I don't wanna hear anyone dismissing college education, specially from people that can't do asymptotic analysis and have no clue what a pointer is. It's not fine. What do you think people spend 4+ years studying for? For this shit? There's a reason why a diploma has a weight, it's not just decoration.

I get it that the american educational system is fucked up and you guys have to pay a shit ton of money for it, but you can't just pretend it's worth nothing.

How diminishing it is to hear people shit on a life long struggle to get where i am today. I had to study a ton to get into college, and I'm still pouring my blood and mental health into my studies, only for some random to say that a youtube tutorial is worth the same.

I’m not dismissive of college but college is what you make of it. I know a ton of grads that haven’t written a single line of quality code in their 4 years + internships so the same can be said the other way around.

But in all honesty, a lot of the high quality college courses are coming to youtube. I’m learning about CNNs from Stanford’s YT channel. And I’m implementing my own MLP from scratch. Makes me wonder why I’m paying for college on occasion but then I remember why that same Stanford course was hard for me to understand in high school cuz I didn’t know a lot about matrices, gradient, etc. And I learnt those from first year of college so yeah I guess a healthy combination of both wouldn’t be bad.

That topic is hard. School and university failed me, yet I don't think I'm "shittier", rather I'd be happy to get the years of torture back both have stolen me.

As long as there is mutual respect, I'd say to everyone their fetish ;) :)

Kinda funny cause I know the game usually the other way around.

What? You want money with no university degree?

Or the even worse part: People thinking they're way above you because they have a university degree.

But the other way round?

Usually I only yell at people with a theoretical background when they try to deliberately block a discussion by making it an entirely theoretical discussion - unintentionally (worse intentionally) throwing lots of terms around so noone without a theoretical background can follow...

I think it's unfair for either side to diminish / insult their hard work.

As always the rule of sanity applies: If said work has nothing to do with reality / sanity, leave it for the tinfoils at the internet, not at work.

@IntrusionCM I don't wanna gatekeep anyone, but tbh it's kinda hard to take criticism for my knowledge from people that didn't put in the work. if you get it from college or the internet doesn't matter, but truthfully speaking there's too many devs out there that don't know the fundamentals

@darrenrahnemoon sure, but it's not the same as saying "college is shit and all those college students make shitty devs", which is something I've seen people say in this app frequently

@darksideofyay at the end of the day the main objective is to know shit to get the job done. Be it Youtube or college.

The only downside to college is that it’s always lagging behind from where the industry is. Something that say YT doesn’t cuz more ppl are creating content.

Plus shitcoding for marks is sooo different than developing an actual project where multiple people are working on. You only care as far as u get the mark not what the consequences of a design decision
will be which is really important IRL.

@darrenrahnemoon i think i have a pretty different view of college, mostly because I'm not american.

in the us, college is an industry. you're paying for it so you're a client.
here we have public institutions, that focus heavily on research and creating a skilled workforce. because of that college here is a space for discussion, growth, independent projects, it's not just tests and "shitcoding". compared to our private colleges, the public ones have a much better reputation because of that environment

@darksideofyay absolutely not.

College and higher education is not a bad thing, but its also not a guarantee that someone actually know their stuff.

Just as 25 years of working in the field is not a guarantee, its just an indication that there is a potential this person knows what they are doing.

And as long as they accept that I would need to see some tangible proof its not a problem.

But from time to time you encounter someone with a diploma that think they stand above needing to prove them self, and all to often they prove to be the ones that never really worked, they just know to team up with the right person to get any project done and approved.

And also, a theoretical background does not mean that they know better than people already working in the field.

I have seen that to, new recruit with a university education claiming we have done it all wrong because that was not how they did it in school.

Bit the way they learned it was not focused on performance.

And to get the best performance you often bend the rules of normalization if data and similar

And very few schools run projects of enough scale to encounter that.

But at my current job I am the only one without a university degree ;)

And still I am the one every one turns to when things do not work and no one else can explain it.

And while I do have more experience than most of them many of them actually have worked at this company longer than me.

@Voxera well I’ve understood your unis down there on the other side of the Baltic Sea aren’t that great 😏

The OP isn’t against people without a degree! She’s against people who talk smack against graduates saying they wasted their time and that their skills aren’t practical. I have a CS degree and am doing fine professionally. And if anyone wants to enter this field without a CS degree or any degree whatsoever, I’m OK with that! Just cut the bullshit about people with degrees being nothing but bookworms!

@TeachMeCode thanks for the back up but I don't think anyone is reading the comments

@darksideofyay yeah what you’ve said here I completely agree with.

It’s not whether or not you went to college (I didn’t) it’s whether or not you’ve put the work in and continue to.

In the UK there are far too many shit devs with degrees that stopped learning the second they graduated.

@darksideofyay

My comment wasn't targeted at you specifically I was just wondering how / why your rant came to be.

Regarding the bad image of college on DevRant: I'm guilty - because in my experience with interns / coworkers a lot of them were lacking the fundamentals, even though they came from a university or had a college degree.

Education is a severe problem worldwide in my opinion... It's lacking in many things, especially being close to reality and giving practical life / work experience.

I'm from Germany btw. :)

When someone, be it like you with college or like me with learning things practically, we value our hard work.

My bad rep of college / education is that there are e.g. people who just learn things by heart - most educational systems "allow" this... Doesn't apply to you, as you value your work, I'm certain that you have the ability to apply your knowledge in practice.

@TeachMeCode This applies to your "bookworm" I guess. When I'm using the word bookworm I specifically mean people who have theoretical knowledge only - they cannot apply / adapt the theory in practice.

@100110111 I cannot really say since I never went to one ;)

But I have met people that did and some are very good but unfortunately some people manages tho get through them without understanding.

Just learning to repeat things like a parrot is not the same as understanding the subject but the parrots are often also the ones that think the degree entitles them to special treatment ;)

The ones that are more humble are never the problem, they either understand things or are prepared to keep learning until they do.

So I have no problem with higher education unless it’s used as some free beer ticket :)

I agree with you but if you know that the people saying something like that do it because their education system is fucked, I don't see the point in caring about their opinion. You're fortunate enough to live in a place that values education and does not make it just be a business. Be happy!

Yes, I agree with you. Many people say that the educational system is bad, there is no point in studying at university, and so on. But I don't think so. Yes, the system is not perfect, but the level of education in the USA is high. In my uni, on my specialty, I receive so much interesting info, so many tasks, which are useful, so somethimes I don't have any free time. Somethimes I even use the help of https://edubirdie.com/research-pape... because, yes, I can write myself, but with mistakes, proofreading saves me time and improve my academic performance. And of course, there are some things I don't like in the educational process, but compared to all the positive things, all of them are nothing.

@AlexandraP there is always reason to study and in IT its not just a one of, no matter if you went to university or youtube you will keep studying and learning.

Then, university today is probably better at computer science than when I was at that age since there really was no pure computer curriculum, it was generally part of the physics or more theoretical curriculums.

So out of 4+ years they might have gotten 6-12 months of computer related education with a focus on theory, meaning quite little actual practical knowledge, especially since any programs often was a year or two behind the industry.

Meaning they had a lot to learn still.

And unfortunately to many if them was not humble enough to accept that a mere college student could have anything to teach them, despite the fact that I by that time had 5 years of teaching computers behind me ;)

Getting lectured by a “non educated” apparently struck some sore toes.

Then as said, some where just eager to keep learning and did have a big advantage of the theoretical foundation the university had given them.

Great post!

I fully agree that education is necessary. However, the system is not perfect. And many young people suffer from an increased study load and endless chores that will most likely never be useful to them later in life. Therefore, I find services like https://paperspoint.com/ to be very useful, where you can find help with homework, such as essays and so on. This allows students to avoid stress, save time and focus their energy on studying the subject that they really like.