18
VaderNT
6y

"How useful was your CS degree and why?" - I studied CS at university, my education always was incredibly useful.

Firstly, the knowledge you gain in itself is useful. Furthermore, we explain and understand the unknown in terms of the known. Thus, the more you know, the easier you learn new things.

But secondly and more importantly, university teaches you *how* to think. In a structured way, like a scientist or engineer. To see the bigger picture.

I originally wanted to end here, but I've read a couple of entries doubting the usefulness of any CS degree.

Our profession isn't all that different from others. It is, however, relatively young. How's this for an analogy: We're still in the stage of building sand castles. That's fine, and can be self taught. But in years to come we'll want to build bridges and sky scrapers, which are not just "sand castles scaled up". Our sand castle knowledge won't help us here. Sky scrapers need entirely different materials and a good understanding of architectural statics.

Can you still teach that yourself? Maybe. Will a formal education with a degree be useful and generally more trusted? I bet.

Comments
  • 3
    Totally agree.
  • 1
    total bs. CS is still stuck teaching how to calculate the effciency of code. and reimplementing graph and sort algorithems. everything else they do is a rehash of that.
    CS does not teach you how to code, and never will. our industry moves too fast.
    learn how to learn by yourself - true in the past, present and future.
  • 2
    @magicMirror You'll find this funny: Our first lecture of the course "Advanced Mathematics" started with us learning that 1+1=2. Whoop-de-do, right?
    However, weeks later the first students started to drop out, because Advanced Maths got advanced really quickly. Claiming "advanced maths is just a rehash of addition" would be incorrect. Just as claiming CS is just a rehash of basic algorithms or big O notation, or university is some ivory tower outpaced by the industry.
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