You're not talking about trained vs. untrained, you're talking about stupid vs. intelligent, and not only do you not need a degree to be intelligent, you can be stupid while still having a degree.
True, although the ones who really lack any level of intelligence usually don't get the degree either. They tend to drop out in their first year, or second year at most. When I started my CS degree, we had an initial group of some 50 people. After the first semester this was down to some 35 persons and only some 15 persons made it to their second year. Eventually, 11 or so of those graduated. This by itself is a pretty good weeding out of non-talent, don't you think?
In practice I've seen more talentless people made it into a programmer job than I've seen talentless people completing their thesis.
Also, don't forget that the reverse of your statement doesn't hold at all. You say you can be stupid while still having a degree, but of course one can also be intelligent AND have a degree. Unless you can provide some prove that an education makes one dumber (I don't think you can), I would say that having a degree and being intelligent is a sure win over being intelligent but don't having a degree.
That's something you learn by reading a book. No need for a "degree".
Technically speaking you're right. You could as well read the book in your own time, but for some reason people rarely do. They stubbornly tend to read the books they think are the most interesting and skip half of it since they need to get some job done. More often than not, those interesting books turn out to be about the latest hyped language.
In university however, you not only get to read the interesting books, you also have to read those books you initially don't think to be relevant. This includes stuff like turing machines in fields such as foundational cs, but also more applied stuff like the inner-workings of a compiler and an operating system. Books such as Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems or H & P's computer architecture a quantitative approach, are typically books you read for a CS degree.
I strongly feel that having read books such as these, making assignments about the text, discussing the theory with my fellow students etc has made me an overall better developer.
At the very, very least, a CS education simply gives you the time and means to study. Even though you could theoretically do this all on your own, you probably simply don't have the time for it next to some job.
The reason I ask is someone can buy one of these and "repurpose" it to a non-legal copy of Windows, ending up with a 13% + (the price of Windows on the same machine) savings.
Well, if you're in China and you're the Chinese guy running this program, then it must be extremely easy to manufacture some crappy piece of hardware. Now make sure that Windows has no drivers for this (easy, since you yourself are that Chinese manufacturer, you just don't write Windows drivers). Simply install this piece of hardware in all those qualified PCs and make sure that this Red Flag Linux supports this hardware out of the box (easy, since you control the OS).
That should be enough to keep this insidious Windows away from those poor farmers!
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You're not talking about trained vs. untrained, you're talking about stupid vs. intelligent, and not only do you not need a degree to be intelligent, you can be stupid while still having a degree.
True, although the ones who really lack any level of intelligence usually don't get the degree either. They tend to drop out in their first year, or second year at most. When I started my CS degree, we had an initial group of some 50 people. After the first semester this was down to some 35 persons and only some 15 persons made it to their second year. Eventually, 11 or so of those graduated. This by itself is a pretty good weeding out of non-talent, don't you think?
In practice I've seen more talentless people made it into a programmer job than I've seen talentless people completing their thesis.
Also, don't forget that the reverse of your statement doesn't hold at all. You say you can be stupid while still having a degree, but of course one can also be intelligent AND have a degree. Unless you can provide some prove that an education makes one dumber (I don't think you can), I would say that having a degree and being intelligent is a sure win over being intelligent but don't having a degree.
That's something you learn by reading a book. No need for a "degree".
Technically speaking you're right. You could as well read the book in your own time, but for some reason people rarely do. They stubbornly tend to read the books they think are the most interesting and skip half of it since they need to get some job done. More often than not, those interesting books turn out to be about the latest hyped language.
In university however, you not only get to read the interesting books, you also have to read those books you initially don't think to be relevant. This includes stuff like turing machines in fields such as foundational cs, but also more applied stuff like the inner-workings of a compiler and an operating system. Books such as Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems or H & P's computer architecture a quantitative approach, are typically books you read for a CS degree.
I strongly feel that having read books such as these, making assignments about the text, discussing the theory with my fellow students etc has made me an overall better developer.
At the very, very least, a CS education simply gives you the time and means to study. Even though you could theoretically do this all on your own, you probably simply don't have the time for it next to some job.
The reason I ask is someone can buy one of these and "repurpose" it to a non-legal copy of Windows, ending up with a 13% + (the price of Windows on the same machine) savings.
Well, if you're in China and you're the Chinese guy running this program, then it must be extremely easy to manufacture some crappy piece of hardware. Now make sure that Windows has no drivers for this (easy, since you yourself are that Chinese manufacturer, you just don't write Windows drivers). Simply install this piece of hardware in all those qualified PCs and make sure that this Red Flag Linux supports this hardware out of the box (easy, since you control the OS).
That should be enough to keep this insidious Windows away from those poor farmers!
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
I think you left it lying in your flying car...