I am currently a CS major, studying in a toxic university that teaches no more than old-school stuff.

I know HTML, CSS, and JS (self-taught), and at present, I am spending time on React.js.

I'm also a competitive programmer.

I badly wanna move out of this toxic educational environment and wanna do something that's worth spending time on.

I am feeling like I am just wasting both my time and money in this old-school university.

what should I do? help me out?

I am thinking that once I am fluent enough with HTML, CSS, JS, React, and some database stuff, I must start finding jobs in small startups.

badly need some guidance. PLEASE HELP ME...

Define this "old school stuff" you're talking about. Bear in mind, you're doing a CS degree, not coding.

That said, if it's a full BSc you should be taught at least one modern dynamic language (JS/Python). But if you're also being taught haskell, prolog and some maths, there are reasons. You're doing *computer science* after all.

If they're just teaching PHP and databases, run.

Why is it toxic?

You ought to elaborate on 'toxic' and what you want to/expected to learn: A CS degree is, as @atheist already said, not a coding course, if you just want to learn to do web development, it's not for you - equally, if you're not interested in CS, then coding might not be for you.

It's a bit dry, for sure, but what seems 'old school' is probably 'how a computer actually works' - that doesn't really change, whereas the skills required to be a web developer now are completely different to ten, even five, years ago. A fundamental understanding of a computer will never not be important, no matter how high-level your work is.

If you only want to do, and are lucky enough to find, work doing non-performance critical (if such a thing exists) web dev work, then fair play. Otherwise, CS is useful to you both in terms of knowledge and your resume. Complaining that CS doesn't cover web dev is like complaining that car mechanics doesn't cover respraying.

I think I'd actually put it more strongly than @atheist - if this "old school" stuff is the *fundamentals* of compilers, networking, memory management, lower level langs, hardware etc. then stick with it and you'll likely realise how wrong you were in a few years. Those fundamentals will give you a great foundation that will likely become invaluable throughout your career. This industry really isn't just about busting out a few cool bits of code in the latest language on the block and calling it a day, and you'll struggle to get far just by doing that.

If on the other hand they're teaching you BASIC like it's a relevant language in industry, then that's worrying.

trust me, all that old school knowledge will eventually pay off. they are the foundational part of most of the tech you see today.

unless the learning environment is not friendly and lecturers are incompetent, I've come across some YouTube lecturers explain most of these concepts in understandable, non-torturing ways.

it's hard to tell what you mean by old school, it could the system of learning is so whack that the school couldn't keep up.

Ditch school.

Start contributing to git repos on GitHub. The experience and networking from there is much more appreciated than a B.Sc. degree im computer science in the market.

On the same boat here. Just hijack all group projects and have fun.

@ilechuks73 agree, I would recommend Ben Eater's channel: has videos on pretty much everything you'll cover in CS, even builds a basic 8-bit CPU on breadboard out of raw components, really fascinating and he's got a knack for explaining abstract concepts that I could only dream of having.

as @atheist @MM83 and others well said, you need to define what you mean by toxic because if you are referring to CS fundamentals, those aren't.

I quite recently finished (a decent) uni and can confidently say that I have found several aspects of job search and (non-retard) interviews where I start with a massive advantage in understanding of concepts compared to other applicants.

On the other hand, if your university expects you to memorise Java 8 library funcions by heart and then write those down on paper without syntactical errors - which I had experienced at a previous university I left - then and only then it is actually "toxic". And then you should run the fuck away.

„I am also a competitive programmer“

Alright but, there is the door.

@petergriffin i don't get it

oh boi, once you find out that react is not one tool to use everywhere and that it depens on use case, you will be dissapointed in work you did in React.

@bioDan Nice as that would be, it's not true. There's plenty of places that still filter by "people who have a degree" before anyone even takes a second glance at the CV.

Should they? Of course not. But that's the reality, and I'd feel very uneasy advising people to ditch a formal education as a result.

@AlmondSauce you are right, and your position is perfectly valid. But i disagree, and i think there are plenty of good places that care less about formal education and more about practical expertise. Whatsmore, those are the kind of places you'd rather be in.

In my generation (graduated around 2010), that was harder to achieve. Now, as per my experience as an employer and employee, i feel comfortable to advise to ditch school for your passion when it comes to Computer Science, I would have done so for myself 🤷‍♂️

When i go over CVs for recruitment, i care more about the commits in the git repo than the stated candidate's education and the rest of the exaggerated stuff people write.

Absolutely granted its not for everyone, and it may carry a greater risk, but also a greater reward.

@bioDan you are outlier. No interviewers read candidates GitHub repos. Interviewers can't even elaborate what developers do in their own company. CS degree is still the way to go because of stupid corporate culture

@h3rp1d3v you may be right, after all ive been an employee and employer in start-up companies, in different investment stages, with a small team of up to 30 people.
If you want to work for a corporation you may need to have formal education.

But if you gather experience in a start up company, that's better than formal education as well. At least that's the case from my point of view

@bioDan
I have mostly been applying to startups between seed - series A, and yet all but one of them seriously cared about my education. Most of them even asked specific questions about the structure of my education, why I chose certain things and much more.

That said, I did try to apply to top startups so maybe the ones further down the pack don't care so much.

Also, if you have several years of experience of course they won't care about your education so much but I don't think that's OP's case.

Only had 1 grad interview, stayed at the company 4 years, so didn't really go through that stuff much.

But yes, the focus is now entirely "can you solve problems".

I think open source code is a good way to demonstrate your ability, get your foot in the door, but not the only thing, or all you need.

@Alt-Tab precisely. Did you present your GitHub profile in your CV?

I bet if you contributed to open source projects the company uses in production youd get much more woo than having an education with honors degree

@atheist i absolutely agree, all im saying is that proven experience in relevant repositories through github has more weight than a formal degree in any institution. At least for companies in the start-up stage

@bioDan of course I presented my GitHub profile in my CV. That's part of the reason many of the companies started talking to me. Two of the startups actually use one of my node modules. Still they asked about education.
I am not saying that they would have rejected me without my degree but it was definitely a good point. And to re-iterate, I meant good startups.

@Alt-Tab well i guess the devil is in the details and we don't have all of them.
I think that the education train, may still be relevant today, but experience counts much more and i believe proper talent and experience has more weight in a recruitment decision

@bioDan lack of a degree wouldn’t preclude someone from my hiring them, it would certainly help them get on the shortlist. Also, education and time spent with peers in such an environment is of more use than subsequent employability, it’s a really valuable life experience. I hope the OP finds a balance and sticks it out.

Having good professional experience, a degree and at least one personal project to show off (that isn’t from some cheap tutorial) will make you pretty much unstoppable