated populace, which IMHO is a great thing. (The benefits of this could create a whole separate discussion). This also means that you're not losing any great minds of people who otherwise couldn't afford school, so you should presumably have the best and brightest available for whatever jobs need doing. A Good Thing, also. However, you do create more competition for the better jobs, so if the economy isn't sufficiently strong to employ all these people in their chosen fields, then you might have them working in jobs beneath their abilities. At the same time, their education allows them to be more flexible, so in times of hardship they could more easily transfer into different, but not necessarily inferior, careers.
or:
2)The system as it currently is in the US. Not everyone can afford college. A lot of people can't fulfill their potential because their couldn't afford the costs of a college education. You have shortages in certain fields because there aren't enough graduates, and because of this those you do get quite possibly aren't nearly as qualified as they should be. The populace in general is less educated than the one in choice 1. On the other hand, those who are sufficiently well-off, or who get enough in scholarships to attend school, have better prospects when they get out. The degree of competition they face in the job hunt is much less, and as a result they get higher pay.
It seems to me that choice 1 is the better one for society in general. In good times, everyone will be employed in their chosen professions. In bad times, sure some people may have to work outside their field. But this would happen in either choice 1 or choice 2. At least with choice 1 society is better educated (which could bring benefits in many areas besides economics. Consider how elections these days are often sound-byte contests rather than debate over the issues. Or how the mass media always has to simplify everything for people because they don't have the education to understand it. Or any of dozens of similar situations where an educated population would be beneficial)
Any comments?
I'm taking college right now for two reasons - the first is that college is less about learning specific things, than the art of learning itself. College students are very adept at picking up skillsets quickly - invaluable for any job, technology especially. My second reason is: everyone believes that right now is the time to enter the job market. The economy is booming, and you can make a nice chunk of change in short order, instead of laboring through college. Let me remind you that capitalism comes in cycles. We are in the longest expansionary period ever - it won't last. Then the job market WILL enter a recession. Will your employer pick you, 5 years experience, no degree, or a college grad with 2 years experience? I leave it to you to decide.
--
I'm taking college right now for two reasons - the first is that college is less about learning specific things, than the art of learning itself. College students are very adept at picking up skillsets quickly - invaluable for any job, technology especially. My second reason is: everyone believes that right now is the time to enter the job market. The economy is booming, and you can make a nice chunk of change in short order, instead of laboring through college. Let me remind you that capitalism comes in cycles. We are in the longest expansionary period ever - it won't last. Then the job market WILL enter a recession. Will your employer pick you, 5 years experience, no degree, or a college grad with 2 years experience? I leave it to you to decide.
--
I'm taking college right now for two reasons - the first is that college is less about learning specific things, than the art of learning itself. College students are very adept at picking up skillsets quickly - invaluable for any job, technology especially. My second reason is: everyone believes that right now is the time to enter the job market. The economy is booming, and you can make a nice chunk of change in short order, instead of laboring through college. Let me remind you that capitalism comes in cycles. We are in the longest expansionary period ever - it won't last. Then the job market WILL enter a recession. Will your employer pick you, 5 years experience, no degree, or a college grad with 2 years experience? I leave it to you to decide.
--
I'm taking college right now for two reasons - the first is that college is less about learning specific things, than the art of learning itself. College students are very adept at picking up skillsets quickly - invaluable for any job, technology especially. My second reason is: everyone believes that right now is the time to enter the job market. The economy is booming, and you can make a nice chunk of change in short order, instead of laboring through college. Let me remind you that capitalism comes in cycles. We are in the longest expansionary period ever - it won't last. Then the job market WILL enter a recession. Will your employer pick you, 5 years experience, no degree, or a college grad with 2 years experience? I leave it to you to decide.
--
But you have to settle for lower paying, less glamourous jobs until you build up enough experience. Four years of real work experience is MUCH more valuable than a chunk of paper. Too many graduates really don't care about what they're doing. They just want the high paying job at the end of the tunnel.
Of course, if you ever become self employed (which is the goal of many programmers), the degree is somewhat irrelevant all of a sudden.
Hmmm... Some hackers (namely myself) try to keep professional, while avoiding the costly indirect college route. There are other hackers besides myself who put emphasis on learning UML, CORBA, Object Oriented Design, as well as low level algorithms like Balanced Binary Trees, Linked Listed, etc.
Just because we're hackers doesn't mean we're stupid, lazy, unprofessional, or any other negative implication your previous message stated.
I agree heavily with the article's comments about communications skills. Many many geeks cannot effectively communicate basic thoughts and concepts. The good ones can. Consider all the "big boys" in the Linux community. They can all communicate eloquently. This directly leads to faster development, because ideas can transfer between people faster and more accurately.
Where do these skills come from? College! Why not High School or on-the-job? In high school, you get pretty much zilch for communication training. On-the-job, is better. But in College, you are constantly placed into group projects and the like, with deadlines that don't move (unlike the job place). And the only way to accomplish the task at hand in the time allotted is to get your heads on straight and talk amongst eachother to be sure it all got done -- right.
I don't know how much longer I can stand it...
It's hard to stay motivated when my friends are already out there earning money. And many of my classes are pure drivel. Even the CS class I'm currently taking is bullshit ... assembly programming for Motorola 68k. I couldn't think of a worse platform to be learning. I don't doubt the value of a little ASM, but for god's sake, we might as well be learning how to program PDP-11's.
Ironically, I'm skipping class at this very moment. And my grades have always suffered from the time I devote to hacking my own projects (I'm writing a Slashdot-like clone in Python.) Damn. I need to study for my ASM test this wendsday...
It's hard to stay motivated when my friends are already out there earning money. And many of my classes are pure drivel. Even the CS class I'm currently taking is bullshit ... assembly programming for Motorola 68k. I couldn't think of a worse platform to be learning. I don't doubt the value of a little ASM, but for god's sake, we might as well be learning how to program PDP-11's.
Ironically, I'm skipping class at this very moment. And my grades have always suffered from the time I devote to hacking my own projects (I'm writing a Slashdot-like clone in Python.) Damn. I need to study for my ASM test this wendsday...
As to what you study in college: University is not just about getting a job when you finish. It's about being educated. That's why you study "irrelevant" things like English and history. English is important for the rest of your life in whatever you do: you need to be able to communicate well. History is equally important, if not moreso: it provides perspective, and if you're careful you might actually learn a lesson or two about things to avoid or pursue in your own life.
If you really think that liberal education is useless, then you still need a liberal education. Be patient, and try to learn the material -- don't just study for the tests. You'll be glad you did someday.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
DFL
Never send a human to do a machine's job.
4 years in a "collage" would make me very, very thin. Imagine! Sitting in a picture all day! What a waste of money. And even at a State University in New York it's more like 10k$ with room and board.
College is a personal decision. It allowed me to blossom socially in a way I doubt would have happened without. It gave me confidence that, in fact, most of the people in CS are idiots. Even the professors.
It also armed me with information about how CS and mathmatics are related and how to use Math to analyze CS problems. These things are attainable without college, but the direction helps tremendously. And learning to work under a deadline has helped me working at a startup more than I can possibly retell.
I also fail to see how a degree in CS is related to being a sysadmin. Programmers in the real world are NOT equal to sysadmins in the real world. Most sysadmins i've met don't know enough C to get beyond "Hello World!". The good ones who DO know more can't bear to stay with sysadmin'ing for too long... it bores them.
OK - my bias: I'm a SysAdmin. Most of my friends are developers.
My overall experience is that I (and most of the good sysadmins I know) have a far larger repetoir of computer knowledge than the developers I know. The distinction here is breadth vs. depth. Sysadmins tend to be a huge repository for bits of knowledge (most admins I know are excellent at Trival Pursuit), since you never know when that little tidbit is going to be needed. Developers are by their nature more focused and tend to ignore info that isn't really germaine to their job. It's the old generalist vs. specialist argument.
I'm not saying that I'm better than the developers, or that my knowledge is somehow more valuable. It's important to do my job. Theirs is important to do theirs. We couldn't switch positions and do anywhere as well in our new places.
And yes, I can tell a good developers from a great one, and have no problem identifying a poor one (he's the one standing in front of my cube all day).
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I spent two years at University, studying Management Science (I think you Yanks call it Operations Research), but spending way too much time on the Uni's computer systems resulted in me failing the exams and being asked very politely to leave.
I spent a year DJ'ing in clubs to earn money and hacking most of the rest of the time, before deciding that it was time for a change and to make a long story short, ended up working for a small ISP which got taken over by a telco. Not looking like a geek (i.e. looking good in a suit) and my natural talen for social engineering got me promoted to a position which had "manager" at the end of it, "technical" at the start and "sales" in the middle.
I rapidly became majorly bored and demanded that I be given something more technical to do, so I got called a Project Manager and given projects to, err, manage, funnily enough. However, I ended up quitting and taking a job as a systems engineer for a digital multimedia asset management solutions provider, which is much more fun than falling asleep in meetings all day.
Anyway, I love my job. I do the sort of things and learn the sort of stuff that I used to have to hack in order to do. On top of that, I'm earning more than a lot of the guys I know who actually graduated with a degree and, to a certain extent, I have better career prospects.
I didn't need a piece of paper with "BSc" on it to get myself a decent career. However, I learnt a lot during my two years at University - some was part of my course (project management, the application of scientific/logical methodology to solving management problems, crisis management, etc.) and some wasn't (Unix, TCP/IP networking, shell scripting). But, the fact is, I reckon I came out of Uni with the equivalent of a degree in terms of knowledge and skills and all that stuff I learnt at Uni has contributed towards my success so far.
The piece of paper doesn't really matter. The telco's CEO, when he promoted me to Technical Sales Manager, said to me that he regarded a degree as proof that there was something holding a person's ears apart, nothing more. And surveys of IT managers have shown that on-the-job experience counts for more than a computer science degree.
I believe that an idiot with a degree won't be as successful as someone who has natural talent but who couldn't afford to go to Uni.
The Dodger
Currently I'm in college, so I guess I should speak up. :)
The only real material benefit to me so far has been the free Internet connection--sound familiar? That, in exchange for all that free time I should be spending on Linux and C++...
In terms of intellectual matters, I don't think most geeks _need_ college. However, it's a really neat way to meet people and get exposure to new ideas. If you're lucky, you might find other geeks to hang out with.
Additionally, a CS degree must be worth _something_ out in the Big Blue Room... I don't know of any classes here that would be useful^H^H^H^H^H^Hinteresting to a computer geek (save for Biomolecular Computing--which I'm taking, of course), but I'm sure someday I'll find a use for the diploma...
-W-
-W-
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
College is a nice place to start from ground zero if you have no experience in coding (or some other computer tech pursuit), but no amount of schooling can give you talent you don't have in the first place.
.02
In my career, I've seen plenty of people with degrees (some advanced) in the field who couldn't code their way out of a brown paper bag. I've also seen people with training in wildly divergent fields, indeed, some with no degree at all, who were and are outstanding software engineers. The only common threads I've seen is that you must have the talent for it, and that you have to love it enough to work your tail off.
In my view, most CS departments are set up to train people to be CS grad assistants instead of software engineers in industry. In my opinion, schools should offer degrees in software engineering in addition to those in computer science. It's important to face another fact as well; 5 yrs after you get your degree, if you expect to continue to glide along on your knowledge that you gained in school without continuous self education, you're going to be dead meat in the field. A degree is a START, not an end unto itself.
Also, for the previous poster that said his degree would be important when he was 45. It's a lot more important at the start of your career than when you have experience. I haven't been seriously quizzed about my educational status in at least 7 or 8 yrs.
Also, in keeping with my comment about talent, I'd also love to eventually see apprenticeship programs for coders. I'm sure there are people out there with the talent to do coding or other computer tech tasks. There are certainly opportunities for people, and I don't think a 35 yr old should be expected to quit his present job and go to school full time for 4 yrs to check them out, if they display the talent.
Just my
College is a nice place to start from ground zero if you have no experience in coding (or some other computer tech pursuit), but no amount of schooling can give you talent you don't have in the first place.
.02
In my career, I've seen plenty of people with degrees (some advanced) in the field who couldn't code their way out of a brown paper bag. I've also seen people with training in wildly divergent fields, indeed, some with no degree at all, who were and are outstanding software engineers. The only common threads I've seen is that you must have the talent for it, and that you have to love it enough to work your tail off.
In my view, most CS departments are set up to train people to be CS grad assistants instead of software engineers in industry. In my opinion, schools should offer degrees in software engineering in addition to those in computer science. It's important to face another fact as well; 5 yrs after you get your degree, if you expect to continue to glide along on your knowledge that you gained in school without continuous self education, you're going to be dead meat in the field. A degree is a START, not an end unto itself.
Also, for the previous poster that said his degree would be important when he was 45. It's a lot more important at the start of your career than when you have experience. I haven't been seriously quizzed about my educational status in at least 7 or 8 yrs.
Also, in keeping with my comment about talent, I'd also love to eventually see apprenticeship programs for coders. I'm sure there are people out there with the talent to do coding or other computer tech tasks. There are certainly opportunities for people, and I don't think a 35 yr old should be expected to quit his present job and go to school full time for 4 yrs to check them out, if they display the talent.
Just my
Well.
Today I finished my last day ever at university.
All I have left to do is write exams. (and an
EVIL kernel hacking term project)
To the chase:
Five beers in, sitting in the middle of the grass
with the sun shining, surrounded by people having
nothing but a great time it occured to me why
I was here.
Not for the educational experience, but for
the life experience.
You only get one shot at it, dont let it slip
pass and wonder what you may have missed 20
years later as you sit in your cubicle.
College has so far taught me one thing. It's useless. I thought a CS degree would be fun. Hardly. Wish I could start a computer repair store. OK money and fun to do. My problem with class is that I don't learn that way. I can teach myself ok, but I can't listen to a lecture on recursion.
College has taught me that it sucks. I thought CS would be fun. Not at all. My biggest problem with class is that I can't learn like that. I can teach myself C or Pascal or Russian, but I can't listen to an hour lecture on recursion, especially with no computer to mess around on.
I agree with not taking all engineering courses. That's why I found a Math program which offered a concentration in computer science. Best decision I ever made. Doing proofs and studying logic, philosophy, and recently, Goedels incompleteness theorem will really change your outlook on the whole industry.
I've met engineering grads who couldn't debug. It's just sad.
When I studied (8 yrs ago) we ended up learning lots of obsolete/irrelevant/stupid stuff just because the lecturers who knew it were there (Ada was touted as the 'next big thing' and we were forced to write all our Cobol projects in lowercase because uppercase was 'old fashioned'). I was actually discouraged from wasting computer time by learning 'C'.... oh and there was not even any internal email let alone internet acccess!
Talking to students recently they seem to be learning better stuff (C++ & SQL come to mind) so it may be that a degree might be worth something nowadays. At least now that internet access is fairly common you can at least teach yourself anything you need to learn while you're connected to a nice 10MB+ link....
Oh, I had to take non-DC circuit analysis too; transient signals are very important in integrated circuits, and integrated circuit design is a part of Comp. Eng.. However, I didn't have to take some of the hairier Elec courses, from Fields and Waves on up.
We have the good fortune of using C under Solaris on Sun workstations for most of our programming work.
What I really want to do is design an OS that will blow Microsoft out of the water. Of course learning how the CPU decodes a machine-language instruction through a microprogram has little to do with this (too low level). Neither does anything having to do with Java (too high level). Methinks I should have been a Computer Scientist, but there probably isn't a scholarship for those.
Actually, both of those are at least tangentially significant for OS design. Comp. Eng. should cover OS design, as it falls right in its area of influence (the layer where hardware and software meet). Comp. Sci. would teach you OS design, but there would be a vast amount of high-level and theoretical stuff thrown at you as well. Comp. Eng. focuses more on practical application, as opposed to the high reaches of theory (though we still get a bit of it).
For OS design, I strongly recommend the excellent textbook that we had in our OS course. Assuming it hasn't changed over the past year or so, it is:
William Stallings
Operating Systems: Internals and Design Principles, 3rd Edition
Of course, that only coveres half of the OS (the kernel). For driver programming, I'd suggest finding semi-decent documentation on Linux drivers and picking apart drivers in your own copy of Linux. BeOS is another good platform on which to learn driver development; there are a few good reference sites that cover its driver architecture.
There are a lot of aspects of OS design that I would have taken quite a while to find out about on my own. I know what a page table is now, and how several process scheduling algorithms work, and the merits and drawbacks of each. As well as a large amount of low-level detail about what's involved in implementing a microkernel, c/o the labs we had to do. I could have picked up all of this by spending a year taking apart the Linux kernel, but out in the working world, it's hard to find the time for major undertakings like that (I know, as I'm working now).
In summary, I was given useful information about this in my CE courses. My sympathies re. NT and Java
Type number one is a place where people go to drink and have sex. The professors range from mediocre to truly incompetent, and nobody really learns a whole lot even if they do pay attention in class and do all of the coursework. People who have been through one of these colleges generally say that college is a waste of time. In a college like this, I agree - it is.
Type number two is different. The professors actually know what they're talking about, and many are quite bright indeed. The coursework is actually challenging. No matter how smart you are, you'll be picking up new concepts and then working your butt off to prove that you understand them. The courses that you are taking are relevant to your chosen career and teach you things that you will use after you graduate. You also learn how to learn, as many others have pointed out. I have the good fortune to be at a university like this, and it has proven invaluable for my work in the software industry.
A complaint that I sometimes hear from people who don't like college is that none of the courses are interesting. IMO, this isn't necessarily a problem with the college (though it can be for the first type of college). I was very lucky, and chose exactly the right course stream; my courses match my interests almost perfectly. But, if I'd chosen Electrical Engineering instead of Computer Engineering, I'd be stuck doing analog circuit analysis when what I really want to do is design ICs. This would not only have presented problems after graduation, but would have made my coursework alternately difficult and boring.
My advice for those pondering college is to think carefully about what they want to learn about, and to pick a good school at which to learn. This might mean a hideously expensive school, or it might not. However, if you pick a bad college or university, your time there will be a dead loss.
Likewise, picking your field is important. If you choose incorrectly, you will be forced to work your butt off learning things that just don't interest you. Don't be afraid to change fields once you have already enrolled; it's better to lose a year than to stick with something you don't like and lose four years. It will still be worth it.
If you do find a good college or university and manage to get into a field that truly interests you, then IMO you will almost certainly find post-secondary education to be worthwhile.
I hate to start a flame war here but your wrong.
HTML=Hyper text markup *language*
all programming languages require certain levels of expertise in order to program in them and HTML just happens to require a lower level than what your used too. But lets get real here, a web page must be programmed in order to work.
I didn't go to college because, well, I had an entertaining life programming and reading science fiction and gaming...I did matriculate/take a few courses, but it was hard to fit into the day/night job as a programmer. I must mention I'm an autodidact...spent many years following the threads of ACM/IEEE et al in order to keep up. University libraries and refereed journals aren't as useful now as then.
Many of my contemporaries (even after 20 years) do not seem stunted for their college experience, despite all the heavy drinking, drugs, and partying with MOTAS. On the other hand, only a few of the folks who skipped college later went on to (what they considered) meaningful careers. The latter were a self-selecting lot, implying a successful geek who skips college didn't need it anyway, and well, the unsuccessful one wasn't really a geek anyway.
Over the last 30 years I think few IS/CS/EE programs have done well at preparing graduates for career relevancy. But does this really matter when many IT-related job ads consider a person w/3-years experience as senior/expert?
In my experience a lot of coders are grunt-coders. They use the same techniques all the time, appropriate or not. Coders that actively try to keep up with new algorithms, theoretical work etc. are few and far between. The ones that do are most likely the ones with advanced degrees.
{
if(n >= 8)
printoct(n / 8);
putchar("01234567"[n%8]);
}
So this is considered 'clever' these days. I think that anyone pretending to be a programmer should be able to come up with something this in no time.
Quiz # 2: make a routine that prints a number where the radix is an argument (2 = radix Quiz #3: don't use recursion
This world is baised on one thing... paper. If you have that then it says that your worth somthing. You should be able to gain a hi-tech job without going through all the mumbo-jumbo. But also you learn a lot at college that could help you get that better job. True you could learn it on the job (better and faster)...
Ok, I got it now... Get the hi-tech job and go to college at the same time. Now that's the way to do it!
This world is based on one thing... paper. If you have that then it says that your worth somthing. You should be able to gain a hi-tech job without going through all the mumbo-jumbo. But also you learn a lot at college that could help you get that better job. True you could learn it on the job (better and faster)...
Ok, I got it now... Get the hi-tech job and go to college at the same time. Now that's the way to do it!
As a college freshman and 1/2 in CS, I can tell you that I am learning very little directly from all these classes and things. I usually sit off to the side and catch up on sleep. However, I still manage to get almost all A's. The answer is simple. They teach it wrong, so learn it yourself. I have offered alternative methods of presenting material to teachers, etc. only to be ignored because it would be "too much work". So, I just gave up. I sit in the corner, take a few notes, and just soak it in. Others hate it since I just seem to know stuff. But the key is to PAY ATTENTION TO THE WORLD! All of the lessons "taught" in college are all around you. Open your eyes. Open your ears. It just makes sense.
So.. Why do I waste time and money in college? Mostly because of family pressures and "society". But it sure can't hurt in the future. When I go in for a job interview sometime after I graduate, I'll be happy to know that I can get just about any job I want. I have massive experience from working in the industry since I was 14 and then add on that I actually stayed in school. Employers are starting to change their views of degrees, I think. Now it's not so much that you have a CS degree (since we all know almost any idiot can get one these days), it's that you stuck with it long enough to earn the paper. That means a lot--far more than just having one. So if you are thinking about dropping out, give it a good LONG think before you act on it.
My $0.02.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
And I thought mine was sad.
:-)
Oh well. At least we got to play with computers and learn C++ and stuff. (By learn I mean: Read the book.) Of course I already knew most of that anyway. Oh well.
I still think it's bad when the senior project at my school is a VB program. *sigh*
Heck.. Go to my page ( gimmick.org ) and see what I work on in my spare time. Beats the snot out of a VB program, that's for sure. (And the webpage rocks too..
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Hmm.. That's doing a bit of generalizing... :-)
:-) And I don't let life pass me by. I let college do that.
I fall in the middle.. College is good for making future contacts and allies. It is also good for learning how to read people. Don't go for the education (since you won't get one), go for the interactive experience between real humans. (And try to get a date..
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Yes.. If anything go to college for the ego trip.
:-)
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I think one problem with this subject is that people tend to generalize based on their own experience. If they went to a lousy college and wasted n years being taught stuff that they knew already, they look on a college education as worthless, because theirs was. If they went to a good college and learned a lot, they consider a college education essential (even though a bad college education can be more of a hindrance than anything else). Just to make my own prejudices clear - I went to what's generally considered to be a pretty good university, and think my degree was well worth the effort.
When I started university I was, while far from an ubergeek, reasonably experienced, with several flavours of BASIC, a couple of assembly languages, a smattering of Pascal and a little Forth. However, learning a language at university was considered subsidiary - we weren't there to learn to program C or Pascal, we were there to learn (amongst other things) to program. So while we spent the first month or two being taught Pascal inside out it was really only to give us a common way to get the work done - it was made clear to us that by the time we graduated we should be able to pick up pretty much any language thrown at us without much difficulty.
A lot of the value was in having to do stuff that I wouldn't otherwise have touched. We covered a wide range of stuff, from basics like algorithms through operating system design, graphics, digital hardware design, compiler design, real-time techniques, and a lot of heavy theoretical stuff that I personally hated (but some of which continues to benefit me to some extent today). While I've by no means needed everything I studied (the contents of the course in Computability, probably the toughest one I did during the degree, hasn't cropped up yet, thank god) I'd guess that the material I studied for during the degree has directly benefitted me in about 70% of the projects I've worked on, in addition to giving me a solid foundation in the basics that's made me a better programmer.
Now to flip the whole thing around, I also saw the process from the other side - while doing post-graduate work I supplemented my meagre income by doing the things that postgrads do, like tutoring courses and sitting around in labs answering questions. I did this for long enough that there were some students that I acted as lab attendant for in their freshman year who I also tutored in later years. Now in the freshman year there was a huge range of experience. On one hand we had serious hackers who were bored silly by the coursework and instead spent their labs trying to subvert systems, and there were people who weren't far off the "which key is the 'ANY' key?" stage. Some from both groups got all the way through the degree, even though those in the latter had to work a hell of a lot harder during the first year or so. By the time they got to the third or fourth year of the degree, you couldn't really tell the difference or, if there was any difference, it was often that the people who'd been complete neophytes in their freshman year were doing better than the self-taught Junior Superhacker types. Many of the latter had an over-inflated opinion of their own capabilities due to their being so far ahead in the first year, and this "I know it all already" attitude hampered them later on when the course started to move outside of their areas of expertise.
All of which means...not a lot, really. Let's face it, nobody wants to be seen to have made the wrong move, so those who dropped out or didn't go to college at all aren't going to admit any value in a college degree, whereas those who did a degree, no matter how useless, aren't going to admit to wasting several years of their life. I think my undergraduate degree benefitted me a lot, but don't hold the same opinion of my postgraduate degree - the latter took a lot more of my life than it should have, and specialized me for an area of Computer Science I now having nothing to do with. Sure, having an advanced degree means that in a lot of jobs I get a slightly higher starting salary, but I've long since concluded that my salary'd be at the same level or higher if I'd spent those years gaining job experience. It was fun, but it ate up more of my life than it was worth.
Despair not, valiant college student, for thou are on the path most righteous!
The one thing that seems to be missing from these discussions is this:
You're not there to learn useful skills. You're there to learn to think.
ASM on s 68k is BS, sure, you'll never use it. But you need the concept of assembler, and that 68k is as good a tool as any. I learned on a VAX, seen any around?
Come for a little walk with me...
But now, with my VAX ASM experience, I see the value of Hungarian notation, and I see why it's worthless in C++. I know that this is not critical knowledge, but actually it is. In the 'real world' we write more documentation than code - sad to say. If we're lucky, we get to write the docs that dictate how we write code.
Shmoe #1 writes: We should standardize on Hungarian notation because that's what M$ uses.
Shmoe #2 (me) writes: We should use human readable naming conventions, because we can write maintainable code that way, there is no learning curve required for the naming convention, the IDE will keep the data types and function return values straight for us - in short we do a better job faster.
Manager calls both Shmoes into office - Explain this difference of opinion, he says.
Shmoe #2 can talk intelligently about the value of Simonyi's notation, and why it is not applicable (but only habitual) in a high-level language like C++ and especially our language du jour Java.
Shmoe #1 can only say: It's what M$ uses.
Shmoe #2 writes draft that get's read by upper management --> name recognition.
Shmoe #2 gets to be team leader (bonus!)
All because Shmoe #2 had to learn assembler on the VAX, and knows that when you only have one data type, naming conventions matter, but when you have lots of code, readability matters.
So, even though it seems like BS now, it will prove very valuable after you earn your B.S. And those things that seem like useless drivel now, will click into place, at the most unexpected moments, and pay off in spades.
So suck it up, log off, and get your arse to class. You're missing drivel that might save your job someday.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Tuche'..
You're right, but there's a reason for it being expensive - it keeps people out, leaving only those with the means (or excellent grades) to even contend for the degree.. It isn't fair, or right, or anything, but neither is evolution, or big rocks falling out of the sky. It just is.
And as for customer friendly... Well, FEH!
Zen buddist monks are not consumer friendly, neither are dojo masters, drill seargants or the tutors of world class pianists. They turn out champions by making them overcome adversity.
If college were cheap and fun, everyone would be doing it.
Some people lack the grades, and can't even get in - and a good thing, since the world can only support so many pointless grads.
Some can't hack the pay - for those that are able minded it's truly too bad. I've seen briliant minds flip burgers, it's a shame. Those that smoke their Pell grants deserve to dig ditches.
Those that have the grades and the money, but do not navigate the burocracy well, well, they're probably better off dropping out and becoming experts in their own right. They may bet branded as non-team-players by their managers, and as anit-social by their coworkers, but they have absolute respect as alpha geeks in the office.
In Europe (Eastern) where higher education is purely merit based, there is a true tragedy. Many Ph.D's are working as salespeople and plumbers, because anyone can get an education if they want to. Here in the US, if you can't pay, you can';t play, and this acts as a safety valve to curb Graduate overpopulatioon.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Since you left school before getting the degree, you can not speak on the value of having one. Having the degree is not the same as going to college for 3 years.
You can run a marathon in the best time ever, and stop 10 feet before the finish line. That way, you know how tough the run is, but you just don't know how that medal feels around your neck.
If you spent $60k on 3 years of school, don't ever attempt to manage money. You can go to a state school at half that amount, and have much less anxiety about walking away from it without actually finishing the job. At $10k/semester, if you quit before seeing it through, sorry to say, you changed jobs a week before deadline. You should have felt that things were not right after the first semester, rather than beating your head against the wall of the Ivory Tower.
Don't ever admit it to an employer, they'll see you as a quitter and as someone who doesn't have the guts to follow through with a committment.
If daddy had given me $60k for school, I would have had a Ph.D. to show for it, and I'd be set for life - I'd be able to pay him back in a year, and still have my bills paid.
As it is, I worked full time while taking full time semesters, and am now working on a Masters in CS. My employer knows that I'm stubborn as hell, and that education means the world to me. My signing bonus included full graduate tuition in one the country's best engineering schools. If I didn't stick it out as an undergrad, I'd never have this option.
It is not judgemental and shortsighted of an employer to look for a degree - it shows a desire to learn, and more importantly it shows fidelity to commitment.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
You, my friend, sound socialist - That's a compliment. Yes, you're absilutely right, giving everyone the opportunity to realize their potential is best for society in general.
:)
Unfortunatelly, I don' think the human race is quite ready for the world on the other side of that door. I know I'm not.
There's just not enough money to reward all those brilliant minds - unless you're willing to live on satisfaction alone. I'm not, I like toys.
You mention bad times. Who makes the decision which neurosurgeons should flip burgers? Do they do it for the same pay? What about the career burger flippers? Where do they go?
It's not fair, but the financially selective US system works. Well, at least it worked for me. I hope it works for everyone. But I also hope no one ever gets cancer. All I can do is care for me and my loved ones. If I can help someone I feel is especially gifted, I will, but not at the cost of my kids. I mean, even if they're stupid, they're mine, right? I need to do best by them.
I intend to make a lot of money in my lifetime. When I'm done, I intend to set aside an account to feed a scholarship for other former hasbeens that didn't quit. That's my contribution.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
Is not very important to you. It's just a piece of paper, right?
/.
I have a little metal ring in my pocket. On it are flat little piece of metal, with teeth. Worthless and useless, right? Too thin to cut food, too thick to pick your nails. Oddly, they fit locks. I can easily get into rooms and cars that are otherwise inaccessible to me.
I can secure my house against thieves, get into my car and drive myself to my job. I can get into my office, in which lay confidential and propriatary materials. I can check my PO box for mail.
I wouldn't have any of these things without my keys. And, I wouldn't have any of them without my degree.
A college education opens doors.
It teaches structured thinking, but most geeks already have that skill. We've argued the value of a college education and the experience of University ad nauseum here on
It turns out that it's a unary argument. One can not make an informed decision about it, since you either do or do not have the experience. A comparison can not be made, since it would be like men trying to compare their experience of manhood with the experience of being a woman. We do not have the means to be objective here.
But, without a doubt, that little piece of paper opens doors. Some people without it get quite lucky, but they are a significant exception to an otherwise unnoticed majority. Most people who do not have the degree, do not get as far as those with the degree. It's not flame-bait, it's fact.
Without a degree, you start as a tech, and you need to prove yourselv constantly, to advance. With the degree, you start at a higher level, and if you continue to prove yourself to advance, you advance faster and higher.
Bill Gates' success not withstanding, a significant majority of executives, CEOs, CIOs, managers and others who make lots of money, is college educated, (sadly) with business degrees that exceed the Bachelor level.
Get your keys. You don't have to use them, you can still use a crowbar or a credit card to open those doors, but keys make it a) easier, and b) socially acceptable.
-- What you do today will cost you a day of your life.
For me. College has been a place where I get to network and learn from other nerds. Also, I get some hands on learning opporunities through computer equipment & a network connections I normally wouldn't have. (Too bad I don't get a grade for that)
Although I think 95% of college is BS..... something like college is needed so we can get to resources that help us expand our knowledge.
"Look out honey cause I'm using technology" Iggy Pop
Generally, these seem to be the two threads in this discussion.
However, I think, whether it is or isn't for everybody, college should be a balance of theory and practice. For example, at my school, we have a class that teaches team programming/large projects, and is done in C++. I think it will be taught in Java in the coming semester. Normally, this wouldn't be of concern except that at my school we don't have another explicitly C++ course. It might be better to teach the class in Java so you don't have to deal with pesky memory management, but if you don't teach some real world skills, like that pesky memory management, you could find yourself up a creek. Luckily, I've already taken this class, but I hope that if it does move to Java that a C++ class is ready and waiting for the students who haven't taken it.
Earlier, I saw a thread about the uselessness of Motorola 68k ASM. I'm taking a class that deals heavily with SPARC ASM, something I probably won't use again outside of college. However, I dabbled in x86 assembly in high school, and I saw parallels and whatnot between the two - for me it was somewhat interesting, like the fact that x86 assembly doesn't have a branch delay slot, and SPARC does, and that SPARC does because of the way pipelining is implemented, ad nauseam. The point of this long-winded text is that college provides you with a real understanding of why stuff works the way it does and why people made decisions that later affected present implementations and architectures.
And then there's the whole social side of college, and the access to resources, and as someone said earlier, the chance to find a direction.
I've been in the real world a little bit. In high school, I programmed/web designed for minimum wage as part of an internship. In the end, I got bored with the work. I'm reaching a similar point as a tech assistant for my school's language lab. I think one of the most important reasons for college is the chance to find something you really want to do, and to be able to sift through jobs you don't want when looking for a job. I don't want to do web work for the rest of my life - that's what I got from the real world. But I do have a general idea of what I DO want to do - and that's what I'm in the process of getting from college.
By no means is college necessary to find any of these things - it depends on the person - but I would highly recommend the college experience if at all possible.
-Mike Y.
"There is no culture in computer science, only cults." - M. Felleisen
There are three aspects in evaluating college education.
#1. The value of education without reference to practicality.
#2. The value of the degree as representing that education.
#3. The value of the relationships one forms in the process of getting #1 or #2
In the case of most people, the education has a value as experience but that never relates to financial benefit...
The other 2 items are where the financial value can be measured..
The top tier lawschool average salary after graduation can be $30000 dollars greater (or more) than the second tier school.
The reason for this is that when someone hires from a school based on the degree they are saying "I need predictable value based on my investment. As I see 0 job experience I need to evaluate based not on any qualification but on the statistical likelyhood that someone from a school I am familiar with as a good school will be like the majority of other people from that school.
I am a high school and college drop out who gets hired by people who are looking for things that NO ONE ELSE HAS DONE. Finding someone who is educated in doing things others have done is of no worth.
While a college education might benefit me (by giving me a broader range of experience and skills including communication, and more contacts with people who might hire me or contribute talent in my projects) it is not a good indicator of my core value, which is technical in nature and yet is not expressedly formalized as an engineer or other professional might be.
In truth college has many merits, but few are financial. I have always considered my college education a luxury that I could seek when my financial responsibilities were relatively settled. I enjoy learning and enjoy being in a group of people learning. However I don't see how my philosophy degree would help in anything beyond bio-ethics (which I dread)...
What sort of degree would you want for someone in this so called WEB industry? The ability to type? Clearly design is not primary as we can see from the high quantity of really nasty looking poorly behaved web pages. Clearly no technical skill is necessary as there is negligible difficulty in producing web pages that are no more than glorified word-processed desktop published contentless dribble.
The fact is that it isn't surprising that people are evaluating this talent as not requiring college. What is surprising is that people think that a task that will eventually be simple enough for a 5 year old to do, is also a good career choice...
As to the comp-sci degree, I was told 10 years ago that it wasn't a good criteria. I was told the masters was the lowest level one should consider as showing some merit in the field...
I thought this might have changed when I stated this recently to a number of my peers (I am modest to include anyone really as my peer... Although I hope that when I am tried for whatever they catch me at, that I will be able to have ya'll exclusively on the jury...)
The response was, are you kidding? A masters is worth garbage...
So I gather it is still the same...
As to college as a source of a free internet account... That is like saying your car came with a free radio antenna...
They teach ASM on the motorola chips not for future usefulness but because its the easiest ASM going from what I have seen and heard. That ASM class should be like CS10 ( it was for us, the first class you take ) and serves more to weed out idiots and unmotivated people then anything else.
You may be the most l88t coder on the planet, but this class is teaching you to deal with new concepts on foreign systems. I found it quite entertaining. Go to class and finish up with an A. That A will get you much farther then senseless platform/usefulness arrogance. If you in college to learn applicable skills then your in the wrong place. CS teaches two things : 1) Concepts 2) How to use reference books.
I never finished although I worked very hard at it. In the end the lure of the real world and projects overseas took me away from school and I never returned. I regret not finishing my CS degree yet at the same time I know that the best course of action is the course I find myself on. The opportunities presented to me now have absolutely nothing to do with my education and my lack of a formal degree has not been criticized by anyone from venture capitalists to my business partners.
:)
I think school does different things for different people. There is no real 'universal constant' in terms of what is best. For entrepreneurial people college life will never be enough and they will know that. However, there are tons of people who don't have that drive and whose sole goal is to 'learn that computer stuff' so that they can get a good secure job with benefits. This is especially true as CS becomes more a of a business style major with people involved who have no passion for it and just want the big jobs that everyone says 'knowing computers' will give you. This was the worst things about college, dealing with the fruits who were involved in CS purely for the financial aspects.
That said, the 3 years of college I did attend really taught me a lot and got me started. It served as an introduction to how things are 'supposed' to be done. I have always written code but the concepts and styles I was introduced to in school have left a lasting impact. Its like literature and writing in a way, you have to know whats been done to do your best work and college is a great venue to learn about what others have accomplished and give you building blocks to construct the future with. It showed me a deeper level of understanding and also gave me a map of the landscape. The concepts I was introduced to are concepts that would have never shown their ugly heads to me otherwise and I have benefited greatly from them. The mind boggles at what I would have seen had I finished.
So, different strokes for different folks I think. A lot of it depends on personality type and individual drive/motivation. Me, I enjoyed college and want to finish but I know that my path to success has be driven more by my internal drive, ambition and intelligence then a document I recieved as credit for time spent.
Lastly, I bet Salon wrote this article specifically to get a Slashdot effect going
I think a degree is of value. Not so much for obtaining knowledge in the IS field (although you will usually get some good broad information of IS so you can mingle with others without sounding too stupid) but it is of more value for learning other skills.
Skills such as working with others under stress (a group project for example), leadership, and communication. I think without a college degree it is more difficult to obtain these skills.
I have a degree in Business (Information Systems), although I work as a programmer. The only technical skills I learned in college were database releated. However, because I learned how to work with people and communicate, I have a decent job with plenty of upward mobility. Without such a degree I would not have the opportunity I'm in right now- our company and many like it don't hire anyone unless they have at least a 4 year degree, and usually at least 1-3 years of experience.
I say go to college if you have the choice. Sure, you may have more $$'s hanging around in the short term, but more than likely you're going to fritter it away anyhow. Plus you'll be missing out on a great learning (about life) experience.
I'm a CS Major, and yeah that's all right, and maybe if I'm lucky something I'm learning will be useful. The big thing I'm getting out of college is working in student organizations doing jobs that nobody in their right mind would hire me for. You can be president or manager of operations for an organization that handles millions of dollars even if you have no relevant experience and you're actually sketchy and disorganized. I got one of those jobs, and it's teaching me organizational and people skills that real-world businesses would require an MBA before you could get any on-the-job experience.
sometimes it's not about math... sometimes it's just plain common sense... I suck at mathematics - but I'm a damn good coder (or so everyone I work with and my professors at the college I dropped out of...)
I fully understand where you are coming from... I went to college for one semester and dropped out. I now work for a large telecommunications company and in a few weeks, I'm leaving to found my own startup doing Linux & network consulting.
While my other friends are getting burned out of college - I've already learned the practical skills needed... I can read books on my own and I can think for myself...
I'm very well rounded and have traveled all over the US on my own money... college is just a waste of time for me... I've got everything I need right now...
Here's what I wrote to the Salon people. YMMV...
While attending art school in Boston, my peers were churning out papers on post-painterly abstraction and reading Art Forum. I was devouring as many (good) comic books as I could and reading The Comics Journal. And cartooning. Lots and lots of cartooning. I couldn't have known at the time that with it's emphasis on clarity, shared experience, and the elimination of redundant information within the image, the discipline of cartooning was preparing me for a career in interface design and instructional media. Will Eisner, Robert Crumb and Jack Kirby made for an outstanding cirriculum, albiet one which barred me from recieving a bachelors degree. No matter. Choosing the unlettered path has afforded me me a stimulating, well paying career, free from required reading lists, save those of my own design. Perhaps more importantly, by keeping me out of graduate school, my ability to be surprised and delighted remains intact.
The music is not in the piano -Clement Mok
Those three points pretty much sum it up for me. :-)
It's important for the education naysayers to note that although you may not be learning anything directly in college, (I can count the actualy useful technical concepts on two hands) You are given access to vast amounts of resources. The real learning takes place outside of the classroom. I would certainly not be in the position I am in today had I not met the people and had access to the resources that I did in college. In a real job you pick up skills, in college you have a clean slate to find a direction. It's important to realize that your boss is not a thinker, and your professor is not a pragmatist. There's something to learn from both of them.
It probably depends on how clueful the colleges in your area are with technology. In my area it's not real great, so I am keeping my job with the local ISP as system's administrator.
Troy Harris
Systems Administrator
Studying SC, you lern not only how to do something, but why to do it that way. The drawback is that the intention of the education is not to increase your creativity; only your reasoning capatibility. If not prepered, you may turn from a hacker to a computer software writer droid. The first sign of sush change is that you loose the possibility to get involved in a new hacking project unless you are forced to, by the school or by an employer...
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
Sounds very familiar.
Most people should get some kind of paper, certification preferably. If they can't get or can't afford that, get a two-year degree so businesses will at least look at you.
It is definately easier to get a degree at a younger age when you can tolerate "stupidity and beuracracy," but don't go into anything with a bad attitude. Try to understand it's something valuable down the road, and easier to get at a younger age.
The only things truly "wrong" with four-year colleges is their slow-to-accept policy, and downright out-of-date material. It's a place where tenure is the ultimate, as professors can cease to create and review class material.
While neither wrong nor bad, keep in mind a four-year college will force-feed you somewhat irrelevant information (history, English, etc.) in an attempt to make you a better person. A two-year or certification will concentrate on what you really care about.
Winners tell stories while losers yell deal.
I started playing with computers in 6th grade, and by the time I graduated high school, I knew BASIC, 6502 assembly, and Pascal, and had quite a bit of programming experience.
But I lacked any theoretical framework.
College changed that. It gave me the big picture. I could see not only how things worked, but why they worked that way.
Of course, I also learned a bunch of new languages, and was exposed to new OS environments, but I would have picked those up on my own eventually. I don't think I can say the same of the theoretical understanding.
I started playing with computers in 6th grade, and by the time I graduated high school, I knew BASIC, 6502 assembly, and Pascal, and had quite a bit of programming experience.
But I lacked any theoretical framework.
College changed that. It gave me the big picture. I could see not only how things worked, but why they worked that way.
Of course, I also learned a bunch of new languages, and was exposed to new OS environments, but I would have picked those up on my own eventually. I don't think I can say the same of the theoretical understanding.
I think it's not so much a matter of whether or not it's worth it or not for computer geeks, as much as it is a question of whether or not colleges and universities are starting off their entry-level people at the right course level.
I just finished a three-hour C++ exam this morning in under an hour. I think the course was effectively a waste of my time, since I already knew C++. The one thing I still needed to learn about C++, OOP, was never taught in the course. We only learned C/C++ fundamentals. Yuck.
Until universities/colleges start customizing their programs for different entry-levels, we're going to have to put up with the redundant nature of early university/college year education. Which means that more and more students will continue to make the sad decision to end their studies early. I don't know; the way things are now, I suspect they may very well have made the better choice.
Fork
Though I have only been in college one year, the unlimited T3 internet access that I have has allowed me to obtain and learn Linux, fully appreciate the resources of the Internet, and introduce several other people to the joys of a stable OS. I think college is also necessary from a maturity standpoint. You learn a lot about yourself and your responsibilities as an adult through college, probably better than you would otherwise. Besides, college is fun!
There are already several excellent comments on the value of college, and probably many many more who write in to add support to the belief
'I don't need college, I can learn anything I want to about programming in the real world'
That's true, if programming, by analogy, is a skill no higher than a technician; someone tells you what they need and when, and you do it.
There are absolutely lots of things that cannot be learned except by college, unless you are a genius along the ranks of Feynman, Newton, or Einstein. If you were that smart though, you'd probably in college with 2 or 3 degrees, right?
I'm not trying to insult people who haven't gone to college(yet), I'm making a point to those people who are considering and wavering. As mentioned in other posts, there are plenty of things you learn in college that isn't taught, ethics among them, but there are just as many things you won't be able to figure out in the real world. Predicate calculus, program correctness, and big O complexity. Or semiconductor physics, and why transistors act the way they do, and how an entrepreneurial physicist/engineer can take advantage of their quirks and unleash the next big(say a thin flat light cheap LCD) thing on the world. Or even math, and alternatives to 2d linear algebra; 3d or 4d math...
The best things one learns are from classes not related to your main interests, but from which if one makes the effort, can be applied to your main interests in new and uniquely satisfying ways...
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Most folks I talk with think that the further you get from your first job, the less the piece of paper matters. I agree. I see college as a way in the door for some people, but experience and good references as a way to move ahead from there. I seriously doubt if I will have a problem in 15 years (when I'm 45 with 27 years work experience) getting any job my skills make me qualified for, with or without a diploma.
Why do you think it will be valuable when you are 45?
It seems everyone equates education with employment,as if that was the only point to it. University and A-Levels provided me with an opportunity to grow up. As I find most high school graduates are misguided individuals, easily affected by trivialities.
University also provides a more rounded approach to study, and allows you to explore all facets of your chosen subject. It is less about 1's and 0's, and more about concepts. As most of the details you learn will change (see COBOL) those who understand the concepts will be at an advantage.
Wealth does not equal success, and those that use it as a yardstick miss the point of life.
Woe be on to them, all who rise against poor people, shall perish in a the end. Buju Banton
Instead of sitting in a classroom for 4 years, design your own curriculum and work at your own pace. Try these out for the best in alternative education:
Thomas Edison State College, http://www.tesc.edu/index.html, Regents College NY, http://www.regents.edu/, Grantham College of Engineering, http://www.grantham.edu/, Charter Oak State College, http://www.cosc.edu/
Non-traditoinal types need non-traditional schools. Try 'em, you'll like 'em!
-- I fear explanations explanatory of things explained.
Yak! I get sick when I read articles like that:
"December, Forbes asked if investing in a college education was a smart way to spend time investing in a career.".
I sure hope that's not an important parameter when people considers to take a degree or not. Even within the field of CS, with all it's applicability for the industry, there are vast amounts of theory, which is a joy to learn just for the sake of it. I study CS because I like it, not as a money investment. Fortunately most of my fellow CS students seems to feel the same way. In fact it's my expirience, that CS students takes greater interest in their study in general, than say law- students(where many really seems to be in it for the money).
So in my opinion; take a CS degree if you like CS for the sake of science. I'm sure both you and the university are better of that way.
For the chemistry, biology, physics, etc... geeks, college is a must. I can't afford a few hundred thousand dollars for a lab.
I'm currently in my 3rd of 5 years for CS at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. It has taught me many things, but most importantly how to think creatively. I've also gotten lots of experience drinking, partying and having a good time. Sure I could have gotten some shitty boring techie job when I was 18, but i'll be graduating making a lot more money and doing more interesting things.
Ha. Here we have to take circuit analysis regardless of whether we're doing Computer Engineering or Electrical Engineering! That means an entire semester wasted analyzing non-DC circuits, when the time could be better spent playing Xpilot... er... admin'ing my very own Solaris/X86 box. oops :) The other black mark is that all courses are done in Java now, when 1% of all applications are actually written in it! Unfortunately the "useful" alternative would have been C++^H^H^HVisual C++... :(
What I really want to do is design an OS that will blow Microsoft out of the water. Of course learning how the CPU decodes a machine-language instruction through a microprogram has little to do with this (too low level). Neither does anything having to do with Java (too high level). Methinks I should have been a Computer Scientist, but there probably isn't a scholarship for those. I won my engineering scholarship in a contest, so now I can't change without it costing my parents an extra $7000 a year. Of course, then I would have had to put up with JavaStations (yes, WE'RE the ones that bought them) instead of NT workstations but at least you can use GoJoe (an EXTREMELY slow X-server) to get to the Solaris server.
Oh yeah, we're a Type I school because all anyone does is drink and the physics and chemistry departments suck. Guess that explains why I'm less than satisfied here. It was cheap and close -- exactly the wrong criteria for choosing a college. I've probably learned more useful things from running Linux & the BSDs & Solaris (not all at the same time) on my home computer and from trying to get Wine running on Solaris than from going to class. Sigh.
Glückwünsche, haben Sie Slashdot ermordet, indem Sie zum korporativen Druck beugten und Subskriptionen einlei
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, college isn't just about getting eduation and information about your chosen career - any trade school can provide that. One of the reason colleges require general education courses is to help build you into a more rounded individual, give you a broad base of information and experience, and help you understand the world around you. Okay, and give you endless partying opportunities. On this basis, I'd say the college experience is beneficial.
;-)
On the other hand, I'm a college dropout myself (to be precise, I washed out of a composition program at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music). I backed into being a sysadmin by getting a cleck-typist job, reading DOS manuals, and being able to answer a few questions my co-workers asked. 16 years ago, that's all the job requirements were.
Now, I'm in a position where I'm the in-house "guru" with a "Systems Engineer" job title. I'm making more money than many of my friends with advanced degrees, and my boss considers me underpaid. I'll soon be setting up a new office for my company, designing the network from the ground up. And I'm responsible for evaluating applicants for new sysadmin slots. You can probably guess what I look for: experience.
I tend to look at college education as a foundation, but not a requirement, and not necessarily a qualifier for the job. If someone comes to me with a 4-year degree and nothing else, I'll generally offer them an entry-level position. I someone comes to me with no degree and 2 years' experience configuring systems, I'd probably offer that person a slightly higher position.
Part of this goes to the dynamic nature of this career field. Things change so quickly, the information received in a class last year is probably out of date by now. My own college experience was completely unrelated to my current job. This has neither helped nor hindered me (as far as I can tell) in my career advancement or in my job performance.
So is college irrelevant? Well, maybe. For SysAdminning, it seems to me that the most important education is that which you receive every day on the job, building on your experience, learning new technologies. If you need college to help you learn how to learn on your own, go for it. If you already know how to pick up new ideas, keep up with a dynamic environment, and approach problems from "outside the box", well, send me your resume!
- Bob
One thing is for certain: college does not teach you anything that you couldn't learn by yourself (when it comes to technology). In the science fields you've got a bunch of PhD's talking down to you, but in the tech fields you're being taught by a bunch of guys who started out as college drop outs themselves. The only thing that college gives you is the PROOF that you know what you know. And as the industry matures and there are more and more 14-year-old haxors telling software companies that they're the next Steve Jobs, the fact that I have a piece of paper to prove it will get me that job over the other guy.
-davek
6th Street Radio @ddombrowsky
The main reason everyone should have to go to
college is because I HAD TO! Actually, some of
the background knowledge is quite useful. You can
network, and build up a group of people you can ask questions of later on (like old professors). It's also a real self confidence booster when you
recieve your diploma.
geremy
As someone currently holding this debate with myself, a few observations.
One, my degree (when I finally get it) will probably not immediately help my career, if anything the time I have had to spend taking classes to finish it has hurt my job related learning this year.
Two, the biggest value I expect to have from finishing the degree will be personal. The sense of accomplishment, and the knowledge that I finished. Also, it will perhaps, open up possibilities for further study which would have been closed without the degree (MBA programs etc).
Three, my degree will be in history, while my career is at present highly technical computer consulting.
Four, had I skipped college entirely, I would not have been ready for my current career, either socially or technically. Not that I learned any of my technical skills in college (did not take a computer courses there at all), but I was exposed to many facets of life and the world (including the Internet) which have stood me in good stead in the work world.
One of the biggest differences between attending College and not, is in the breadth of experiances which can be brought to problems, and in the soft skills you learn in college. Skills such as how to research a subject in depth, how to write, different ways to view the world than just what you learned about in High School.
There is also a vast difference between schools. A degree from the local junior college is not the same as a degree from the University of Chicago, which is a different degree than one from CalTech. Some of these differences are in the rigor of the coursework, some are in the social and alumni aspects to school, and others are in the focus (the University of Chicago is heavily tilted towards the Liberal Arts, not even having an engineering degree)
In the high tech world, a geek who has a modicum of technical skills, and a willingness and ability to learn more as needed, will not want for work whether or not there is a Degree on the resume. However, having the degree and the college experience will be a good thing throughout life. College is a chance to learn, not the specific skills needed at the moment, but the stuff you don't even know you will need later on in life.
The most valuable courses I took in College were the ones which have forced me to learn about things I would not have found on my own. When I finally have the degree, and not just a few years of attendance, on my resume, I know that it will help me in my career.
Not by specific skills which I learned, but by showing to prospective employers that I can learn quickly, that I am intelligent, and that I will likely bring a new perspective on job problems.
Why do I say this, I know employers who have told me that the actively recruit graduates of my school (The University of Chicago) not for the knowledge which they posess on graduation, but because they have proven that they can learn and learn well, and the past record of by earlier hires has proven this.
So, to sum up. If you are a geek just out of High School, I encourage you to take advantage of your college years. Take some classes in subjects outside your specific field of interest (and I'd personally recommend not being a CS major but studying something else, the specifics of technology can be learned elsewhere). If you need to, perhaps a few classes on basic computer programming (I took mine in High school, which is why I did not in college) will stand you in good stead, but focus on the basic stuff, the specifics can be learned as needed.
Above all else, College is a time to explore and learn, it is a luxurious time in your life, on which you will look back to and dream about.
Hope this wan't too long.
-- Join us in Chicago May 1-4th for MeshForum -- writer, historian, tech geek, entrepreneur, internet junky since '91 --
College is useful. Technology courses in college are less than useful. The point of college is not to learn specific facts -it is to learn technique, a mode of thinking, or a style. This is why I am a philosophy major instead of a CS major -because this is how philosophy students and professors approach college. Is doing exhaustive research on a paper discussing the disparity between the fictional Socrates and the historical Socrates useful because of what I said in my paper. Of course not, but the process of writing, researching, and defending one's work is. (the CS classes I take for my minor in computer science don't get this; instead the classes and assignments concentrate on making us do a problem a certain way, instead of allowing us the freedom to discover our own methods {which is why I got into Linux in the first place})
Am I going to become a philosopher? It's not likely -my plan is go to graduate school for IS--, but the process of studying has taught me, most how to adapt.
(on a more abstract level, I think sometimes that the entire system of undergraduate majors and Pre- tracks is a silly, stupid process which prevents many people from getting an education)
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
For the past 3 years I've been attending a university, and during two of those years I've been working as a sys-admin. When I started attending classes I never imagined not getting a fancy sheet of paper, but now, I get better benefits than my degree holding friends, I get paid more, and have more money stashed away. Plus, my salary is still quite low. If I continue on to get my degree, the only thing I would gain is a little more leverage in sallary negotiations, but the intrest on my loans would exceed any finacial gain this may give me.
For me at least, college has done anything except burn a small hole in my pocket.
CS in college does not teach you how to program in C/C++/Java/Pascal/Whatever. You should consider yourself fortunate if the technical skills you picked up in college classes permits you to instantly take up a job. College teaches you the CONCEPTS of programming. You achieve a breadth of knowledge that prepares you to learn whatever skill is necessary.
You are taught programming languages in college to provide a platform for studying the deep concepts of software development; algorithms, lifecycles, teamwork, and design patterns (to name a few)
If you want to be hired out of college, then during college you should be teaching yourself current languages. The only mechanism that a college provides for gaining vocational knowledge is the coop/intern program.
I'll probably get flamed over this remark, but I haven't met a programmer who does not have any formal college CS background who is worth a damn when it comes to large application organization, the discipline is just not there.
Anybody can throw some lines of code together and accomplish a task...it takes a rigorous background in CS to start thinking in terms of design patterns.
e to the i pi equals negative one
I'm not sure what they're teaching in colleges these days, so I may be off base...
You get a CS or CE degree for more than just learning a programming language. First of all, you learn *how* to program in a way that "Sams in 21 Days" just can't teach you. You learn core skills such as designing hashes. And very importantly, you're forced to study topics that you otherwise would not. You also attain (depending on the college) a real education.
If you're skipping college to startup your own business, go for it. This will give you more education than any college ever could. But if you're skipping just so that you can start work as a developer, think again. Take that job, but take it part time while you're attending classes.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Let's distinguish between what it takes to get a job and what it takes to do the job.
The reason I'm back in school now is that during the late '80s / early '90s I was working as a contractor for a large corporation, knocking them dead, and making beans for my trouble. After being there for a while, it was perfectly clear that whether you were a contractor or a regular employee, you just "weren't anybody" unless you had some kind of degree. Which degree didn't matter: their IS group had people with BFA's and the like, and they got the same respect that all the other degree holders did. So I packed it in, finished a BA, and now I'm in grad school in CS.
But times have changed, and the economy is booming compared to what it was back then. Jobs are particularly lucrative in our field. I've got a "you can pretty much name your price" job offer for the summer. If it had been this way back then, I would have never come back to school.
But how long will the boom last? Will the (US) economy turn down after the next election? Will there be a glut of unemployed programmers and analysts after Y2K is wrapped up? I wouldn't drop out for any offer right now, because if something like that does happen we're going to have a big crop of former big-$$$ aces looking for jobs sacking groceries, because the corporations will cut their staffs, and go back to giving preference to the degree holders.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Oh yeah, college also helped me build up a tolerance to stupidiy and beuracracy. That will be critical as I enter the real world.
My cynical view is that that is what potential employers want. Anyone who can put up with the four years of unrelenting b.s. that it takes to get a degree -- all the waiting in line without a reason, subservience to petty regulations, etc. -- will make the ideal peon in the typical corporate environment.
I guess what you said was just a more positive spin on the same thing.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
College is critical for life perspective. This cannot be underestimated in the face of money or fame. If you talk to almost anyone in mid-life now, they'll tell you that they envy college students because of the exciting access to information, intellectual resources, social scenarios, and freedom of choice. These things diminish quickly as one enters the "real world" and gains more responsibilities than just ordering the pizza to sustain an all-night frat house Quake game. In college, students must take all the oppurtunities presented to them and mold themselves into better, more prepared people for the real world. Would any of us say that Bill Gates is exactly a well rounded individual??
Many people who leave college early to pursue high-powered technical positions argue that they can always go back to college, but that these computer oppurtunities are fleeting. Well, not to keep harping on perspective, but give me a break! First of all, most will NEVER go back to school, because they've moved to a new stage in their lives with new responsibilities that make it too difficult to be a student again, and they've lost all those oppurtunities to study outside their field, to meet other students, and have the college experience that we all know and love. Furthermore, the computer industry will ALWAYS be there. Make yourself into a better, more intelligent, more qualified person now, and oppurtunities will come banging at your door. If you want to advance through the ranks, and really make a difference in the industry, it will help not only to have that piece of paper called the diploma, but also to have so many of the skills that paper should represent for you.
Work hard and study the industry, and hold down god jobs while in school, but don't drop out. It's too good an oppurtunity to miss.
I see it as this.
4 years in collage, at least $5k to get a Bachalors (pardon the sp) or 1 year and $700 can get you certified in NT, Linux and Novell. If you wanted to spend alot of money you can goto a week coarse in Cisco and get certified w/ out taking a test, but that is like $1k+..
Most people look for the certs becuase collage usually doesn't get into the cert and alot of the program are not upto date. But there are alot of good reason for collage, looks good on your resume if you have alot of programming coarses on it.. But you can also get cert'd for programming languages.. I would say go for both if you have the money becuase if you do both you would end up w/ the super cash!!!
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I've been having a bad day and spelling was not on my list of things to check..
I ate my tag line.
-=Ellis (D)25=-
I think grad school is worth it. While I just barely started (and just barely finished by BS in CS), I saw some good reasons to continue on. My first "programming" job was working with a bunch of very smart individuals who had masters and doctorates. They were working in the specialties that interested them. When I asked them if they'd do it again, they all said yes. The way I see it, is that I like a certain aspect of programming/computers and want to learn more about it and then go on to work in it.
If I spent time, I probably could find a job doing what I want with just my BS degree, but with a Masters degree, I'm almost assured to.
For myself, college wasn't about that piece of paper I got after 4 years, it wasn't about the hours upon hours I spent in the lab working on my Assembly finals, and it certainly wasn't about staying awake in my 8am Differential Equations class. It was about people.
The activities, the organizations, and just the overal opportunity that exists at a college is amazing. It's about living with people who are all there for similar reasons, yet are all very different. It's about taking an idea and doing something with it, be it starting a new social organization, working with a prof on some hot new research, or just learning something on your own because you're interested in it. But all along the way you meet people, and you learn how to interact with people who live grew up 10 miles away, or 10,000 miles away. This in itself is just as challenging as any class one can take. And in many ways it can be much more rewarding.
I'll be going to college this Fall. I've pretty much decided on going to the local community college and getting an Associates in compsci. I don't think anyone needs _four_ years of classes to start off with but I think 2 is an appropriate amount to learn theory and basic skills. After that I think it's pretty much up to the student to continue learning anyhow. While there I can take their networking courses too which are designed to make it easy for you to get your certs. It's structured so that after each course segment you'll be ready to pick up another cert. The best part is it's well rounded - Unix/Novell/NT.
Don't get me wrong though. I'm not planning on ending my education there. It's just that I'm 21 now and don't want to be 25+ before I start working in the field. Once I get out of school and find a decent job I can go back part time and pick up some more certs and get a Bachelors/Masters.
It's only recently that I realized what my real calling in life was. If I would have went to school when I was 18 it would have been a waste. I would have wound up majoring in languages or something like that, which I would not care for anymore. Then again that wouldn't be any worse than where I am now; stuck in a cube gettin $9/hr putting my English skills to use writing reports for guys who get $100k/yr to play Solitaire.
My coding skills are null and my networking accomplishments consist of setting up a home LAN w/ Linux and ipmasq. The only thing I've got going for me now is A+ certification. $50+/hr to fix people's windoze boxes and setup Linux for newbies isn't bad, I'll probably do that to pay the bills while in school.
It's not all set in stone yet though. Any of you think my goals so far are good/bad ideas? Any tips will be appreciated.
"Unix is a proprietary operating system intended to compete against Microsoft Windows" --Patrick Reilly
The economics of the US right now may make it more profitable in the long run to attend college, but this is not the primary reason to attend such an institution. Also, college is not the place to become a hot shot programer, this type of a skill comes through experience. College is a place though to get an education, an education that is diversified into fields you would not have studied on your own. The classical liberal arts education forces you to be exposed to new ideas and without an influx in these new ideas our field will stagnate with the old ideas. In addition, college is more than just the paper education. No where else will you be exposed to such a diverse group of people of different races, ethnicities, religions, and beliefs. A college is education is the best way for most people to gain a broader unstanding if how the world interconnects with it self, and how to apply this knowledge to our field to build upon the foundation built by our programing forbearers.
Three major reasons:
(1) It's fun! You get to lead a (mostly) independent lifestyle, meet friends and chicks, and have free time to do interesting things.
(2) It'll improve your thinking. I tend to believe that education's value is not in acquiring information, but in training (think gym) for the mind. In college you'll be forced to think in a more-or-less organized way about more-or-less different subjects. Majors do not matter -- some of the smarter people I know took classics as majors.
(3) That piece of paper that the college gives you in the end is quite important. Other people tend to be very disimpressed when you cannot produce it.
The major qualifier: all this applies only if you go to a good, preferably a top college. Going through a top 10 college is very worthwhile experience. If you college didn't make it into top 200 or so, don't bother. Read books instead.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Also, tech schools tend to be, in my experience, more oriented to gettting you a job after you graduate, and scheduling things so that you can have a real job while you go to school.... I guess that comes from having teachers who are employees and do nothing but teach... go figure.
If we're not talking about all hte other stuff you get saddled with in college (history, english, etc, etc), then I think the CS portition of college could be knocked down to 2 years.
If you learn the fundamentals (discrete math, number theory, finite state automata, etc) then most of what I've actually used has been OJT or things I've picked up in my own extra-curricular reading.
One thing you don't want, though, is a bunch of people who come out of college with just pure technical knowledge. You really do need to learn history, english, philosophy and other things -- I think it helps you understand the world and how it works. Without that, you've got a bunch of technically literate slaves.
-nate
Currently in our university in computer science its 75% math and 25% computers. That's basicaly why I'm going to change net year, because I hate maths. I would rather learn how to use MySQL with Perl CGI scripts, and how to setup Solaris boxes, and then going to work as a sysadmin, rather than learning the various math theories and when I start working as a sysadmin, not knowing what is useful.
Anyways, I looked at the previous comments, why are so many geeks going into arts?
I used to think that a degree didn't matter in the slightest. However, after working with a number of programmers with no degree (or a completely irrelevent degree), it does seem to make a difference.
Especially if they're in a leadership position, like a team leader or manager. Programming is rarely about coding nowadays, and although I know enough people who spent their early years in their bedrooms coding, I don't know of anyone who spent them learning about software engineering paradigms.
Sure, most of the time at Uni is completely and utterly wasted.. I'm not sure any of the lectures I went to actually taught me anything. In fact, most of them 'un-taught' me. However, the process of doing coursework and team projects taught me a lot more than I thought.
I used to think that a degree didn't matter in the slightest. However, after working with a number of programmers with no degree (or a completely irrelevent degree), it does seem to make a difference.
Especially if they're in a leadership position, like a team leader or manager. Programming is rarely about coding nowadays, and although I know enough people who spent their early years in their bedrooms coding, I don't know of anyone who spent them learning about software engineering paradigms.
Sure, most of the time at Uni is completely and utterly wasted.. I'm not sure any of the lectures I went to actually taught me anything. In fact, most of them 'un-taught' me. However, the process of doing coursework and team projects taught me a lot more than I thought.
In my experience of the UK system the better the university the more people it attracts that can just remember & regurgitate in exams. If you can work in that manner then you get a 1st. If you cannot you:
;-)
a) Understand hell of a lot more
b) Don't get a 1st
c) Have fun if you were one of the lucky one not to have a cash shortage
d) Have a nice warm fuzzy feeling that you can probably solve more real life problems than your 'high achieving' classmates
But what get's me is after graduating I would hazard a guess that about 50% of employers stipulate that to apply you must have a 1st/2:1 degree!
Me I work for a US company which looks at people on their merits not their grades
Just my 2 penneth worth
Edge
I know this might sound naive, but whatever happened to going to college for its own sake?
My degree in physics didn't really give me much of a background in computing (aside from learning Fortran!), but was extremely interesting and allowed me to study in depth an important and even
(although not often!) exciting subject.
Having said that, my PhD afforded me with much spare time to mess around with linux...
I know this might sound naive, but whatever happened to going to college for its own sake?
My degree in physics didn't really give me much of a background in computing (aside from learning Fortran!), but was extremely interesting and allowed me to study in depth an important and even
(although not often!) exciting subject.
Having said that, my PhD afforded me with much time to mess around with Linux...
I know this might sound naive, but whatever happened to going to college for its own sake?
My degree in physics didn't really give me much of a background in computing (aside from learning Fortran!), but was extremely interesting and allowed me to study in depth an important and even
(although not often!) exciting subject.
Having said that, my PhD afforded me with much time to mess around with Linux...
Most of my geek-related knowhow is derived from stuff I learned at college. I ddin't learn it from the staff though. They were mostly on another planet; caught up in their research and out of touch with the students.
I became the geek I am today through hanging around in a computer lab with other geeks. We learned off each other. A lot of them had their own Linux boxes and thus knew tons about sysadmining. They were able to pass that knowledge along to those of us who didn't admin our own boxes. I spent a lot of time at college just messing about with Unix, compiling and installing software; just getting a "feel" for the system. If I ever got stuck, there were a whole bunch of other geeks in the room to help me. In my final year, I knew enough to help the proto-geeks in the years below me.
(the degree I managed to scrape through came in handy when I started applying for jobs too :-)
it can be important to know which college the CS department is associated with. If it is with engineering and all you want to do is program, you're probably going to end up with a bunch of classes you don't want to take.
Another thing that I find interesting is that no one has mentioned changing/transferring schools if they don't feel like they're getting the type of courses, instructors, or environment that they want.
I started out at one university and found the CS department a little to closely tied to the engineering department for my taste (no thanks, no 'engineering economy' or 'engineering statics' for me!) along with other problems (they had CS under grads teaching the freshman labs the semester after they had finished the intro class!) So after spending 2 years getting a bunch of reqs out of the way I transferred to a different school where I've been the past 4 years (don't do the math =). The difference is night and day.
So unless its just an excuse to give up, you really might want to look into CS departments at other universities. They can be REALLY different.
Like any class in college, take from it what you can!
I too had to take a 68k assembly course. Even then (several years ago) that was of marginal value. but still I got a lot out of it.
First, there was the interesting architechture of the system. We had small 68k boxes (we called them "toasters" due to the boxieness of construction as well what happend to your code in them). There was a whole mechanism where we wrote the code on UNIX boxes, used cross-assemblers to compile the program for the toaster, then a mechanism to transfer the code to the toaster.
Because of the way things always are, we had something like 12 toasters for 4x that many students. Also, poor programming of any sort had a tendancy to lock the things up tight for a good many minutes, sometimes forever (the toasters were sadly locked away from us so we could not reboot and/or maim them)! So, we develeoped a pretty powerful script that would automatically seek the first availiable non-toasted toaster and run our code on it. That got us quite a jump on many of the other students, and we were able to do more interesting things at 3am than wait for a toaster to be accessable by normal means.
Because of that class I learned a number of useful scripting things, about cross-compilation, more about Emacs and elisp (the only way to write assembly!!), some interesting things about computer architechture, and all sorts of other things (like the vending machines odd habit of every now and then giving out free food while displaying "winner!" on a small LCD).
Remember, you'll have cool stories about 68k programming while your friends in the real world will have years of similar memories that just blend together. I figure in the end, the person with the biggest set of unique memories wins!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It depends on the individual person, I would say. I don't know much about how other people out there are on IQ tests, but I test out darn near the top of the chart. Example: When I was 12, I took one, and on one of the questions, I didn't have a clue what one of the key words in the sentence meant. This was a short answer test, and after thinking for a minute, I wrote down the correct answer. Then, when I was asked the same question recently, I /still/ had no clue. I'd forgotten the incident, until my mother reminded me.
Anyway, my point is, I learn and associate knowledge very quickly. I did well up till my Junior year of High School, when I started having real problems. The problem wasn't that I couldn't do the material. The problem was, it was all too easy for me. The teachers would all go on about how homework was 'just to help you learn'. So, being a person who believes in not doing unnecessary work, I didn't do much homework. This caused problems. Some of my teachers worked out a deal with me, where I could test out of homework. So, I graduated from High School.
When I got to college, things went downhill rapidly. In my science, math, and Computer Science classes, where I was being challenged, I did very well. However, I had to take several liberal arts classes, all of which were covering stuff I'd been doing for two years at highschool. I managed to find one teacher who would work with my problem, but all the others treated me like scum. So, I promptly flunked out of several classes, and lost my scholarship. I had no other way of going to school, so I dropped out, and started working a minimum wage job.
After a year of that, I pulled a job with a technical temp agency, and knew I'd hit it big. I now work at Novell, and I'm doing well. So, what's my point? That there are certain types of intelligence that learn much better in the real world than they ever will in a controlled learning environment. For those people, college is definately not the place to be.
For those of you who think I'm lazy, that may be. And if you think that's the point of my article, you need to read it again.
--
Matthew Walker
My DNA is Y2K compliant
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
Case in point: me. MIT makes us take 8 humanities classes in order to graduate (among other general requirements which are common across all majors). I got talked into taking a music history class. That class changed my life and opened a whole world of possibilities for me. I'm still a CS major, but I plan to minor (or at least concentrate) in music, all due to this one class that I took more or less because I "had to."
I'm currently taking a writing class (again, one of the core requirements), and it's really opened my eyes to a lot of literature (I highly recommend Moravec for those geeky types).
Sure, I do a lot of learning in my field as well, but if that's all I got, I'd feel a bit cheated. After 2 years here, I can say with confidence that I feel I have grown as a person, and I'm only halfway done.
Now I work as the sysadmin of a campus of Mexico's main University :)
I never needed the paper, but (as you said) I may need it later, so I'm starting to study at a distance-learning university... Maybe that will be 6 months, and I'll have my B.A.
I think college is probably not a bad idea; it's a good way to get an introduction to a broad range of subjects you may not otherwise look at.
:) The CS/Math degree I took was fairly interesting, though, and gave me a look at lots of things I wouldn't have otherwise seen.
:) without the university...
If you're self-disciplined enough, you could just buy and read the textbooks, but I think few people have the discipline to make it all the way through the Dragon Book, for instance, without a final exam looming in the future.
Of course, it also depends on the degree. An "IT" or "MIS" program that's heavy on accounting and business courses is not likely to be "geek-friendly"
The flip side of that is that I've learned a lot more at work or on my own projects than I ever did in school, but I might not have had the base to start from (or the first job
"Web workers" who write and feature in these articles. Maybe it's because even complex HTML/DHTML/CSS (etc) "coding" isn't rocket science.
I'd love to see one of these geeks who go around proclaiming that you don't need uni education actually do something that might take a bit of thought (OS programming as an example)
Like the majority of college students, I went right to college from high school. In retrospect, it would have done me no harm whatsoever to have asked my college admissions office to defer my admission for one year (or two) so that I could have done something -- worked, volunteered, served in the military, what-have-you -- which would have given me a taste of the real world before I went to college. My understanding is that most colleges are relatively generous about granting such deferments; high school students who are confronting this dilemma might look into it.
Perhaps this is due to an increasing disassociation between computer science and mathematics at the post-secondary level. I find that among my American friends, SOME of their US colleges (I don't mean all. Others are quite good) don't put enough (sometimes any) emphasis on mathematics. (Some of them even get away without three full years of mathematics. Ack!)
Fortunately at university here up in the GWN, Computer Science is nothing but a major attatched to a Bachhelor of Mathematics degree.
I still find it amusing when people read my documentation and papers on various alogirthms and can't wrap their brains around my basic use of sigma-summation or pi-product notation, even after an explanation. If you don't understand the mathematicla root of the process, how can you code it [decently]? Or even improve it? Or make a better/new solution?
-- M. Slager
Quite true.
Although many CS degree-holders go on to get degrees in web design, basic coding, and systems administration (which for the most part do not require any or much extensive education in formal Computer Science, they just require basic technical skills), for the real cream (if this is your thing), such as R&D, advanced design, or just new technologies, you simply NEED a university degree.
Where else do you learn the math to recognise properties of multi-dimensional curves (useful in graphics design and cryptography), matrices and vector spaces (Graphics, numerical analysis, languages), recursive properties and enummeration (compilers, parsers, AI, lang recog), statistics (predictive processing), limits and functions (algorithm analysis and design), or even the CS-learned skills of LR-parsing, concurrency (as in implementing it from scratch, not just using it), compilation and code generation, issues concerning true real-time applications, coding theory (error correction, et al), tree theory (algorithms), etc etc.
If all you want to do is write programs that display fancy GUIs (without understanding the nature of GUIs or human psychology and sociology, another university thing), print text in different fonts, draw windows on the screen, or implement somebody else's protocol, go for it.
But if you want to do something exciting, such as design the OS that uses the GUI, or the graphics algorithms that'll render it in 3D, flawlessly; invent the protocol that others will implement, or the compilers that will allow them to implement it, then you'll likely need that piece of paper.
If anything else, you can also pick up electives at university in the arts, or other areas, that may help you innvoate in the future, or even assist you in entrepreneurial ventures.
-- M. Slager
Even if they don't remember how to use printf to print an octal, but they know how to print a string, they should be able to write a routine to do it in.
void printoct(int num){
char octdig[]="01234567";
char buffer[256]="";
int i=0,j=0;
for(i=0;num>>(i*3);i++){
for(j=0;j(i+1);j++){
buffer[j-i+1]=buffer[j-i];
}
buffer[0]=octdig[(num>>(i*3))&7];
}
printf(buffer);
}
Of course, this is about as ugly and hackish as it gets, but that's the kind of thing I'd write if given 2 minutes and no references (and I couldn't remember any codes for printf).
I concur that not memorizing the printf codes is a stupid reason not to hire someone. On the rare occasions that I use printf, I keep a reference handy. I don't remember ever printing an octal with it, plenty of hexidecimals, but no octal.
I lost all faith in university when one of the major hurdles to passing the C++ course exam was memorizing the intricacies of iostream.h!
I'm currently attending the University of Illinois in CHampaign-Urbana, a top rated school in engineering and computer science. I know a person doing interviews for a highly technical company in the area. In the past three months they interviewed over 300 people - mostly BS or Masters in CS from the University of Illinois. They hired only 15, and all of them had ether internships or some sort of experience in the field.
True, without a degree they probably would not get an interview but even with a degree from a highly rated technical school most of these people were useless to this company.
The piece of paper is important, but not as important as experience.
-=================================-
"Computers are mighter than the pen, sword and usually the programmer."
What about the non-academic elements of college? Several people have mentioned that college is also about the art of learning. More importantly, college helps people reach a better understanding of themselves and life. Its not just a cliche, it happens. Before college I was only fooling myself when I thought I was open minded. Life isn't about money, and college is an important step in figuring out how the intangibles fit into your life.
The Department of Labor & Industry probably knows whether a CS or other college degree statistically affects programmers' earnings over a lifetime. If that's what you want to know, go check the real data, not a collection of gee-whizkid stories.
If you want to be a really good programmer, I would guess that it matters more where you get a CS degree than whether. Fierce, constructive criticism will teach you the principles faster than reading the textbooks, and paying for it will get it quickly, before you have deeply ingrained bad habits.
If you want to be more than a coder, if you want to change the world - if you hope or fear that the technological infrastructure we build will shape the world for lifetimes - you're a loon if you don't study more than programming. It's all RFCs, after all - every pamphlet and principle, every historical mistake that cost decades and lives to fix even when change was slow. It's all RFCs for human organization.
Ugh!!! Don't mean to be preachy, but I think you're taking the wrong attitude about learning assembly programming for the 68k, and missing the point entirely. When I was in college, I too had to learn 68k assembly, and I consider it one of the most valuable classes I had to take. (Full Disclosure: I got a C in this class, because I didn't "get it" until we were about half-way done witht he class.)
The point of the class is not to teach you how to program in 68k assembly, or even assembly for any processor, as there is a good chance you will never program in raw assembly.
The point of the class is to teach you how computer systems work. You should learn critical lessons like how declaring a 10,000 byte array statically differs from allocating it dynamically, and why using a recursive algorithm might be a bad choice for a performance sensitive app.
The reason 68k assembly is chosen for this type of class is because it is less complex than x86 and PPC assembly (these are the only other one's I've seen), but similar enough that you won't be lost if you have to look at either of these. Since it's simpler, you also should spend less time learning the language itself and spending more time learning how higher level languages (like C) translate into assembly.
Trust me, this stuff is more valuable than you realize.
Kinda sounds like a "choose your fate" type discussion.
Who would you rather be?
Bill Gates - Hated by many who consider themselves intelligent. CEO of a company that spouts "innovation" but is mosly known for it's lack there-of. Many people use his products. Many people hate them. Dropped out of college to found said company. Worth so much financially that [your God here] regularly calls him for loans.
Linus Torvolds - Loved by all who consider themselves intelligent. Pioneered a UNIX-like operating system from the ground up, possibly preventing the eventual death of all things UNIX-like (and possibly starting the eventual death of all thing Microsoft-like). Not worth billions, but (probably) still very comfortable financially.
You decide.
Every time this topic comes up, my initial reaction is "I didn't graduate, and look where I've gotten." I have a very good job with a very good company, and more importantly, I have the respect of my peers (including those with advanced degrees)
However, when I look more closely at my past, I realize that the brief time I was in college was very important. I learned my first structured language (Pascal), without which it would have been much harder to learn other languages. I was able to buy my first PC (thank god for financial aid checks, and ramen noodels), on which I taught myself C. I got it beat into my head that any procedure should have one entry point and one exit point (I even still follow that rule, sometimes). I learned theory of data structures (and now find myself explaining hashtables to graduates). This knowledge gave me a better background for the self-teaching that I've been doing every since.
I have to say that my time in school made a good programmer better, but I must also point out that I've seen many bad programmers who didn't benefit from the work they did toward their degree: the degree (or lack thereof) isn't the point, it's what you learned on the way. But then that's my approach toward life: what you've got don't matter nearly so much as what you've done.
An example of what a good CS education will do for you comes from a ACM sponsored programming contest I went to recently. The difference between real CS programs and technical programs is how problems are approached. In the ACM contest I went around and visited the other teams in our room. I noted which schools brought Java language books (Java is the latest technical hype), which schools brought C++ books, and which teams brought real books. Our team had books like _Introduction_to_Algorithms, Discrete math, and the like. We did have a language book, but it was for Pascal. Before the contest somebody asked me why we would want to use an old language like Pascal. After the contest when our two teams placed 1st and 2nd I asked him why he would want to use a language like C++.
What was the point of that story? The point was that most technical colleges are like the business world, they are focused on learning a finite skill set. Going to a good college indeed makes you a better programmer, a better problems solver, and a better person.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human.
In short, if your goal is only to work a tech job in the computer industry, then you are probably wasting your time and money going to college. As many have mentioned before, anyone with a modicum of intellegence and initiative can read the O'Reily books and support themselves nicely as a sysadmin.
College is worthwile only if you refuse to go about it passively. You must try to go to the best school you can. Then you've got to view the school as a vast array of resources that you are allowed to take advantage of. It really is a time to explore things that aren't necessarily related to you career goals.
University gave me three years studying a subject I enjoy, in a place I love, working hours that I chose and it taught me a lot more then just the subject I studied (like how to drink beer, cook chilli, and appreciate good music).
Ok at the end of it I still couldn't get a job (not much call for astrophysicists round here), but that was just a good excuse to go back and do another year.
There is more to college/ university then getting a job at the end of it, people who only see the money are missing all the best bits.
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
IMHO post secondary education very important to producing better thinkers. While I agree that not everyone needs to go to school to learn how to think, most - including myself - do.
I believe that school provides you with several things that are harder to obtain in the real world. Including:
The ability to handle an awful lot of information at any given time. Do you remember end of semester when all that stuff was due? You either learned to work efficiently or you sunk. You didn't schedule your time, you rationed it. Now that's a skill.:)
The ability to think critically. People who didn't learn programming in school tend to be the sort of people who put several "return(-1);" statements midway through a function instead of having one exit point at the end of the function. Thinking rationally about what you are doing is important. You need to be able to balance the projects requirements to come up with the best solution; ie maintenance considerations vs development time.
Communication Skills. Presentations Suck! I hated doing them. But practice makes perfect and I can communicate more effectively and efficiently now (you may disagree:) because of that experience.
These are just some of the things that are important about going to school. Is it possible to acquire these skills outside of school? Of course, that's where you hone them. But generally (not always) the best place to learn the basics is school.
Just some thoughts...
j:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
I've just read a smattering on the postings on this topic, and there seems to be one overwhelming assumption: that the only degree course worth pursuing is one in computer science (or maybe mathematics...)
Expand your horizons!
-- O improbe amor, quid non mortalia pectora cogis!
I know a lot of people can get really good and stable job without going to college especially in this field. But it's not because of just getting a piece of paper that's all college's about. I tend to think of it as a way to meet other people and learn from some of the most intelligent people I've met.
I'll admit, different colleges give you experiences and I'm lucky enough to be in one where it's small enough but really challenging.
Before college, I would never consider myself a geek. I never had the opportunity to let out my inner "geek" child. It was in college where I was given the opportunity to see what I wanted to do and found computers really cool than just checking email.
Now, I take CS courses that are literally creaming me with knowledge that I would probably never end up using in the real world because a lot of them tend to be math/theory oriented. Not only that, but these coures are devasting my gpa that was once decent. But regardless, there are no regrets. I am finally learning to think with greater logic and greater capacity to analyze and which I feel is probably a more worthwhile gain from these four years and not just a piece of paper.
Just my two pence.
-KitKat-
This is a big pet peeve of mine. Years ago, I entered college as a Computer Science major. I went through the entire first semester never using or even seeing a computer. The Engineering department felt it was more important that I get a solid foundation in traditional engineering skills -- so I took courses like "Engineering Drafting".
Well, at least I could DRAW a computer.
I ended up changing majors and eventually graduated with a Political Science degree.
Five years ago, I happened to find a course catalog for that college. I checked the CompSci program and found that C programming was a GRADUATE course. You had to pay them for four years to get a degree, then pay even more to learn how to do anything USEFUL in the real world.
IMHO, the real problem is that colleges are trying to gouge their students. They are using the prestige of being a college to overcharge people, waste their time with pointless courses, excuse horrible instructors, and generally treat students -- the people PAYING their salaries -- like dirt. Maybe it's time for them to wake up, look at the real world, and ask if what they are doing is relevant.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
This really depends on the skills one is considering. College imparts a manner of thinking (problem-solving, thinking critically) and teaches one to communicate effectively (make a good argument worth defending, and come up with reasoning to defend that argument). It's not just about technical skills (programming in a given language, or even programming itself), though it does give students tried and tested knowledge and experience of others, distilled and concentrated to make effective people out of them. What makes these skills so unimportant that a person is unwilling to spend three to four years in a good university to obtain them? As one person wrote in the old thread, one is enriching one's life through college.
This suggests to me that the persons who write this were in the wrong field. It would help to put a lot of thought into one's interests and goals in life before choosing a career and the corresponding field of study. I have noticed (as many others have, I am sure) that high schoolers often have no developed aim. It would definitely help if parents took more interest in their offspring's life and activities, and helped them decide what they wanted to do. Part of the problem is that very often, adults themselves do not have a spiritual aim - they just have an interest in amassing wealth and spending it.
Many have said that degrees can help getting a good job, and with a larger pay, and many others have cited examples where they saw larger pays to people without a formal higher education. Let's differentiate between the rule and the exception. In general, higher pays and better jobs go to people with degrees. This is because it is more likely that they have learnt to solve problems and have learnt techniques that people without degrees probably haven't. Sure, there are exceptions, but I speak of the majority. Even many opponents of college have admitted that going to college would have helped them in certain situations. But remember, we're talking about individual cases, not a general proportion of geeks, many of whom would benefit from an academic atmosphere.
There may be two sorts of universities - one where technical skills (e.g. programming in certain languages) are emphasized, with faculty of lower competence prevail, and better institutes where the faculty know what they're doing, and don't restrict classes to technical skills (unlike many IS departments). In fact, I think we can also divide academic programs in the same manner - many IS/IT degrees deal with the technical details that are implicitly left to students to learn on their own time by other programs, such as CS programs offered by more reputable universities, which focus on the theoretical aspects, and as the university I attend does, try to make it a broad experience by fiving a student the choice to fill in the gaps, leaving as many classes as possible as restricted electives, so that one can take e.g. psych classes to get a different perspective of things as well.
A lot of people drop out of college because they might not have fit in this scheme of things - i.e., their curiosity is limited to the technical aspect, in a narrow, one-dimensional world view. They haven't committed themselves to an education, which is what a proper university program intends to impart. Because of this, they find classes boring and think they're wasting their time getting an education. Education never was meant for everyone in the first place - it is only those who seek it that will find it. A side effect of the education, however, is that it may impart a certain degree of wisdom to a person, and perhaps make them more intelligent people. This will definitely make them better at what they do. But in the end, they're improving the quality of their lives, which IMO is more important than, for instance, getting four years more worth of experience in the field of one's career, which won't give them the broad spectrum of experience that study and interaction with one's peers and faculty members would.
What really matters is what one intends to do with one's life. If a person wants to spend their life doing one kind of activity all their life, with less emphasis on personal development, then college is not meant for that person. However, if a person wants to become a better member of society, with more effective interaction, and as a side effect, to rise in their career (and possibly others), college is the way to go. It isn't just a sense of elitism which leads to the observation that the average intelligence of a university graduate is higher than that of the general population, a fact that holds even for geeks.
One thing that is all too common are people complaining that they don't learn any current, useful stuff in college classes.
This isn't the point! The point is how to learn how to learn, and how to learn how to communicate.
If you're lucky, you'll be able to do projects for classes that allow you to investigate current technology.
Its horrible that so many smart computer types see communcation as a secondary or tertiary skill.
hmm I'm not getting any sort of free internet access, but the rest seems very fimiliar...
I guess I'm just at the wrong type of college (a tech college), their aren't any keg parties/binge drinking/protesting (except for protesting intel & microsoft products)/pizza for breakfast. I guess I'm missing a core part of the whole college experience myself...
my parents wouldn't take no for an answer as far as college was concerned & I needed someway to get out of tech no-mansland where I lived.
OK I'm not going to compare UK and US education systems.
I went to uni in 1998, and spent the first year learning Cobol, Pascal (well not learning, more like ignoring the lessons as I knew it anyway) and 6502 machine code (which I knew aleady again)
Very helpful wasn't it?
As it came to exam time personal stuff caused me to miss exams (don't ask, it's still painful). The uni offered me the chance to resit the whole year as my failure wasn't academic (although my bad spelling is *grin*), but I looked at what the courses offered and decided why bother, there was nothing helpful on the course.
Mistake, kinda. Starting out it's hard without a degree. I managed to get on a work placement scheme where I started off as a IBM System 38 tape monkey, went through Novell 2.11, and onto PC apps using Microsoft Basic (it was the only thing available) and then got hold of Turbo C (who needs objects? *grin*) I learnt C from K&R, then shifted jobs to do more DOS stuff, using db_vista and C, then to Visual C++ and MFC (huh, whats a thread?!) and from there to the dizzy heights of web development, including stints with banks and Microsoft.
A degree helps when you start
After a couple of jobs, forget it.
Barry
...all woman, extremely attractive and a determined, strong engineer...
_____________________________________
Not to mention modest...
Cian - who's intimidated regularily, but then that's what comes from living in Hackney...
Hell, we call it University, but its more or less the same.
I'm there at the moment and I think that without another 2 years of sleeping through lectures and lazing around bars all day I'de be lost.
Here in the UK we find degrees very important and to study CS has always been on my checklist for life.
I could program when I was 6 , yeah it was BASIC, but it WAS a language (thease days HTML seems to suffice). I don't need Uni for the facts they teach me (although a few cracks are plastered over there). It's the experience that counts.
Here at least the degree itself doesn't count, its the fact that you have studied to that level that wins the jobs.
So I say that a degree (like a diploma but with culture) gives you a better chance and also some of the experiences that make a life worth-while. But that brings up another question, what does a geek need??
Oh yeah, GO NOTTINGHAM!!!!
I dropped out of highschool when I was a senior and retired to my room, played with linux while getting some nifty certifications. My parent's thought it was stupid, but they let me do it (I only had a credit to graduate. They were kinds pissed and wanted there 1st son to go to college. Ehh, I saw more potential in showing my hands on computer knowledge, than my knowledge of Crime and Punishment, or even to show that I could do advanced geometry proofs, though they are fun stuff.) Now I'm 20 and I'm a unix sys admin who is helping my girlfriend pay for college :-). Kind of ironic, don't you think? (she won't listen to me and get a graphics arts certificate and put a portfolio together, o well. I guess there should be SOME artists out there that still use paint, I guess ;-) I realize that I missed out on all the "social mutilation" like keg parties/binge drinking, protesting the local clam bake, and eating pizza for breakfast but I think I can live with myself. Besides, my girlfriend says college is burning her out and making her feel stupid (she seems pretty tired, I don't understand her idealism... ). I'll just sit back and read Les Miserables again, write some poetry or work on my perl scripts in liesure like it's supposed to be done! I don't understand college, it takes away all your time and energy to create, and you pay ALOT of money for it! I plan on being a millionaire by the time I'm 30, not 100,000 dollars in student loan debt. A good thing I can see about college is, it's good for numbing the senses and preparing a childs mind for the corporate world, but a few weeks of data-entry tmp jobs do the same thing, and you get payed for it!
Just my 6th sense
Often, when sitting in a classroom with some dull professor who is more or less reading from a script or book, it's easy to see college as a complete waste of time.
It's not until you find that professor who truly inspires you that you understand why college is a Good Thing. The true power of the human animal is deeply rooted in discussion and communication; learning from someone who has both the experience you lack and the gift to open your eyes is truly a wonderful experience. These are the people who teach you why you aren't nearly as cool as you thought you were. And you'll end up a far better person for it, intellectually as well as socially.
Good teachers are exceedingly rare, and are probably some of our most valuable resource on the planet.
-Justin
For a good system administrator:
4 years of your life @ 150,000US$ a year:
4 Years = 600,000$.
The point of college is to give you a decient starting point on the ladder. Everyone can get to the top - how long it takes you depends on your skill and starting point.
I found that three years in the real world got me a lot further than a degree in the real world ever would have.
For other people, that may not be the case. But it is important that people realise that not having a degre is no impediment if you are good at what you do and are prepared to move around.
Red
Greetings,
You made four incorrect assumptions.
1) The work would be permie
2) The work was in the US
3) The work would be with SGI boxen
4) The person would be 18.
Re the above points...
1) Contract work is more profitable - typically double to triple the permie rate.
2) Talk about work in countries where there is more demand - for example, UK, France, Switzerland etc...
3) Talk about the Bank boxes - Solaris and AIX, people get paid more for that.
4) 18.
At the age at which you start a degree here (18) - you start on the bottom rung. Say, 8quid an hour. Move up in steps, changing contracts every six months and I would expect someone to be on that sort of income by the time they were meant to graduate. I've seen it happen multiple times.
fwiw; your average sysadmin rate in the UK for contract work is 35UKP per hour, approx 120,000$.
In Switzerland, expect an extra 10-20% - but the expenses of living there hit much harder.
If you want evidence, take a look at a contract links such as http://www.jobserve.com
A good SAP contractor will make over US$400,000 (~120 per hour)
Regards,
noidd
Not at all.
Its all about economics. If you, as I did go to an emplyer and say something along the lines of "I have the skills, I just can't prove it. I will work at half the rate for the first six months to prove it. If you don't like me, sack me after one month - you've lost 2 weeks pay. If you like me, you've saved your company 3 months wages."
It worked for me.
I wouldn't say it was the status quo. I am saying its happened and I've seen it happen lots of times.
Red
I think ppl who goto college to prepare them for their chosen career go for th e wrong reasons now, especially in the computer industry. I've talked to so many ppl with a piece of paper who would apply for a job but couldn't handle simple questions posed to them. It's the ivory tower syndrome. Fact is most Colleges lag in technology and teaching.
Example: A friend of mine who is a CS major was told he couldn't telnet into the unix servers at school if he was using windows95 by his teacher. The fact that Win95 comes with a telnet client(albeit a sucky one) or u can install one never occured to the teacher.
I dropped out, mostly for financial reasons. It has taken me less time to get where I am overall, instead of 4+years of school, I had 2 years of workplace experience before I got the good job.
Now i think every situation is different, some ppl learn better by teaching, some by experience(I'm the latter). But college, IMHO teaches you more about social interactions, and the world around you than about what u want to do for a career.
this space for rent
>Most of my friends do SysAdmin and Tech Support - and they usually know a lot more than the developers and consultants I have to work with.
I hear this claim a lot, and it's almost never true. What you probably mean is that they know less about _what you think it's important to know_ (e.g. system administration or tech support) _for your job_. My mother still asks me about Word macros and ICQ, because she knows I'm in computers and lacks the knowledge to distinguish a GUI/VB slob from a UNIX kernel hacker. Likewise, I'd say that very few sysadmins would be able to distinguish a great developer from a mediocre one even if they both slapped him (or her) in the face. You have your specialty, we have ours, and it's generally fair to judge each other by the same standards we'd use for those in our own field.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
College works for some people. Self-teaching works for some people. The one thing that's pretty much guaranteed is that someone who has both a college education _and_ real-world experience is more likely to be competent than someone who only has one or the other. Employers would rather go for the almost-sure bet than for either alternative where _maybe_ it will work out but the odds are worse, and employers certainly don't have any inclination to check out the specific circumstances of each and every individual candidate. Looking for both is an heuristic ("rule of thumb" for those who didn't go to college) that works pretty well overall.
I'd also like to make a point about those people who say "lack of a degree never held me back". First off, you would have learned in a statistics class that anecdotal evidence isn't generalizable. Secondly, one of the lessons you might have learned by studying either evolutionary biology or graph theory has to do with local optima and dead ends. Maybe your lack of a degree hasn't held you back..._yet_. Maybe you think you're climbing that mountain just fine, until you realize that your chosen approach brings you to an insurmountable cliff wall and your only choice will be to backtrack. I've seen people who've had to backtrack career-wise because they had thought they could skip learning some technique or technology. It's not pretty, and they didn't enjoy it much.
College may lead you in some pretty useless directions sometimes, but that 30000-foot view may come in handy when you can't see the terrain from the ground.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
You don't need to go to an expensive college to get a good degree. I've met many sharp people who graduated from San Jose State. I myself graduated from U.C. Santa Cruz in Computer Engineering. The UC system isn't all that unreasonable either when compared to many of these private Ivy League colleges. The thing is, you need to find a college that has a good cirriculum and offers a wide range of choices. Also, at least at UCSC, I was required to take numerous courses outside my CE major (i.e. music, writing, Latin American Studies, and so forth).
You don't have to graduate from Harvard or MIT to get a good education. Of course that doesn't mean that you'll get a good education down at the local Junior College. The JC's typically arn't in the same calibar as the 4-year colleges.
One other thing college does is to require you to work on things you probably wouldn't choose to do on your own. Yeah, you might think that that class on microprocessor design is boring, but at least you were exposed to it so you would know what it was about. I found some of my most enjoyable classes were subjects I would never have studied on my own.
And finally, by getting that piece of paper, you have demonstrated that you have some skill and that you can provide the effort needed to succeed in a new job.
In my experience, most companies want one of two things before hiring, either prior work experience or a degree. It's almost impossible to get your foot in the door beyond a sys-admin (if even that) without that piece of paper.
I was lucky in that fresh out of high school I was writing assembly code, but that was only through a fluke set of circumstances. Most of my friends had no such breaks.
As for those of you who say "I can earn $150,000/year without college", yeah, you can, but not straight out of high school. It's going to be a much more difficult climb to reach the levels of those with a degree. With that degree you start much further up the ladder, and your job prospects are much better at least for the first few years. After your first few years, experience becomes the dominant factor.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
College did several things for me. I was a geek through and through prior to entering college, but college opened up whole new avenues for me that there is no way I could have explored otherwise. Things like building a microprocessor would have been out of the question, or playing around with GL on an SGI (prior to Open GL).
Many of the things I learned in college were invaluable, besides just that piece of paper. Other things were not very valuable. There were a number of classes that were basically a waste of time, but that was just preparing me for the real world.
Perhapse it depends on the college. I just interviewed a new college grad for an entry-level embedded programming job, yet the grad couldn't perform simple things. I asked about the difference between a linked list and a binary tree and how they relate to Big-O notation when searching. No answer. I asked the grad to write a C function to convert an integer to an ASCII string. Again, the grad was at a total loss.
For those who say they got nothing out of college, either you didn't want anything out of college or you were some super genious before entering. Either that or you went to some brain-damaged college.
Prior to college I had done a fair amount of programming and exploration. I knew 80x86 assembly cold and all the main data types used. In college I was able to greatly build on my experiences. Also, that piece of paper has been useful since it allows me to get a lower insurance rate.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
College is IMHO an inefficient means of ... I learned
obtaining knowledge. Intelligence is pretty
much static at this point of one's life and
real work teaches much more knowledge than
class room environment. Geez
more in first 6 months of work than in 4 yrs
of school.
At least that's what I tell people, but frankly, that's where I learned to write programs. I got a D+ in the only formal programming course I took (Fortran), but I also learned (a) Basic, (b) PL/I (fat lot of good that does me now , (c) How to Write Programs (the Tao of programming, if you will), and (d) that I was good at (c). (I got the D+ for other reasons more related to laziness and a certain girl than because I couldn't wrap my head around Fortran.) So I guess it wasn't a complete waste.
On the other hand, this was 4-5 years before the first widescale microcomputers caught on, so I also tell people my particular career field hadn't even been invented yet when I went to college the first time.
College can be a worthwhile experience, but it isn't for everyone. There are times when it isn't even for the people who would benefit by it. I got a lot more out of college the second time around than when I was spending my parents' money.
-- An Ominous Cowbird
I have been in college for 3 years, I think I am still a freshman, or whatever that comes after it. ...., things that college provide. and yes, even women!
I have a 1.0 GPA. like D or something. I am not in college to get a degree or whatever. College gives free internet access, if you live there, you get ethernet. I get access to huge labs, with lots of computers, *drool*, now I can build my own cluster with those 200 200mhz computers at 1am while no1 is using the lab. Books! You want books?! College Libraries! Lots of books, and journals. Bad food, taco, subsandwitches
Uh oh, so you see, College is good! Expensive equipments are also another good use, here is an example, SONY releases PSX2, we need to hack it, we want to be the first geeks to make modchip2, so we need a data analyzer, where duh hell will you get one? You go to electronics shop, and borrow their $5,000 logic analyzer and oscopes, You have always wanted to design your CPU and stuff, but can't right? You take that lame CPU design class, just to get your own CPU built.
College costs me, but it is worth it, the books, the equipment, the net access, the shelter(library and labs), the somewhat "Social lifes", running into other geeks, makes it worthwhile for me. Money is not everything, I am living to have fun.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
True, I will be a liar if I say I haven't benefited from a few electronics classes, but mostly the classes that have benefited me are the non technological classes, like European Medival History, I enjoyed the class, but if not for college, I dobut I do pick up a book and read on that.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
College isn't about taking a class to learn something. It's about expanding yourself and teaching you things you would have never learned if you didn't go.
I disagree with the statement that colleges don't teach you up to date programming languages. In college you don't learn a specific language you learn the basics of programming. Everything I did in school was c/c++ but was ablt to switch to Java or perl in a few days.....sure I'm still learning little things about them but I learned the logic and the thinking that goes into programming.
Going into college I wanted to be a chip designer, I found hardware to be fastinating, but a few VHDL classes put an end to that.
Also everyone talks about these CEOs who didn't go to college or dropped out. These are the exceptions and not the rule. I wouldn't have gotten the job I have now if I was a college dropout.
Sure you can get a job you like without a degree, but employers will use it against you and give you only half of what you are worth. In my opinion its nessessary to go to school and try new things, try taking classes do don't know anything about. Take the independent study in something that really interests you. If nothing else, just to play around with millions of dollars worth of equipment.
PIE. In that order. People who cannot think
abstractly will not get it from any old college
education. They are destined to become grunt
coders or support personel and burn out in a
decade or less. A great liberal arts program,
may perhaps, teach abstraction and allow one to
connect one discipline to another but this is
sadly not as common as one would hope.
People who are not incredibly interested in tech
or highly self-motivated will not take the trouble
to teach themselves. Motivation is important
for success in any endeavor. However, in
computers, suitability to the discipline is
equally important. If you are not an NT on
the myers-briggs your chance of lasting long
in the hard-core tech side of the business
is dubious. Your ability to manage NTs may
also be compromised. I've seen several
quit to make furnature or something.
There are so many bad systems and lazy people
that unsuitable individuals will undoubtably
blend in once they find their way into the
profession.
None of the best programmers I know have
degrees. One went through merchant marine.
I was making >$100k by 23 years of age and still
didn't know what I was doing... There is so
much I want to learn. Wish I could quit and
write free software for my own amusement.
Alas, the startup bug wont leave me alone.
-m2b
In less than two weeks I'm going to recieve my BSc from a small "University College". They have a well - developed CS department which teaches fairly up to date info. It's not exactly a type one college, although there is a segment of the population which seems to wish it was.
However it's not a type two school either. The professors are knowlegable and the material is challenging. However, the relevance of what I've learned to my new job (whatever it may be) is questionable.
Our school has a very wide view when it comes to topics of study for CS. I've learned everything from architecture to operating system concepts. Because I attend a "University College", I get a nice blend of hands-on experience as well as theory.
The problem I've got is that the hands-on work is mostly basic coding and most of the time has little to do with the theory we're learning. Some of the coding we've done also has very little to do with current business trends.
Also, information on a broad range of topics (it's a liberal arts school) is poured into our heads and we have to memorize it all for an exam, then we're free to forget it. I am hard pressed to remember topics I covered last term because they're no longer applicable to what I'm doing now.
When I do get a job there'll have to be a period of orientation and training for me. This period will be shorter because, as some people have already mentioned, I've learned to learn. During this period, I'll learn what is needed to do my job, then I'll proceed to forget 90% of the information I accumulated while attending college.
In a field where somebody who was working in their garage or playing with code while I was learning can become a success overnight, taking time out to learn how to learn is a bit worrying.
Feel the fear and do it anyway.
My 64 bits of advise: leave the parental nest and don't be cheap about college. Parents are harmful in undergraduate years, and if you're not paying more than 15K for your education, it's likely that educators aren't properly motivated to get you your degree.
Think of it from a fiscal point of view. Who's going to have the best teachers? The universities who pay for teachers. Who's going to have the worst teachers? The universities that recruit researchers. I know very few professors who can do both very well. (1 professor out of 25 in a certain CS department ranked in the top ten)
-Stryemer
-Stryemer
We are the music makers,
and we are the dreamers of the dream.
It appears that your mind is already made up, so why would you even bother to interview them. Unless you knew what you were doing was wrong by prejudging people, and used the interview as a way to fool those around you to thinking you were actually being objective.
If your not gonna hire them, then dont waste their time interviewing them.
-Praxxis
Depends on what kind of job you want to get. The University of Arkansas at Little Rock is starting up a new College of Information Science and Systems Engineering. Survey of more than 300 folks who hire programmers, systems engineers, analysts indicates they want folks with tech skills, plus "soft skills" and knowledge of business concepts. You can see their views on technical skills needed, soft skills, etc. in full report that can be found at http://www.ualr.edu/~itreport
Okay, so I got really really bored by school, and punted about halfway through my third year. I've used some of what I learned, but not a lot.
Personally, I think people should go to college for the social stuff, and to learn how to deal with other people, 'cause you know, if there's anything we really just don't need, it's a whole bunch of unsocialized geeks swarming around being rude or bizarre to one another... (College might not change that, but it can't hurt.)
Plus, it's nice to be well-rounded. There's more to life than computers; there's music and sex!
Josh
I don't think college hurt our hero one bit.
One viagra in the morning before work; I just know I'm gonna be screwed
I can understand if you're frustrated that college graduates can't write a routine to print a number in octal, but if you're only allowing them to use printf, that's insane. College isn't a place where a student should learn all the useless minutae of various languages -- that's what reference manuals are for. College is more about theory than "practical knowledge", and I doubt knowing how to use printf to print octal numbers even counts as "practical".
I completely agree with this. I actually think most of the best 'Wireheads' I know did *not* receive a CS degree, but rather had a liberal arts background.
:-)
I thought I had the best of both worlds in that I received an Associates in Liberal Arts - Music & Theatre in the 70' and in the 80's received an Associates in Engineering Technology.
Unfortunately, because of the accredidation circus, they don't both add up to a Bachelors.
LINUX: The Power of Choice
i'm wrestling with the same question.
does anyone know where to find information on prospective salaries with BS, MS, or doctorate? i have also heard that companies frequently pay for grad school for their employees; any verification or word on that?
thanks.
aaron.
...what matters is what the people in the executive suite think you need. If they're a bunch of Harvard MBA clones, you can have 25 years of field experience, an instructor background, and security clearances out the wazoo, and still lose out to some wet-behind-the-ears kid who just happens to have a silly piece of paper that you don't.
Regards;
I was reading the different view points on this subject and decided to put in my two cents. For the most part I believe that college gives
people a sense of false reality. That false reality is if you pay (insert your college tuition here) you will auto magically receive a high paying
job and you have learned all that you will need to succeed in life. This is definitely not true. I have worked as a software developer for
several years now (non traditional education). Mostly from what I have observed is that college graduates tend to demand some sort of
restitution for there hard labors (cough, cough) of 4+ years of school and refuse to learn anything new. As opposed to a non college graduate
that is willing to do what it takes and learn whatever is needed to in order to get the job done. Also the one thing that college does not
teach you is mere survival skills in the work place. In order to get ahead you have to constantly want to learn. That is the key. Maybe some
colleges teach this but most don't. I actually picked that up from a non standard school when I was in kindergarten (Montessori). By the way
I was reading at a college level when I was 7.
Also in the software industry things do change dramatically at times. It is not a traditional industry any more. It used to be you did one
thing and that was it you only needed to know one language (maybe two depending on what you where doing). You had an analysis that told
you where the problem was and you just coded away worked your 40 hours and collected your restitution. Well guess what it's not like that
any more. If you want to make a case for college you are going to have to do better than chicks, beer, socializing, (which by the way most
computer geeks are bad at this later any ways), and seeing how many marshmallows you can stick up your ass. I see the self motivated
willing to learn non college graduate as the best bet. Why because they want to learn and excel. Instead of demanding restitution for
learning outdated and useless algorithms, languages, operating systems.
For the record the school I am attending UVIC recently added a Software Engineering degree option. You could even take all the courses offered the first year with no prerequisites.
Out CSC department is aligned with the Engineering department and is part of the faculty of Engineering for what that is worth. It was originally part of the Arts and Sciences Faculty, that Faculty has been broken up a lot too now.
Muskie
One of the mysteries of /. I guess. I agree that HTML by itself isn't programming and replied mainly as my unofficial definition of a programing language is has variables and looping mechanisms.
However just to play Devil's advocate when you consider the web is moving away from static pages to something more like Slashdot web design becomes more like programming. The addition of Javascript, Java applets, backside scripting CGI and others... Also the whole idea of a easy to use interface is a major area of software engineering. Webdesign is all about presenting information in a easy to understand, appealling, and efficient method.
Well back to regular scheduled Microsoft bashing...
Muskie