Yes, yes, I know. Computer Science classes are useless and difficult. It’s okay. I took them too. I hated having to study full year of physics, thought my software engineering class was at least two years behind the times, learned operating systems and languages that were twice as old as me, and pulled an all-nighter at least twice a semester trying to finish a nearly-impossible algorithm (I still hate you, Dynamic Programming).
The practical and obvious reason for a degree is to get a job. Recruiters from all the big software companies make the rounds at Universities and completing your degree is a quick way to a cush office chair at one of the biggies.
But if you’re a bit of a punk like me and don’t care much for working in a cubicle, why bother going to college at all? There are lots of examples of successful folks who didn’t finish their degrees. Well, there are plenty of examples of people who did. And that’s not the point. Does college have anything to offer a working programmer?
I’ve been a working programmer for less than a year now and I’ve been pleasantly surprised to learn that the four five years I spent in school weren’t completely wasted. University gave me the opportunity to explore different topics in computer science while providing mentors (professors) and colleagues (other students) in each topic. Computer science is a wide field and I was surprised at which subjects I ended up liking the best. As an aspiring web designer, I probably never would have learned any Perl. Yet Web and Internet Programming, taught in Perl, turned out to be the most fun class I took. So I ended up loving application development and giving up on design entirely (this blog is a great example of my current design skills).
Knowing a variety of languages, popular or outdated, seems to have helped me out as well. I recently started learning Python and saw obvious similarities between languages I knew from school, like Java and C++. It came as a surprise to me that Python doesn’t currently have any type of switch/case statement. However, Python developers often use a series of unnamed functions, lambdas, to simulate a switch/case statement. No problem, I know lambda well from a first-year computer science class I took in Scheme. Scheme, that obscure language that I thought I’d never use.
Another advantage of a traditional computer science education is the ability to gauge optimization (pay attention to the lectures on normalization and asymptotic notation). As a web developer I care a lot about optimization. Efficiency is the key to responsive web applications and throwing huge, expensive servers at scaling problems won’t help if your database design is inefficient or your code is redundant and sloppy. Not that my code is ever sloppy…
Okay, so the classes are HARD. That’s the best part. Getting your ass kicked gives a bit of perspective into the working world of programming. There are HARD problems. HARD problems are fun. The great developers that I know are always trying to tackle tough problems and expand their knowledge. I do not know a single rock star developer that shies away from a programming problem because it appears too difficult. They would all say, “bring it” (and they would all readily admit times when a program got the better of them.)
So the decision is really up to the individual. Just don’t be too quick to bitch about a computer science degree. Just think of all those classes in linear algebra, who ever uses those?
55 Comments
John Chilton
> I know lambda well from a first-year computer science class I took in Scheme. Scheme, that obscure language that I thought I’d never use.
Ever since the wave of publicity you received a couple weeks ago I have been telling anyone who will listen that I taught you everything you know about programming. It is only going to get worse now that I know you learned something in the course
-John
Christopher Finke
Internet Programming the most fun class? Surely you jest!
*cough* Chipmark *cough*
Zelnox
._. I feel the same way. But at the time, I used to scoff at web applications (just like how people still make fun of VB) and wanted to go into game development or cool desktop stuff. But I didn’t live the web then.
Ever since working at a web app company, it feels like the majority of stuff learned is useless so far. We have to be agile. Much shorter iterations (and even shorter now since I’ve joined) and almost no external documentation. Huge emphasis on testing.
Working the Web requires agility that one might not grasp while in university. Plus, professors and the curriculum are old school. They do teach about the various software processes, but it all seems to lead to “use RUP”, and assignments/projects required documentation that followed RUP standards and lots of UML diagrams drawn with Rational Rose. And one gets pulled in many different directions in a rush to complete assignments.
Maybe I just focused on the wrong things. >_
Benji
What i learned in the uni - is that i don’t want to be in a cubicle for all my life, i dropped out; but the lessons and the environment helped a lot to wake that curiosity of things outside.
Jeff O'Hara
Did you go to Rose-Hulman? My sister-in-law graduated from there.
-Jeff O’Hara
http://blog.zemote.com
http://www.twitter.com/zemote
awright
How’s the job market for a recent graduate? I’m a junior and am getting a bit discouraged with all the decline of cs talk going around. (That and some professional level summer courses I’m taking feel like a waste of time. *cough* fundamentals of software engineering) I’m not a fan of web developement and most internships at my university seem to be just that.
Matthias
> No problem, I know lambda well from a first-year computer science class I took in Scheme. Scheme, that obscure language that I thought I’d never use.
haha, me2. I thought exactly the same last semester… now I do my math homework in scheme because info lessons (we learn java with drscheme) are so boring… (and to annoy my tutor *hehe*)
Michael
College, what a sham. Why pay for knowledge when there’s the internet or the plethora of books on store shelves?
Kyle Savage
I can’t agree with you more. As a fledgling software engineer myself, out just one year, I’m surprised at how much stuff from school I DO use. I’m surprised about caring about runtime and efficiency. I remember thinking in school, I’ll never use this/care about this in the real world.
Well, in the real world, I do care about run time, I do care about efficient code and I do use design patterns.
Good Post
-Kyle
James
I would say go for the degree. I personally didnt finish a CS degree, but work as a tech director for a fortunate 500 company and will typically look to hire those that finished school.
Tim Michalski
I only went to college for a semester and decided to bail. I had the misfortune of learning Turbo Basic and QBasic when I was 13 (I’m not a nerd, really), so I thought I would just try to get a job with what skills I already had. Finding my first job wasn’t all that hard and since then I have started a software company that has been running well for the last 7 years. I’m glad I didn’t go to college, but I definitely could have avoided some of the mega mistakes I made in my first few years if I had kept at the schoolin’.
Tom
Northeastern kids?
Marc
I couldn’t get a job for yrs til I learned a bit of programming. So plenty of work now and I didn’t have to do accounting or law and end up reading a lot of mind numbing paragraphs and figures. Avoiding such jobs has also meant I’ve side stepped the corporate hoop jumping which involves wondering how to brown nose the partner and hanging out with financial twats who are endlessly impressed with themselves.
So well worth learning how to declare a variable, if statments and loops.
CC
Great insight! I also have a CS degree and I get ticked when people say they didn’t get any real world use from the degree. Let’s face it college is not the real world. The field is so vast and changes rapidly so the best schools teach the foundations that all CS is built from like basic electrical engineer, some old program languages, etc. This way you have a strong foundation that when you are faced with learning something new you already have your foot in the door and can take what you’ve learned and apply it to the new task. For example, I recently ran into a software bug that was performing poorly due to some paging memory issues. I was asked to look at this from fellow co-workers (none of whom had CS degrees) who could not figure the problem out. I was able to find where the problem was rather quickly due to the fact that I had a computer architecture course and learned about memory management and all the low level crap that hopefully most of never need to worry about.
So yes we may not learn the latest and greatest in class. It gives us the foundation to go out on our own and learn it ourselves. I’m tired of people wanting everything hand feed to them. Take some initiative, buy a book or two on the topic, read the book and apply what you’ve learned use the basics that your degree gave you.
Ok enough ranting…back to the real world. I miss college life
ollie
I done a BSc Information Systems degree in the UK and almost dropped it in the first because I was so bored of the generic stuff they teach you…
However, I do appreciate that teaching you the basics of programming C++ can be useful but so so so boring when all you get to do is simulate dealing a pack of cards….It wasn’t until I started doing web development I realised programming can actually be fun and rewarding once you achieve something…
That said, the most fun part of university isn’t the study but the drinking and partying (which doesnt happen in the final year)
John Haitas
good stuff ms. culver…. sadly this article comes six years too late for me…
you left out assembly - i feel it deserves honorable mention in this discussion
Shawn
I guess the idea is that if you haven’t learned a number of languages on your own and/or the programming classes are/would be difficult for you, then college is probably a good idea.
If you’re the type that has been into programming since you were a kid, have many languages under your belt, and would be just teaching your instructors anyway… don’t bother. There’s plenty of people out there like that wasting money in college.
Tyler Prete
I’m getting close to finishing up a Computer Science degree at the University of Utah, while also doing web development (Ruby on Rails) and now Java Enterprise development on the side, and I have found that the best part of my degree is the math I have learned along with it. Programming I find easy enough to pick up on my own, but more and more I find that the answer to a lot of problems lies in mathematical understanding rather than simply brute-forcing a solution.
So with that said, I am definitely going to stick it out and get my degree; probably even a Master’s.
Robert
I’m a computer science graduate but I have not been working as a programmer. Since I have some certs like A+,Net+, and MCP I’ve been doing mostly tech work. I want to get back into the programming field but I have no real world programming experience. All the programming I have done has been hobby work in JAVA,ASP.NET,PHP, Perl and Javascript. Do you have any advice on how to promote myself to employers looking for experienced programmers?
Dan
Here’s what I tell people I learned in getting my CS degree — the understanding of what is out there. Without the degree, you have your bag of tricks that you always pull from. And they grow stale. With the degree, you’re used to having to LEARN new tricks. If you think you’re never going to write something in a language you don’t know yet, you’re only seeing 10 years of your career.
A CS degree teaches you to embrace new technology, but you also learn the history of WHY things are the way they are. Understanding WHY Java was developed with single inheritance and interfaces is a GREAT illustration of how to use interfaces correctly. Understanding HOW Ruby is built for extremely rapid development is a great illustration of the potential pitfalls you may run into when trying to build a giant site. (I don’t mean that as a knock on Ruby — just that scaling to a million requires a little planning).
Finally — the CS degree is worth it because it shows that you can actually finish something. It is not a deal breaker for me when hiring, but if you’ve got to either have a degree or a good portfolio to get to the interview.
Matthew Smith
You are right, it doesn’t hurt… well, a lot. The problem with most CS programs is that while you are learning useless things (compilers, operating systems, …boring) you could be taking classes that you will actually use in the business world like marketing and communications. Anyways, I didn’t figure that out until I went back for my MBA. If I had to do it again, I would have done MIS, but then I probably wouldn’t have got a good job.
Martin
I am looking to make a decision, currently I am attending a college with the goal of getting a BFA in Animation by 2009, however I am more interested in programming. My problem; I am not anywhere near good at math, I am quite bad actually. Should I get up to speed on math first? Or should I just dive into CS?
-Martin
Jonatan
Great post, I’ve been wondering if the courses I’m currently taking, and will take in the future ever will do me any good. Your post encourages me to keep on a while longer
Jennifer Ma
-sigh-
I remember Computer Science classes…personally thought they were worthless trash, but hey seems like they actually have uses.
Shawn
Nice post. I went back to school for computer science after getting the super useful history degree. When I started in my program (back in ‘99), I thought I’d program video games or desktop apps… but when I graduated, I ended up a web designer/developer. Taking Cobol, Assembler, Pascal, Operating Systems and Networking have no direct relation to my daily work, but a wider education has paid off in the long run.
Jason
Hi, nice blog post! I am a Senior CS Major, and trying to finish up my degree in (hopefully) 4 years. I want to do a lot more web development, and I found your post very interesting- I will try to pay better attention in ALL my classes now…
Jeremiah Mitchell
I had an AI class that used LISP for all the coursework. While the class itself was worthless, learning LISP ending up being very beneficial since my current job uses scheme for all our development and customization.
Most of the classes that I took had some benefit, whether it was learning a new programming language or learning a new way to think about programming.
Shady
It might just be the area, but most of the degree holders I’ve encountered on the East Coast are fairly horrible developers. Most of the better programmers I’ve met though are usually without degrees. While the degree holders tend to be more reliably hard-working, some of the non-degree people just don’t have a good work ethic. All of the hardest working most brilliant programmers I know are self-taught whether they have degrees or not. I have the pleasure of knowing this RegEx god, Steven Levithan:
http://blog.stevenlevithan.com/
neelabh
my case is same too… gud work
mark
a computer science degree is useless anyways. nowadays it’s nothing more than a glorified, state-certified webmaster. if you truly want to know about computers then major in (computer and electrical) engineering.
Sam Stelfox
Caught your post on digg and i’m fairly impressed. You article was well written and well thought out. I came to college with little programming skills and very ambitious dreams to be able to sit down and in about a week have a program that I could sell for millions. To say the least college humbled me and taught me things that I could never have imagined. IMHO it was worth the pain and agony of learning languages like smalltalk and scheme.
Skyscraper Melesky
Well I dont think I will do computer science.
O yeah i looked up Dynamic programing on the wiki link, LOL i wanna see the allnighter you should of kept a copy of it.
Mike
Amen! As a product of Computer Science myself, I’ve been very frustrated by the current round of applicants we’ve been getting for the open position at my company’s web department. Lots of people seem to take classes from wherever and learn just how to work with that language, which is fine until you need to learn a different language and you don’t have the basics to easily figure it out because you didn’t struggle through 3 classes in Ada (Another example of a language that, at the time, I thought was useless.)
Paul
In Australia you only need the most basic high school university entrance maths course to get into computer science. There is no physics, just lots of programming. I changed into IT instead!
circuitz
Well said, in so many ways. I was a CS major in the late 80’s when everything taught was wayyy out of date. A language is a language is a language. There are only so many ways to tell a computer to do something 0 & 1.
There are nine types of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don’t.
Matt Langan
I debated dropping out of college each of the last 3 semesters. Why? Because the stuff I learned the year before was outdated at the time, and had only become increasingly archaic in the meantime. I was an Interactive Multimedia major at a large public university in Virginia and felt as though my time was being wasted just doing projects for classes instead of for companies. A degree in our fields only proves that we spent a large sum of money to attend classes with like-minded people for 4 (5) years. Our field is unique in that unlike with management, medicine, or engineering, we are able to prove what skills we do and do not posess. Hell, my source code has been put under much more scrutiny than my resumé, and nobody has even asked for a transcript or GPA.
But I am optimistic about the future of education - with the growing amount of instructional content available on the web now it is possible to supplement the university experience with much more in-depth and specialized learning. It’s just up to the student to take it upon themselves to do it. . .
- Matt
K.J.
Yea, but CS degrees are completely useless in comparison with Computer Engineering degrees. You get enough programming to be more than dangerous, plus you get all that, you know, electrical stuff. It is a much more difficult course structure than CS, so it’s not for everyone. I try to advice everyone I know who wants to go that route to think about CMPE.
After all, if you ever get tired of making wads of cash, you can always fall back into a programming job…
Frank Lakatos
Great article. I just finished up my Audio Engineering B.A. and i am moving on the my Computer Science graduate degree in the end of August. I have always liked computers, never a big programmer- but i have always had the passion to WANT to be a programmer. So now im gonna see how far that passion will take me. Please feel free to email me all the guidance you can (and gift certificates to Starbucks). Thanks again for the article.
Aaron Brethorst
This is because the U of M’s undergrad teaching staff tends to suck. I found myself liking the Csci professors far more when I got to the 4xxx and 5xxx levels. Prof Kumar, for instance, could literally put me to sleep with his ramblings on combinatorics.
Aaron
steve
Well said.
I’ve found 2 big things that I can attribute directly to my CS degree.
1) I’ve developed a habit of self-criticism to the work I do. I sincerely believe that “working code” does not always mean “good code”.
2) I’ve also learned to weigh algorithms based on the context in which they will be used.
Examples:
I’ve rewritten a single CPU:O(n^3) loop using time-space tradeoffs that results in a piece of code that is CPU:O(n^2), MEMORY:O(n^2). But is this always the right thing to do? Of course not. Maybe your working on a system where memory usage is of utmost importance and the O(n^2) amount of memory that your solution takes could be a major problem.
Is mergesort better to use than bubblesort? Usually, yes. However, what if your coding for hardware that is optimized for looping control structures, but sucks on context switching?
J Kim
punx rawk! \m/ >_
Aviram Segal
Personally, i learned alot in CS courses
the thing is, they don’t teach you something practical but ideas and ways to think.
Scheme is quite useless in my opinion, but it helps you think in different ways , in an overview you have no loops (just recursions), functions as parameters (C# delegetaions), etc…
Algorithm and Data Structure courses helps you program efficiently (which helped me one time with making a 20minute progam i wrote before to run in less than a minute)
what they don’t teach you in CS courses (and that’s why i’m doing a software engineering degree and not CS) is how to design and program correctly. i guess this is the only downside of compute science (well, this and calculus :P)
to conclude (i’m writing too much)
i programmed before, and CS courses definitely helped, and i see it every day at work (well the days i work…)
p.s.
(i hasn’t touched mine in 2 months)
nice blog
Chris
I’m into CS.. In Italy though.. I don’t know if it’s the same thing. I know it’s hard.. but in the end it’s worth it. Especially if your experience broads different enviroments and languages..
Jeff
this is a good article for going on interviews. For non-programming jobs, they ask you how does your CS degree apply here - you gave some good answers to this. optimization, efficiency, dealing with HARD problems. thanks
underdog5004
Just so you know, you’re site was submitted to http://www.digg.com.
That’s why you’re having the amazing amount of hits right now.
mimo
Excellent post -
Its true - you never know what will be useful.
For example -linear algebra: first ‘real’ programming job I had was writing a section cutting routine that took 3d objects and generated an outline on any specified plane which required: you got it - linear algebra..The system is a 3d mine modeling program, and the part that I was involved in creating was a 3d blast layout system, which required the outlines of the ore zones..
http://www.flairbase.com/English/Eng_Amine.htm
Vicenzo
you went to rose-hulman??
i was going to attend there if i had the money (im from brasil btw) i lived in west terre haute… it seemed to be a great college… maybe ill get my masters there next year….
its great to hear that the school provides some good education =D
Mark
It doesn’t hurt, but a minor’s just as good.
I was in the same labs and courses as all the majors, including the “fun” ones. I managed to avoid the science and math requirements, though.
Leah Culver
Thanks for all the feedback. Here’s a great response post: http://www.willarson.com/blog/?p=28
Leah Culver
Matthew Smith - lately I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about business from books and the internet. Perhaps I should consider going back for my business degree. I’m completely lost when it comes to finance and business law!
John Haitas - I took an x86 assembly class as my second programming class just to find out if I could handle it. I did just fine and I actually liked how limited and low-level it is.
Robert - one way to promote yourself is to have a portfolio. If you’re interested in web development it might help to create a website to show off your skills. I’m still working on learning web standards and best practices because these are things employers are looking for.
Martin - try taking a computer science course for non-majors, since these are usually less focused on math. Then see if you like it and are willing to brave the math courses.
K.J. - I work a little with electronics as a hobby but my love is still programming. To each his/her own I guess.
Frank - Good luck!
Steve - so true. Context is everything when it comes to determining the best solution.
Vincenzo - I attended the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology in Minneapolis.
Arepo
How is University of Minnesota when it comes to a CS degree? Are they knowledgeable? I live close by and am curious as to what college to attend in the coming years. I’ve also heard Iowa States is pretty good, but haven’t heard anything else. Thanks.
Buu Nguyen
Couldn’t agree more!
Fundamental knowledge is important for everything else. When interviewing people, I don’t care if they have a CS/SE degree or not, but I do care as to whether they possess the fundamental knowledge about CS/SE (although I can’t see many could manage to do that without a CS/SE degree though). Yes, I mean OSI, TCP/IP, HTTP, relational theory, operating system, compiler, OO principles (no I don’t mean ‘encapsulation’, ‘inheritance’ etc. which any bad OO programmers is aware of), and so forth. I have an entry which is quite close to the topic here.
cannibalrock
you seriously just got me motivated to finish the last two years of computer science that i have left.
I think mid way through learning basic c and visual i was thinking “this is useless, i can’t believe i’m learning how to do print commands”
but i mean, you just put it in a way that makes it worth the while…even if its not like that during the time in class.
m4s4mun3
I agree with you with the uselessness of a very high-end computing degree, to work obviously…
Here in France after the High School Graduation, most of the computing students aim at a Bachelor’s Degree… It’s weird because getting a better degree don’t bring you much more… But something like an Associate’s Degree really handicap you. I do hope there won’t be a neck due to the massive flow of students getting out of University with a Computing Degree…
Being stuck to unemployement after 5 years of post-High School Graduation studies must be frustrating :-/ Something I have to put the stress on is the fact that if you get an “Computing Engineer Degree” (5 years of studies) in a private school, you’ll have more chances to get a job… But you’ll have to pay a 6000$/year school. Not really pleasant…
To conclude, I would say the situation is approximately the same in both countries (other must suffer from the same situation), but it seems to be tough in America.
*asking for more details on the US situation*
*proposing more details on the FR situation*
Irakli Nadareishvili
Heh, nice writing.
If the tech industry suddenly goes down you won’t starve - just write a novel
cheers