A CS degree is worthless, all my knowledge of modern frameworks comes from YouTube videos, some codeacademy and a little bit of reading the documentation.

I wonder what it feels like to actually learn something completely. I understand something, then I forget it exits until I have to use it again and by then all I remember is how to google the right stuff. Thoughts?

It's not actually worthless, but majority of modern development (mostly web) consists mostly of hacking several ready parts together which does not demand much knowledge other than basic logic and some crash course

People seem to miss the point of university - its role is to prepare you to be a researcher, hence the name computer *science*.
If you want to be a practitioner/technician who uses pre-made software and frameworks, then you (mostly) don't need an academic degree.
But when there is no off-the-shelf product to suit your needs, you begin to appreciate the skills you learned in university.

@NickyBones I don’t think I’m qualified for research either, I applied for this Research Assistant job where the prof asked me questions about convex optimisation, gauss-something optimisation and cyclic GANs. Suffice to say I didn’t get an offer.

@Raikan10 Because normally B.Sc is not enough to be a researcher - unless you do an enormous amount of studying on your own.
I worked as a research assistant in the last months of my M.Sc. I didn't really care for DL in my M.Sc, but I did learn about convex optimization and non linear solvers like Gauss-Newton and Levenberg–Marquardt.
You have to complete your PhD to be considered a scientist or a researcher, unless you are exceptionally gifted and managed to acquire the required skills in a different fashion.

@NickyBones thank you for this, gave me some confidence

Oddly enough my dad sent this to me this morning: https://betterprogramming.pub/why-e...

You don’t need a degree, but you do need a fundamental grasp and experience with a certain subset of knowledge. Degrees are one way to certify it.

@qbalsdon great article. This begs the question, how do I find out if I’ve accumulated enough knowledge and where do I find knowledge that is needed.

If you ask me to design a compiler I won’t be able to.

The work I’ve done at internships so far I wouldn’t say my code is optimised at all. In fact it’s super hacky, but I don’t know the right way ( no senior dev to depend on). How does one get the senior dev smarts?

@Raikan10 I think the best way to acquire the senior dev smarts is by shadowing a kickass senior. I (gracefully) leeched on kickass devs and it was super beneficial

@NickyBones great idea, will keep in mind

@molaram that’s smart ,

I joined devRant today and it’s like I’m getting a free mentorship session. I love it. Thanks guys

@NickyBones so you're a professional leech? 🤔

Looking back I think university glossed over the basics of programming too much and didn't focus on practicality enough. By the time I was ready to use what I'd learned at uni I'd already forgotten it all.

At my uni they tried to teach a group that could barely write a simple program the fundamentals of enterprise architecture and system design. Of course it was pointless.

@iiii I identify as a knowledge vampire

"Driving ed is worthless, I learned how to press pedals and turn the wheel from playing with toys. I don't need to understand what a parking brake does or how to release it, I can always get the car moving by cutting this wire that goes to the wheels."

@hitko isn’t a CS degree more about understanding internal car mechanics than driving ed?

Considering I learnt driving from my parents and trying stuff out much like coding rather than study it.

@NickyBones works for me 😁

@Raikan10 two things I learned from writing a compiler: 1. I don’t like it and (more importantly) 2. Lazy evaluation is really powerful.

I think the point is not that you have every “reached the pinnacle” but rather than you grow in a direction that makes the most efficient use of your time. Why spend years banging your head on bad code when the concept of design patterns was always there?

I would complain that in my 7 years as a “science” student no one ever taught me the scientific method properly and didn’t encourage effective TDD, or that design patterns are pretty useful. However the foundations I did get prepared me for being able to appreciate the value of those things and incorporate them into my workflows.

There is a line from the first “Dragon Age” game that has really stuck with me: “some tests … never end”

@Raikan10 Driving ed is not only about moving the car but also how to do it correctly. At least in Germany, driving ed will also teach about "car basics" like measuring the oil, what parts a car has, etc.
Additionally you can drive a car without looking into the mirrors - but you will learn why to look in itm

With university, this is similar, but not the same: On hand, it will teach fundamentals, even if they are not relevant to your specific use case. Depending on the syllabus, you will also learn software engineering and project organisation (which is less commonly thought online). Additionally it will teach a broader set of skills (that's why its called CS and not "<what ever field> programming"!).
Additionally, the degree certifies for an empolyer you have this minimum set of knowledge and skills.

Unfortunately, some universities suffer from outdated materials and a lack of quality (so one even learns outdated or wrong things), but the same applies to online sources...

Having graduated with an MSci in Computer Science with Year In Industry, I can tell that a CS degree ISN'T worthless unless you happen to do a job that benefits from 0% of what you were taught.
I've mostly been self-taught (got in the industry before uni), but *many* of the things I learnt at uni have been helpful (several which wouldn't have been apparent if I was entirely self-taught).

Now, most unis I know will let you pick your modules throughout your degree to choose to study what you prefer, so you have more control over your academic learning path than you may think.

Computer science is not a ten dollar online Angular bootcamp.

That’s why i didn’t even bother getting a degree..

Persoanlly, very happy when I know something for my job that I thought was useless at the time I learned it in uni

@craig939393 I am doing something more similar to CE than CS however we have project courses which is for the sole purpose of practicing the theory and learning how to work in a team and project stuff etc. Other courses have project components usually unless it's a very theoretical course like pure math course. This varies a lot from uni to uni and even between majors, so what people get out from their degree can probably differ a lot I suppose