Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5081442

by djisjke • 14 years ago

20 27 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I work with programming, however, I never formally learned it. Sometimes that is a disadvantage when getting a job. Did you who got a CS degree ever regret it, and did you who work in the field without degree regret that?

johnmurch• 14 years ago

With any degree - you get what you put into it. I think it has been extremely valuable in terms of understanding some of the theory/etc. of CS. Then again I am upset that more real-world + theory tools/process were not part of my courses.

For example - understanding source control and working with it is something that SHOULD be happening in classes. Every teacher should leverage git (https://github.com/edu) for managing/submission of code.

lsiebert• 14 years ago

I kinda regret getting a psychology degree and not getting a CS degree.

segmond• 14 years ago

in the computer field, as of today, a CS degree is not important. the only reason for someone to regret a CS degree is if they had an opportunity to do a startup and they refused, and someone else did that startup and made some serious money.

jason_slack2• 14 years ago

I do regret getting a CS degree.

CS came easy to me and so I got a CS degree.

Hindsight I wish I had challenged myself to get a degree in something that didn't come easy.

I dont appreciate my degree and I blow off the fact that I even have one. It means nothing to me.

I have a 14 year old son whom I am pushing to challenge himself and be more well rounded than I was. He is learning C++, yes but he plays basketball, loves MotoGP, learning to cook and overall learning how to talk and argue his points :-)

victorhn• 14 years ago

what kind of degree would not come easy if you were able to make a CS degree? IMHO only a few degrees like pure math or physics may be more difficult.

ceol• 14 years ago

CS isn't any harder than most other programs. GP could have found a challenge in arguing philosophy, designing fashion, or learning theater.

jason_slack2• 14 years ago

I always liked Economics. I was accepted to PA School but could not come up with the funds to attend.

geofft2• 14 years ago

There's a distinction between "difficult" and "comes easily". A lot of CS is easy for me, I think in part because the underlying thought patterns are intuitive and in part because I enjoy poking at it on my own. I don't think, say, mechanical engineering is particularly more _difficult_ on an absolute scale, but I personally would have had to work a lot harder and develop better learning skills for a mechanical engineering degree, and I would have learned a lot more in the process. And exposed my brain to something I'll likely never get a chance to expose it to now.

suhailpatel• 14 years ago

I'm in my final year of getting a CS degree and i'll be honest I feel the same way. My main motivation for getting a CS degree was that it would open up more career choices in the field but I wished i'd done something like Economics (which I have a real interest in).

Most of the content has been easy although I have learnt a lot of techniques and algorithms (especially in AI) so it's not been completely worthless.

datr• 14 years ago

The danger with this is that it requires a lot of self-control to dedicate yourself to something else for three years. It becomes very easy to ignore your university work in favour for that which you're more passionate about. The risk is you end up in more or less the same position but with a lower GPA.

zerohp• 14 years ago

I started college a couple years ago after 15 years working as a programmer. I wanted a CS degree, but during the first semester I spent a lot of time thinking about what I really want to do and switched to Computer Engineering. I might switch to EE before I'm done.

I thought I wanted the piece of paper, but I found out that I really enjoy pushing myself to learn new things.

codenesium• 14 years ago

If you code all of the time and it's something you enjoy I'm not sure a CS degree is right for you. I was CS and I switched to music because assembly and calculus didn't seem relevant to anything I wanted to build. If you work hard and build projects and put a little effort into learning the CS concepts on your own you will have no problem finding a job. You better be able to code though if you're not going to have that CS line item on your resume. I'm saying you need 5 years experience building things to be qualified most places.

Thebigcheeze• 14 years ago

A lot of my CS degree wasn't really applicable to the work I actually do (line of business applications) but it was interesting as hell. I went to classes with a lot of people that hated half of the things we did (physics, math, combinatorics, machine learning, assembly, microprocessor fabrication) but every one of those things was just flat out interesting. Not really applicable, but I don't regret learning it at all.

purplelobster• 14 years ago

Depends on what you want to do, but for me, no. If CS comes easy to you, that just means you can push even further in the time when others are stuck on the basics. If you're only interested in doing social web apps, then maybe you shouldn't get a CS degree. Getting more than an undergraduate degree in CS can make you knowledgeable and confident enough to tackle problems others won't, or be able to see solutions that others can't.

strathmeyer• 14 years ago

Many people get CS degrees and never get a CS job so they move on with their lives.

AlexDanger• 14 years ago

In hindsight, the CS cirriculum I did was pretty bad. There were only three units which I think really had any value for me in terms of application to my work in IT. The units I did outside of CS (mainly maths) were much more valuable.

But there are two things I got from university that were invaluable:

1.) People. The people I met at uni are still my best friends today and a diverse bunch of talented and interesting folk. The social aspect was invaluable.

2.) Learning how to learn. By the end of my second year I felt I had the cognitive and critical thinking skills to tackle new topics without the aid of a professor guiding me. I take this skill somewhat for granted and it has been a critical part of my success in the workplace. Some people are born with this capacity for self-learning, I wasnt, I got it at university. So there is still something to be said about the old brick-and-mortar educational paradigm.

michael_miller• 14 years ago

I don't regret getting a CS degree one bit, since it exposed me to people I wouldn't have been exposed to otherwise. I wouldn't have taken ballroom dancing, buddhist art, or learned how to fly had it not been for getting my degree.

My intuition is that school marginally helped by day-to-day coding, but gave me the tools I needed to dig deeper. It was invaluable to take operating systems, and learn about the nitty gritty internals of how a modern OS worked, along with the details of CPU caching. I probably could have learned the information outside of school, but it would have been a much longer process, and I might have large gaps in my knowledge.

threedaymonk• 14 years ago

I didn't get a CS degree - I did Elec Eng instead, which has some overlap, I suppose - but I haven't found it too much of a problem. I occasionally become aware of gaps in my knowledge, but I find that a bit of reading can usually fix that. I think I'm more motivated and self-directed now than I was back when I was a student, so I'm not sure I really missed too much. Education is wasted on the young!

In any case, once people are more than a few years out of university, they've forgotten enough that it doesn't seem to make a huge difference. Experience, receptiveness, and willingness to continue learning become bigger factors.

okjake• 14 years ago

Agree completely. I am in the same position, having an EE degree, and haven't found this to be a drawback so far.

After a few years of work and motivated self-study, a bachelors degree begins to fade into relative insignificance.

bitwize• 14 years ago

I should have become a physicist.

suyash• 14 years ago

Are you kidding me? You are the one who needs to regret it since you would never be respected equally amongst your colleagues if all other skills are equal between you and them.

geofft2• 14 years ago

Why wouldn't you be respected equally? The point of a degree is that it's a proxy for a statement about skills, not that the prestige of the degree itself is valuable.

JamesMcMinn• 14 years ago

Not in the slightest.

I went into the degree having done a lot of programming and found the first year of CS fairly easy. However, I was lucky as Glasgow allows you to switch between degrees almost at will as long as you meet the requirements for it during the first 2 years (1st year courses generally only make up 1/3rd of the credits, and 2nd year courses make up 1/2 of the credits for that year).This meant that I was able to peruse Maths, Physics and CS in my first year, and Electrical Engineering and CS during my second year - it was only in the final 2 years that CS became my only focus.

Essentially, I didn't need to decide which degree I would do until the start of my 3rd year, by which point the course had ramped up to the 4 hours sleep per night level, I was loving every moment of being pushed to the edge, and I was very sure that CS was the right choice for me.

Practically speaking, I came out of the degree having covered a bit of just about everything, and in a position to quickly learn anything that I don't already know. I probably could have become better at programming, but a much less capable thinker if I'd spent the 4 years working.

I don't think that every developers needs a CS degree, however I'd say that if you want to tackle really hard problems, the ones that most people wouldn't even dream of solving, then a CS degree is probably the best tool in your box.

dear• 14 years ago

Not at all. It makes everything SO MUCH easier. Without it there will ALWAYS be a question mark in employers' mind, no matter how many years of experience you have!

Now if you are starting your own company and think you will be the next Zuckerberg/Gates/Jobs, then it's a different story.

simondfletcher• 14 years ago

I did a Master's degree in CS and have absolutely no regrets. It was, without a doubt, the most enjoyable, interesting, fun and educational period of my life.

In the 20 years since I have, at some point, found almost every subject that was covered useful. Most useful of all, though, was the education in critical thinking, critical systems thinking and soft systems. The lessons I learned there are ones I still use every day. Almost every job in technology involves, in some form, solving complex problems in complex, continually changing environments with many participants with differing interests, motivations and capabilities. This has stood me in good stead from my first job as a developer to my current role managing large programs of work.

sbochins• 14 years ago

Nope. I wouldn't have taken many of the classes I took when getting my CS degree if I didn't need to. But, I am glad I took them.

This would mostly be the theory, OS, and compiler courses. If you know the full stack and the connections between them, it makes it much easier to pick up new things. Getting a CS degree let me spend 4 years of my life understanding the fundamentals.

I understand that you can learn all this stuff on your own, but pretty much nobody does. And having all this knowledge makes it substantially easier to learn new things (something I do quite a bit nowadays).

njsubedi• 13 years ago

I quite regret joining for a CS degree. I am on my second year (I should have been in 3rd, but I chose to take an year of academic break). What CS teaches you, you cannot implement in real world without doing stuff you would be doing without joining the degree.

Best way is to stay passionate about CS and join a degree for some other studies, like business or law, hence bringing out your full potential.

I am, for sure, going to regret taking my CS degree.

Ask HN: Did you regret getting a CS degree?

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