DIY Masters in Computer Science

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1543697

by adaptives • 16 years ago

5 10 16 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have been experimenting with Do-It-Yourself learning. This year I thought of actually doing a self-study masters in Computer Science and understand if it is possible for someone to be able to do a DIY masters, to gain knowledge and build credentials.

If successful I am also hoping that my experiment will demonstrate a process which can be used by self learners.

What do you think of this experiment, and the process? Can you suggest any changes in either?

Here is the main page where I am consolidating everything.

http://opencs.wikidot.com

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

Clickable: http://opencs.wikidot.com

aitoehigie• 16 years ago

Very cool idea. I do not have a formal degree in comp. science and most times I feel that there so many things that I don't know which I ought to know. Is there any place where I can do a DIY undergraduate comp science degree?

adaptives3• 16 years ago

Well there is no formal place, but you could create a wiki for your self learning, similar to what I have done, to log your learning and create credentials for what you learn.

I did come across one website which could hep you organize your learning log - http://curiousreef.com/

rick_20472• 16 years ago

Well I don't think an UG DIY degree would be a good idea. The UG degree has more courses than the PG (as they should be, so you have atleast a basic survey of the key topics in CS). This increases the workload on the student. Further more, the UG degree is not only about getting the knowledge. Its an essential part of social life one must go through. Joining clubs, games, groups build your character. This is likewise true for Masters courses. Its not only about the knowledge, its also about the exposure you get out of the Uni. campus.

adaptives3• 16 years ago

Thanks, how did you make the link clickable?

RiderOfGiraffes2• 16 years ago

Links in submissions are not clickable, links in comments are.

rick_20472• 16 years ago

Why not make a UofReddit course out of it? Rope in a mentor for what you want to learn. Make a four/five week study plan and do social learning. While that would somewhat give you the credentials and openness that you want, it will take away some of the flexibility.

adaptives3• 16 years ago

UofReddit seems very interesting. Will check it out.

HilbertSpace• 16 years ago

Of what is worth careful study in computer science, your old Master's in CS likely is still just fine.

For what you want to learn now, e.g., Web site development, profs in a Master's program in a CS department likely won't know it either. Uh, they don't spend their time doing Web development! So, what you want now really isn't an up to date Master's or a Master's in Web site development.

If you want 'credentials', then give people the URLs of some Web sites you've developed -- in the job market, that's mostly regarded as the best 'credentials' anyway.

Like essentially everything else in such 'practical' computing, if you want to learn Web development, then develop some Web sites and read and learn what you need to know as you need it.

My Web site is based all on Microsoft software. So, the Web site itself is based on ASP.NET and the .NET version of Visual Basic. When I need to interact with SQL Server, I use ADO.NET.

To start, I got a copy of Buyens book, 'Web Database Development, Step by Step, .NET Edition', which is quite well written for an introduction.

I also have the Belena's book on Visual Basic 2005, and it is helpful.

For most of the rest, I've downloaded about 1000 Web pages of documentation from Microsoft's MSDN, etc. sites. As I keep developing, I keep downloading: If do anything a little new, then I download another 30 pages or so.

To store the downloaded pages, I have one directory for each of Visual Basic, ASP, ADO, etc.

Then, in each directory, to find things, I have a file I maintain with my favorite general purpose (programmable) text editor that has an 'abstract' of each Web page I've downloaded. So, those directories are my main source of what I need to know.

In addition, for some questions, I search Google and find other Web pages and download and abstract those similarly.

The Express version of SQL Server Management Studio can be helpful when getting started, e.g., setting user names.

I do my Visual Basic programming and ASP.NET programming just using my favorite text editor, In my source code, I document what I'm doing, e.g., often will give a reference to documentation details. So, when I download a page, the HTML part goes to a file, and I can put the tree name of that file in a source code comment and, with one keystroke of my editor, have my favorite Web browser display the file. Or if the detail is in Buyens, etc., I can put the page number in a comment.

In the end, code samples are good, and there many of those.

For SQL Server, I'm mostly just using the MSDN pages. So far I just write simple T-SQL code, executed via ADO.NET or just the command line SQLCMD.EXE that comes with SQL Server.

Yes, one 500 page book, another 600 page book, 1000+ Web pages is a lot to work with, but I've had no trouble understanding what I've read and making corresponding code work.

If you want to develop with Microsoft's .NET, etc. the above is a good outline and should be enough to get you started and, then, self sufficient for as about as far as you want to go. For versions of Unix, likely something similar would work.

Uh, in the history of the US computer industry, actually university courses have had relatively little to do what what the workers learned that they needed to know.

DIY Masters in Computer Science

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