Ask HN: Can you tell if CS interests you without getting a degree in it first?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42444328

by amichail • 2 years ago

1 5 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Maybe hobby programmers just assume they will find CS fascinating, only to discover much later — after earning a degree — that CS is not really the focus of their interest in programming?

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

I studied physics in college, my one regret is I never took a compilers class but that reminds me to go down to the student services office downstairs and sign up for one.

amichail2• 2 years ago

So you want to work on a compiler in your job?

PaulHoule2• 2 years ago

I apply some ideas from compilers to my work. For instance I wrote a parser for something that's a hybrid of a binary search such that "immigration AND crime" requires both words to appear and "'french toast'" will needs the words to be together but "presidential approval" is treated as an old-school (word per dimension) vector search.

It 'compiles' to Postgres queries, one interesting thing about it is that the compiler deals with errors in a forgiving way based on a theory I thought out.

Generally I am interested in ideas from compilers wherever they are useful or can speed up the applications work that I do.

taylorbuley• 2 years ago

This touches on the subtle but significant distinction between computer science (CS) as an academic field and programming as a skill or profession. I would say that not all paths to programming emanate from CS. But, practically, I'd say most people who get a degree in CS are not destined to work abstractly for life. Why does this matter to you? Are you worried about committing to a CS degree as a hobbyist programmer?

amichail2• 2 years ago

I think it's like a novelist who assumes they will find a linguistics degree fascinating, but the focus of writing a novel is actually very different from linguistics.

Ask HN: Can you tell if CS interests you without getting a degree in it first?

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