Not sure yet. I finished my study for Software Engineering and I'm currently working as a Linux engineer.

But, my current boss didn't give a fuck about whether or not I had a diploma or whatsoever at all, as long as I had/have the required skills.

I don’t have a degree, nor has a degree ever prevented me from being hired / doing my job.

Now that’s not to say all businesses / companies will over look your education section on the CV, But for me it’s never been a problem.

#SelfTaughtDevsMatter

Dropped out to grow a business I co-founded. Respect to all those that finished. I was already working a six figure salary as a software engineer before I even started at a university. I decided to attend though to have a more complete resume. One day a professor explained that we could look forward to doing really "advanced concepts" like web services OUR SENIOR YEAR. That was already daily life for me. Our business was starting to grow quickly and it needed more and more of my time. I chose the business and for me, that was the correct choice.

Totally useful!
Master CS Degree.
More knowledge then most coders.
More knowledge on what’s going to come.

No ragrets 🤷‍♂️

Long rant ahead.. so feel free to refill your cup of coffee and have a seat 🙂

It's completely useless. At least in the school I went to, the teachers were worse than useless. It's a bit of an old story that I've told quite a few times already, but I had a dispute with said teachers at some point after which I wasn't able nor willing to fully do the classes anymore.

So, just to set the stage.. le me, die-hard Linux user, and reasonably initiated in networking and security already, to the point that I really only needed half an ear to follow along with the classes, while most of the time I was just working on my own servers to pass the time instead. I noticed that the Moodle website that the school was using to do a big chunk of the course material with, wasn't TLS-secured. So whenever the class begins and everyone logs in to the Moodle website..? Yeah.. it wouldn't be hard for anyone in that class to steal everyone else's credentials, including the teacher's (as they were using the same network).

So I brought it up a few times in the first year, teacher was like "yeah yeah we'll do it at some point". Shortly before summer break I took the security teacher aside after class and mentioned it another time - please please take the opportunity to do it during summer break.

Coming back in September.. nothing happened. Maybe I needed to bring in more evidence that this is a serious issue, so I asked the security teacher: can I make a proper PoC using my machines in my home network to steal the credentials of my own Moodle account and mail a screencast to you as a private disclosure? She said "yeah sure, that's fine".
Pro tip: make the people involved sign a written contract for this!!! It'll cover your ass when they decide to be dicks.. which spoiler alert, these teachers decided they wanted to be.

So I made the PoC, mailed it to them, yada yada yada... Soon after, next class, and I noticed that my VPN server was blocked. Now I used my personal VPN server at the time mostly to access a file server at home to securely fetch documents I needed in class, without having to carry an external hard drive with me all the time. However it was also used for gateway redirection (i.e. the main purpose of commercial VPN's, le new IP for "le onenumity"). I mean for example, if some douche in that class would've decided to ARP poison the network and steal credentials, my VPN connection would've prevented that.. it was a decent workaround. But now it's for some reason causing Moodle to throw some type of 403.

Asked the teacher for routers and switches I had a class from at the time.. why is my VPN server blocked? He replied with the statement that "yeah we blocked it because you can bypass the firewall with that and watch porn in class".
Alright, fair enough. I can indeed bypass the firewall with that. But watch porn.. in class? I mean I'm a bit of an exhibitionist too, but in a fucking class!? And why right after that PoC, while I've been using that VPN connection for over a year?

Not too long after that, I prematurely left that class out of sheer frustration (I remember browsing devRant with the intent to write about it while the teacher was watching 😂), and left while looking that teacher dead in the eyes.. and never have I been that cold to someone while calling them a fucking idiot.

Shortly after I've also received an email from them in which they stated that they wanted compensation for "the disruption of good service". They actually thought that I had hacked into their servers. Security teachers, ostensibly technical people, if I may add. Never seen anyone more incompetent than those 3 motherfuckers that plotted against me to save their own asses for making such a shitty infrastructure. Regarding that mail, I not so friendly replied to them that they could settle it in court if they wanted to.. but that I already knew who would win that case. Haven't heard of them since.

So yeah. That's why I regard those expensive shitty pieces of paper as such. The only thing they prove is that someone somewhere with some unknown degree of competence confirms that you know something. I think there's far too many unknowns in there.

Nowadays I'm putting my bets on a certification from the Linux Professional Institute - a renowned and well-regarded certification body in sysadmin. Last February at FOSDEM I did half of the LPIC-1 certification exam, next year I'll do the other half. With the amount of reputation the LPI has behind it, I believe that's a far better route to go with than some random school somewhere.

Imagine if you will, a fictional world outside our own.

In this world, the requirement for getting a drivers licenses is 4 years of research into quantum mechanics.

- Was it interesting? Yeah.

- Did I learn it because I had to? Yup.

- Will I use the harmonic oscillation calculations of a particle when driving my car. Fuck no!

- Did it cost me an ungodly amount of money? It sure did!

- Will some dumb people still say it was useful because it is the minimum (fictional) barrier to entry for driving a car. You bet your sweet ass they will!!!

It was about as useful as any made up requirement, make-work, self-funding, circle-jerking, waste or time and money to feed the pockets of people who are too scared to do actual work so they teach, can be.

I paid all that money to be taught technology that was old when my mother was in school.

In the first year out of school, with only a $300 subscription to PluralSight some uDemy courses and hard work, I learned 100X as much as everything they put in front of me in school.

-------

School has its place.

Children who don't understand the importance of learning and need their hand help.

Adult children (some of which on on their 3rd or 4th degree) who also need their hand held.

People too afraid to enter the real world.

Doctors.

-------

I would do it again because it is the minimum requirement of entry, but thats nothing more than a bullshit make-work project.

Play their game as long as you need to. Keep your own game in mind. Don't drink the koolaid, just fake a sip. Then when the time is right, play by your own rules.

Peace

Dropped out after 4 months at Uni when I realised that I will learn absolutely nothing useful for my future career. We were either learning HTML/CSS or coding calculators in C# . At this point I was already writing my own PHP CMSs with huge databases for real life clients. I guess I can only blame my course level and maybe I could go someplace else but it probably wouldn't be so much different.

A month after I dropped out I got my first job as a junior Drupal developer. That was 7 years ago, now I'm a FrontEnd dev in a really great environment and throughout the years no one looked at my grades or even asked for them.

Experience and passion as as valuable if not more as your education.

If you don’t have a CS degree... this question isn’t for you to answer with “I don’t have a degree but...”

I found university very worthwhile, mainly for what it exposed me to that I wouldn’t have necessarily learned otherwise. University exposed me to a lot of knowledge which allowed me to discover the fields and concepts that really interested me. It also forced me to learn math, and I’ve come to really love mathematics, even though my knowledge is still not that deep. I really respect and appreciate math now that I have more than a superficial understanding of it.

CS-wise, the things that have been most useful in practice have been complexity, data structures, concurrency, and others, but complexity is probably the absolute most important thing to at least learn the basics of.

I would not say that university is a necessity though. You can absolutely get by teaching yourself, especially if you are disciplined/interested enough to keep doing it. The important thing is to learn *what* to learn.

Will be getting my degree in next 2 months people around me are happy that somebody can finally fix their printers for free.

How useful was my CS Degree?

I don't have one. I went $50k in debt trying to get one, but after shuffling schools and trying to make it work around a full time job...I took a break.

I've been a professional developer for 4+ years and worked in IT for over a decade.

I'm not sure if it's worth going back, but it sucks to have all that debt and nothing tangible to show for it.

"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.

I'm in 3rd year of my CS degree....
Fucking Indian Education System

I'm having a subject css(cryptography & system security)... The bitch who teaches us doesn't know shit.... She just picks random words from the ppt & blabber random bullshit...

Last week we had our unit tests...and the question was explain Working of deffie-helman. Just because I didn't use the names Alice & Bob in the example she didn't gave me marks....I mean wtf..that was just an example mentioned in the slides.....

I bet it wasn't required at all...
I knew most of the things they teach here..
These mofo professors have just a CS degree and they are here to teach the same course....

Never took any degree in anything except finishing gymnasium (as we call it in Sweden). Got hired before I even had the chance to move on with studies. Although, even if I would have, I don't think it'd been computer science.

My cs degree helped me learn how to learn. No it didn't teach me the technologies I use today, but I now know that I learn best through struggle and that is invaluable. Struggle feels a lot like frustration so it can be confusing in the moment, but knowing that it's the feeling where I learn the best keeps me at the problem with a positive attitude.

Also I made a lot of great friends.

Not CS degree, but EE, and totally worth the effort. Not only that without degree, I wouldn't get jobs in many companies, but I actually learnt a lot. Laplace and Fourier will be as valid in a 100 years as they were 200 years ago.

Yeah, it was fucking hard. Math was rather OK, only 50% of the students failed the first exam. EE was harder, 90% failed at the first try. That wasn't regarded as problem - on the contrary, the exams were designed to weed out. After two semesters, we already had 50% student loss.

I remember what the EE prof told us in the first semester: we would learn a lot of things, but most importantly, to think like an engineer. Didn't make sense right away, but 5 years later, I knew what he had been talking about.

Really who would check if he/ she is an idiot ??

Atleast somebody thinks I know what I do 😂

Well..honestly the degree is useless, because at the end what matters is your skills

LinkedIn is the new Facebook.

I feel a great ole big circle jerk of the no degree club forming with this topic lol

I started writing code at a young age, nodding games, building websites, modifying hex files, hacking etc... I started my career off tho in highschool writing embedded code for a local medical robotics company, and also got tasked with building the mobile app to control these robots and use them for diagnostics, etc.... this was before the App bubble, before there was app degree and that bullshit.. anyway graduated highschool, went to college to get a comp sci degree.
Wanted to teach for the university and research AI...

well I dropped out of college after 3 years, cuz I spent more time at work than in class. (I was a software consultant) in the auto industry in Detroit. I wasn’t learning anything I didn’t already know or could learn from books or a quick google search.
I also didn’t like the approach professors and the department taught software... way none of the kids had a good foundation of what the fuck they were doing... and everyone relied on the god damn IDEs... so I said fuck it and dropped out after getting in plenty of arguments with the professors and department leads.

I probably should have choose CE .. but whatever CS imo still needs a solid CE/EE foundation without it, 30 years from now I fear what will become of the industry of electronics... when all current gen folks are retired and nobody to write the embedded code, that literally ALLLLL consumer electronics runs on. Newer generations don’t understand pointers, proper memory management etc.

So I combined both passion AI and knowledge of software in general and embedded software, and been working on my career in the auto industry without a degree, never looked back.

A little background of me. I’m a firm believer of knowledge is power, skill is practice and hard work. Especially for this field, it’s easier to self learn the skills or language these days without having to take loans or burn a huge hole in ur wallet and stuff. But i personally feel, it’s hard to follow an effective path of learning when the info is everywhere. So have to be careful with that. (that’s why I’m here to learn from experts, lurking around)

Sure, degree is just a paper or validation that this person has completed this and that. But doesn’t reflect their actual skill. Especially for this field where u can just show ur skills by making projects. If ur potential boss is impressed by ur skills, u are hired. BUT if ure in Singapore, they require u to have degree by law. No matter how skilled u are, u only get specific amount of salary within a preset range. The range goes by Diploma, Degree, Master, PhD. Etc. U will still get hired by a company if they like u, but won’t get more than a preset range.

I was contented with just my Diploma. But decided to get degree cuz I wanted to earn more. And now considering to go for ms, just cuz my current company gives sponsorship.

Aside from salary, I do think getting a degree in University is one of the important phases of the life, where ure working hard, trying to juggle different things. Also, u do get other perks being a uni students, like discount for books, get access to latest devices if the uni has.

But all in all, whatever floats ur boat, right.

Well, my country has a Degree called Bsc.CSIT which literally means Bachelors of Science Computer Science and Information Technology. I completed that degree and was employed right after I completed my degree. I have worked in two offices and no one cares what degree I have.

So I think Degree is not that necessary here in Nepal as long as you can get the job done.

Now I am about to pursue a Big Data related degree hope that is not as worthless as my current degree.

I believe it is really useful because all of the elements of discipline and perseverance that are required to be effective in the workforce will be tested in one way or another by a higher learning institution. Getting my degree made me little more tolerant of other people and the idea of working with others, it also exposed me to a lot of topics that I was otherwise uninterested and ended up loving. For example, prior to going into uni I was a firm believer that I could and was going to learn all regarding web dev by maaaaaself without the need of a school. I wasn't wrong. And most of you wouldn't be wrong. Buuuuuut what I didn't know is how interesting compiler design was, how systems level development was etc etc. School exposed me to many topics that would have taken me time to get to them otherwise and not just on CS, but on many other fields.

I honestly believe that deciding to NOT go to school and perpetuating the idea that school is not needed in the field of software development ultimately harms our field by making it look like a trade.

Pffft you don't need to pay Johnny his $50dllrs an hour rate! They don't need school to learn that shit! Anyone can do it give him 9.50 and call it a day!<------- that is shit i have heard before.

I also believe that it is funny that people tend to believe that the idea of self learning will put you above and beyond a graduate as if the notion of self learning was sort of a mutually exclusive deal. I mean, congrats on learning about if statements man! I had to spend time out of class self learning discrete math and relearning everything regarding calculus and literally every math topic under the sun(my CS degree was very math oriented) while simultaneously applying those concepts in mathematica, r, python ,Java and cpp as well as making sure our shit lil OS emulation(in C why thank you) worked! Oh and what's that? We have that for next week?

Mind you, I did this while I was already being employed as a web and mobile developer.

Which btw, make sure you don't go to a shit school. ;) it does help in regards to learning the goood shit.

Very much! My internship during school turned into a full-time job over the summer! I don’t make crazy money, but I LOVE the work and cost of living in my area is pretty low compared to the rest of the country. So, I’m great! 😁😁

Very. I saved 27,000 pounds by never going and teaching myself using the interwebs. ALL HAIL THE INTERNET

~ Old McDonald's had a farm, 502 error? ~

It made my life as it is now,
I didn't know anything about programming before getting into college.
Now, I have my own business because of study CS.

It's just a piece of paper which tells that I know something.

I was teaching students most of the time, in the last year teachers where somewhat forced by my internship company to be open for the knowledge students have, so that is when I started teaching teachers as well.

Its the worst experience I ever had.

During my last University year, a big IT Corp made a national contest for students with some 3 phases and some prized at the end. I ended 14 over 2000 participants and they called me for an internship which eventually turned up to a good job contract. Still working with them now.

as you can see my naive people; even dfox/trogus started to question whether or not they have done the right thing by chasing a degree that has no value in the real world. just understand that when you see someone who works at a job, he works there not because he has a degree but because he has the knowledge and skills to get the work done

(probably a stretch and only Aussies will understand half of what I'm saying with this one buuut)

Not at all, I did a certificate 3 from TAFE in information and technology with a prominent amount of the course being on software diagnostic and web development and to this day have used absolutely 0 of the knowledge I gained and half of it is now deprecated and obsolete anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I only finished my CS degree last year but while I was a student and after I got my degree I went for a few interviews and none of the companies really asked me what degree I have or didn't ask at all, some just asked what I was studying. All of the companies asked what I can do and what my skills are. If I can do it, they were happy to hire me even if I didn't have a degree.

So to answer the question, a degree is not useful if you still don't know how to program (for example) or if you don't know your field well. If you are good at what you do, you will earn crazy money with or without a degree.

I know a few people that don't have a CS degree but their programming skills are crazy good...probably much better than a uni graduate with a CS degree.

Mine was not CS but software engineering. I had been programming for 5 years, and I think anything before my degree was just so bad. No patterns or anything. It was really good in the way that I learned how to do things well, not exactly learning about the technologies. I also have an internship that I must do for at least 3 months before getting the degree which also helps.

Did two bachelors (network/system then dev).
Useful ?
Well I learnt some basics during the first year; but then being curious and searching things by myself made them completely useless.
Almost every interview I did were successful and didn't asked for my degrees but what I was actually able to do, code and understand.

Completely useless.
Well to be fair...
I studied after I already worked as a software dev for a few years, so I already knew most of the stuff.
Most of the time I just pointed out mistakes of the profs.
I still completed it, but I've never used the degree at all. Not even for my recent interview. I did not even put it on my CV. And I still landed the job.

I think that practical experience is way more valuable than having a CS degree. (Apart from CS research/academic positions)

Have no Degree (the paper, I did study), currently doing a master to actually get the damn paper.

Have been working with a good pay for a few years now.

The Degree will help pass some HR filters on the dumbest companies, but sometimes you do want to work there.

The degree does nothing in the new professional word in this profession.

BUT sometimes, a degree gets you information that you will not get on your own that help you grow faster. Talking about the basics that everyone says are useless... But they are not.

Degree itself? Marginally useful. Learned most of what I know from youtube/CTFs/tinkering. Most kids graduating with me don't know or care what a rest service is, AWS. What's that?, Etc.

Is what you make out of it honestly.

Now the environment it provided and doors immediately opened by people I met/professors: invaluable. Guaranteed internships and jobs.

Studied for 9 years in a degree, decided to quit because the math related subjects were to hard for me. Got a job anyways. TL;DR; a degree doesn't really atleast. not if you find the right company.

I did a communication and multimedia design study because I was convinced I already knew almost anything.

Ooh the beauty of youth.

But it did help me in the long run, communication with clients and being able to present work with some decent looking presentation and mockups gets the managers all horney as teenagers on springbreak.

Pretty sure thats why I beat some competitors on big projects while their technical skill and team where much better.

I studied computer game development at a university that had pretty low standards. It was perfect for a slacker like me. I enjoyed it. Maybe it was implied that you'd have to study on your own and that completing the courses wasn't enough to make you a competent developer, but maybe I'm a bit slow or something because that never occurred to me until after we were finished.

I was taught enough programming and database stuff to land me an entry position job at a consulting firm before I was able to complete my thesis. Technically I dropped out, I guess, since I don't have a diploma.

I built a portfolio consisting of different projects/essays I'd completed/wrote for different courses. That, together with my charm and boyish good lucks made me get the job.

Anyways, even though I learned more practical stuff my first year on the job than I did my 3 years of uni it was a very good experience. It helped me understand what I was interested in so that I could pursue that later and some of the people I got to know would help my career later.

I mean, if education wasn't free (except living expenses, books, etc) I'd might say that I had been better off just taking a year of egghead/udemy/Indian Guy On YouTube classes to learn what I needed to land myself a job. But I'd need to know which courses to take so I'd probably find a group of courses that someone else put together. I guess it would be nice to take those classes with other people so that you can work together, learn from each other, and make some friends and connections as well. Oh, that sounds kinda like uni ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Bootcamps get you up and running in coding quickly. If you are a programmer, companies are only interested on how quickly, error free and cheaply you produce marketable output. Bootcamps enable this.

More or less you are not more than a former assembly line worker putting parts on a car platform. Your value is not very high as you may be exchanged at any time at their will.

Nevertheless, you can earn money quickly. You trade in your youth and time which might be a dead end in the long-term. Trends go to machine learning, artificial intelligence. They will not need Bootcamp people and code workers.

It is better you set up Bootcamps and sell them versus absolving this. Like selling shovels during the gold rush, but not working in the mud of Alaska by yourself.

Your choice is: Making quick money, which fades anyway; or striving for the long-term future proof career.

C/S degrees from Technical Universities of reputation give to you the right direction under a strategic consideration. Companies which pay well, or freelancing with a solid acknowledged background, will always look for top graduates. People from Bootcamps are just OK for hammering assembly line coding. Even worse with SCRUM in one noisy room under enormous team server pressure controls, counting your lines of code per minute, with pale people all around. And groups of controllers never acknowledging nor trusting your work.

To acquire a serious degree, a Bachelor is nothing. Here, in INDIA, Bachelor now is what a former high school grade was. You must carry a diploma or Masters degree combined with internships at big companies with high brand recognition. This will require 4–6 years of your lifetime. You can support this financially by working part-time freelancing as making some projects front- or back-end web, data analysis and else.

Bootcamp people will lose in the long-term. They are the modern cannon fudder of software production.

It is your choice. Personally, I would never do Bootcamps. Quality and sustainability require time, deep studies and devotion.

My college years was actually quite helpful.

I'm from a college that value academic proficiency over industrial skills. There are only 2-3 courses top that are focusing more on coding or software development. The others are theoretical and focus more on the math behinds everything (with fun projects tho, so they are not boring at all).

The importance is that, you could easily learn coding and software dev practice from good examples in your workplace, probably way better what you can get in college. But chances are that our daily job rarely touches hardcore algorithm and mathematical principal behind. Where when you actually need it (bi-weekly scenario), your knowledge and research experience in college comes to play.

And of course, by all means, that was an enjoyable college life!

Didn't take one...

!rant
I think that more than learning about CS, I learned how to cope with enormous amounts of frustration that comes with being a dev and I also felt great when I was being challenged with actual deadlines through exams, hackathons, assignments, practicals and tough professors.
Professionally, I think the great knowledge of fundamentals of CS helps a lot and it is just a great way to get your foot inside the door (for internship interviews and career opportunities) of a company and then show what you're made of when it comes to being a dev.
Also, I had the time of my life because I was around like-minded people who loved the same things and it was good to watch them suffer at first and then, watch them succeed at something that I was about to do.

The shit code I wrote before my cs degree is marginally better than the shit code I write now. The lack of of improvement is related to the shit job I got after my degree. Cs degree did teach me a lot of good oo concepts and design.... That I rarely use due to shit legacy code I maintain.

I got associated degree, it helped me to get my first job. From there I learned everything at work.

Associated degree and bachelor degree here are just titles, education in computer science over this country is not so good tbh. Far too few colleges are competent enough to give you a grasp of the current state of development world from the last 15 years.

So I'm not planning to get bachelor degree, it's expensive and has enough math to not like it(I had to see some math in my associated degree and haven't used in the last 9 years). I'm not in the machine learning, researching or that stuff field, so I'm not need of that. From what I can learn getting a bachelor degree, I think I can handle from my own to get the food on the table. Currently planning to start a startup

It’s not the degree itself or even cs specifically that I find useful, but rather that you learn to put thoughts and ideas on paper in a structured manner. Explaining things you think you know is harder than it seems, especially when you know a teacher is going to grade you on how well you explain that thing.

Technology moves too fast these days for a program to he worth it in my opinion but the degree definitely raises the salary roof, so there’s always that.

Very useful!
It's not just about code but the whole package.
Watching great programmers fail miserably at project management, research, documentation, team leading and acting professional is just embarrassing, especially when they slate those who went out to educate themselves.

🎙️ Mic drop, I'm out!

Still studying, but considering dropping out. I've been working part time in the field since last months of highschool. Going to University seems like a waste of time. I just sit at lectures and listen about things I already know. Worst part of it is that it's extremely depressing, seems like I'm just wasting time I could be spending doing something actually productive. Seems like the only thing keeping me there currently is sunk cost fallacy.

Last week went to a startup conference and set up multiple interviews in some startups and if they go well I'm finally saying goodbye to University.

Well, I left my job to continue my study.
I guess that explains it all.

useless.

I was working as freelancer while doing my bachelor degree and then got hired. I'll say that help bigger company to trust and pay you more. But nothing about skills.

Although I didnt get my degree yet i can say that i already knew that university wont teach me shit. Im already at second semester and im currently planning on skipping (passing early) half of the courses.

Most of the knowlege i will gain surely will come from personal projects and research. Some people forget that uni just gives you the oppurtunity and the tools and that is your resposibility to use them and learn by yourself as well.

To be fair, I don't have my degree yet (just two more semesters...) but I'm working as a dev second year now and studying is really nothing compared to real-world experience. Yeah, I know I haven't said nothing new.

Simple... Its not useful,
.
.
.
.
.
Experience and knowledge is what matters.

I think the advantage of CS is that it forces you to explore things you might not think interest you, it also gives a general base and vocabulary to speak "the language" of this career. With that said I often look to hire people without CS degrees but that has the motivation to learn by themselves (I'm self-taught). The degree doesn't say much about, but if during it you explore, stay curious, look beyond 20y/o outdated advice from some professors you'd get the most out of it.

Start making a portfolio even before starting college and stay curious!

Okay, so we've learned nothing new.
A degree is a useless waste of time and nobody cares about it.

Said by someone who's currently in school, and will learn the basics of the stuff I'm currently doing day to day in about roughly three years.

wk145

A uni kicked out here, enough said :3

// I don't wanna share my great achievement and wisdom in the official weekly topic thread 😆

Don't have a cs degree, when I was in college I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I got an bachelor's in math figuring that would open a lot of doors. Did a boot camp after college to test the waters and found out i had a real passion for engineering. 2 years later I am teaching people with Masters in cs how to get shit done at my job. Morale of the story, your education in the theoretical doesn't mean shit when it's time to get practical work done.

I think it was very useful for developing soft skills like time management, teamwork, dealing with failures, the willingness to learn and how to approach a problem, etc.

It's not about learning a technology or programming language super good and be the C++ or Web expert after finishing your degree. It's about self organization and problem solving IMO.

It’s a step in the door

A week late but I was just thinking about this:

How to slow down, read instructions/specs, ask instead of assume, and step away when my brain is going crazy.

I think the technical stuff I’m learning I could learn by myself, but needing to slow down and pay attention is a problem I’ve had my whole life, and I’m truly only now addressing it with help from my teachers, cause I’d fail every class if I didn’t!!!

Ngl I probably never would've learned any programming properly without it. I'm too disorganized and get distracted easily so I probably wouldn't have learned any language if it took me more than 30 minutes to get up and running. Plus I made great friends that I wouldn't trade for the world and learned a lot about myself and how I think and work with problems. I really doubt I would've become a hobby programmer so yeah. Unpopular opinion but I'm having a good time at uni. It also seems like my university does a lot more to prepare us for development in the real world than many other universities do so that might have something to do with it.

Honestly? In a way. The degree itself did not bring me anything more that I already had. The process, on the other hand, was very useful. Both medicine and SW engg. courses taught me a lot: patience, manipulation, listen carefuly to what is asked/told [rather than assuming I know it all], dealing with consequences of my decisions, teamwork, "I must", "I mustn't", "I will", etc.

As for tech skills - nay, I didn't get anything new from IT course [although I've learned a freaking lot in med].

Well studying for it made me stop working fulltime (in a cs field), so for my bank account it's not useful at all. And for myself, it feels a bit like a waste of time.

Currently studying.
I feel like degrees are quite valuable. It is basically the university vouching for you and that they think you are qualified within an area. This is quite valuable.
Through work, I have seen some horrible shit in production, therefore i think it makes good sense for a company to ask for some "minimum requirements" which can be verified by an institution like a university. Not saying that all who graduates are good programmers, they just have the minimum required knowledge and skill that the university demands in order to vouch for them.

I believe that on average the "average bad programmer" from a university will be better than "average bad programmer" without degree.

Plus, if you have a decent education system in your country, you shouldn't have to pay for you degree.

Actually my degree helped me a lot, I owe my teachers most of what I know, I learned so much, I even learned to love programming with one of my teachers and now I can't think of myself doing anything apart from programming. It got me my first job, and soon I realized my formation (and my college partner's) was among the best in my country, I was soon able to solve problems that no one else in the team could, and could learn new stuff faster than them, all the graduated from my same college usually had better projects and instant good reputation because they knew we were well prepared.

So YES, my degree helped me and my friends a LOT and I feel I couldn't have chosen a better thing to study or a better place to do it.

Not very since I don't have one.

I think discussing / talking about whether your educations are useful or not is always gonna be a never ending debate.

Each person has their own unique way to nurture their true potentials. In my case, I always "thought" that taking college in Computer Science is such a waste of time and money, even I still try to survive with it these 3 years. In my first year, I fight a lot with my parents because I always said I wanna drop out and just get to work. But in the end...I still continue my journey for 3 years and yeah...I currently struggling to graduate. Maybe, after graduate, it will be a waste of time and money like how I thought about it. But I also learn that taking college journey have teach me a lot of things, like meeting so mane different kind of friends / people, time-management, etc. Maybe those Study Materials in Class will be forgotten in just a few years after I graduate, but those other life-lessons I believe will remain in myself for a long time...

Some people said if you are someone who wanna work hard, study hard, and have the grit to learn by yourself and committed to become a developer by yourself, you don't need college. But if you are someone who still find out your way, still figuring out whether it's the best choice to take computer science or not as a carreer, and you don't wanna waste time doing nothing, just get yourself to college.

The point is...it's just how we try to find out what's actually worked for us even if it's not the best choice.

It looked nice on my CV ... Hmmmm actually the only useful thing was learning how to design a system.
Programming is matter of practice...
Designing however you need some educational background.. see some amazing programmers with equally horrible designing skills ..!

Yes. It effect when working in foreign country. The Government ask for basic Graduation for visa purpose.

I did software engineering but it was total waste of 4 years for learning. It was good for networking and exploring the shit going on in tech world but learning is always self work. You have to learn most of things by self i.e self-taught. The second main thing is practice every single day, there is no fucking shortcut.. I repeat no.

I dont have a degree yet, actually Im on my way to my next exam towards this degree. But I think it helps me alot in understanding basic things. I learned to program in my job where I am working as a web developer beside my studies. But we were teached so many basics, when I am looking at code and dirfferent languages, it just feels as if I "understand" what is happening there. And I think this is a pretty neat thing, because IMO everyone can be a developer, but not everyone can be a computer scientist. Beside this, we have pretty nice profs and cool subjects we can choose from. One is like the founder of wikidata and we heard a lecture considering newest technologies that are used in wikidata and how we can work with it, which was pretty interesting. So I think the degree teaches me a lot

How useful is my degree? I'm not sure to be honest. I did get to dive into a lot of subject matter which I find interesting and challenging. I also had to learn stuff I hate (solving matrices of differential equations). Strangely though, even though I doubt I will ever use this I am proud of myself for having slugged though it.

The teachers were helpful and supportive, I got to study in groups and had access to resources such as the university's GPU cluster.

In my day2day? So far, I cannot see anything I use directly. However, the university forced me to learn to pick up different technologies quickly, read the documentation, ask for help when your don't understand something. So, in that regard I think I profited from university.

I wasn't the best student by a long shot. My class mates helped me a lot. I struggled A LOT. Having been in the recieving end of a helping hand, o return the favour where ever I can.

Can't say, don't have one yet

//Also first rant!

Haven't gotten it yet, still in college working towards it, but from the way a good number of people are making it sound, it's not that worth it. Probably going to drop out when my scholarship dries out at the end of spring 2020. It's a four-year scholarship, but I'm probably not going to graduate in spring 2020 based on the grades I'm getting in my math and physics classes.

Side note: I'm taking Computer Organization and Architecture this semester and it's making me want to jump off a fucking bridge.

Degree is still on the way.
But once i have finished it'll help me do something like

std::cin>>a;
syd::cin>>b;
int sum = a + b ;
std::cout<<"sum of both numbers is:"<<sum;

My degree tells me that it is the most useful way of solving real world problems. By using c++ to cout statemens on terminal can solve all problems of a corporate company.

Never went to Uni.
I am currently a College student (UK).
I've also got a part time job as a Web Developer.
I've got this job because I was able to prove myself.
Nothing I've learned at the College is useful for my job.
I've seen a lot of fresh graduates getting jobs at my company. They think they know their shit - that is until they get smashed by reality.
From what I've seen the CS degree is not worth a penny. I might still go to Uni but I'd rather choose a different subject.

I don't have a cs degree (my degree is in aerospace engineering). However, I think the question is valid for any degree. The answer depends on the field. When sitting in on interviews over the years, the type of degree for programming jobs never seemed that important if there were experience involved. So, if the job description required 2 yrs exp. in X, then that experience trumped the degree type. If the job was for a junior dev right out of college, then degree type becomes one of the most important factors. So, for that first job, it's important that you've got a degree (any degree) because it shows that you can accomplish that chunk of work. Having a cs degree at that point does provide a distinct advantage over those with medieval romantic french poetry degrees. That's the game, and don't fret if 95% of the material you study in college you never use again. The point of studying it wasn't to use it immediately (go learn a trade if that's your bent), it was to both test you and to expose you to specialties that you might want to do later.

Well, I work in the industry for about 2 years now. No one ever asked me about my degree. And I didn’t learn shit on college anyway. Guess its good I took those years in college to self educate...

I didn't do CS and yet after all these years, I don't know if it was for good or not

I never went to college, the main reason was financially so I self educated myself from home, and 1 year later I had a bigger salary than the average salary in my country.. so I diploma is just a paper to me.. in fact one of my friends who went to a well recognized college in my country came to me to do him a project, he ended up impressing the professor and getting highest marks. So no CS degree has 0 affect on your job today.

I can't say how a CS degree helped me since I dropped out, but in all of my tech related jobs we turn down candidates with a CS degree left and right. Turns out showing up for class and managing to pass doesnt give you real world experience, passion, or even knowledge. I used to be a floor factory worker and my team lead was a CS degree holder.

But hey, maybe the crippling debt and super unrelated classes were worth it.

1200mg Gabapentin 3x a day. That is all... 😕😕

Haven't finished it yet but just doing it has helped me land an internship in the field I want to work in.

I mean... Nothing to descriptive, and it's technically not a CS degree. But it got me a job and helped me learn some fundamentals that I was lacking.

I was originally going to try learning on my own because I hated school. Now I'm glad I at least went through the Associate program I went through.

👀👀👀👀👀👀

Currently still working on this one. Interning at the sugardaddy for dutch students. Have a great team there, but the whole research thing that my university demands me to do is on my mind so damn much that it takes all my joy from the internship. It feels like it prevents me from learning things that truly matter to me, like my extreme anxiety of even doing any form of coding. I just want to be an IT teacher/lecturer ;¬;

I think here the CS degree/experience just gives you training basically to pass this technical interviews which has been a constant problem because 99% of the work you actually do, you ain't gonna need it. (I don't work at big tech companies but pretty sure it's the same, have to be very Senior and leading a project before you really need to think about this stuff?)

I don't have a CS degree unfortunately, completely self taught, but that experience while "impressive" to interviewers doesn't seem to matter much when do how do you implement a red black tree or quick-sort.

I may know the difference in general but I don't fucking care to remember the details as YAGNI... If rather remember the things I need every day

Except for meeting good people and getting a lot of time to do my own stuff, I didn't get anything from the University. Yes, grades suffered. But who gives a fuck about them? And Coursera helped a lot. So did YouTube, edX, Udacity, etc.