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Comment by terminalcommand | Hacker News Reader

Murdock mentions that he was studying management at the time he got into Linux. I couldn't find any further information about it. In Wikipedia it says that he studied computer science in Germany. At some point in life he changed majors. I'd very much like to read a post about that decision.

I share the love of computers. I spend all my free time in front of computers, programming and reading. It's been like this for my whole life. Due to a twist of fate (couldn't get a scholarship) I ended up in law school. I have no interest in anything beside computers. I can't live without them, but it's killing me to know that I can't study computer science. Any suggestions??

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If you spend as much of your free time programming as you say, you'll probably be spending more time programming than many CS students I've come across who have no interest in computing, and you'll probably be much better at programming than many CS graduates I've come across, who have hardly any interest in computing.

Your passion will take you further than your college programme.

This was my experience as a hobbyist with a business degree who went back to school several years later for CS.

My second semester, we worked in groups of four for an elective Robotics course. Our group was composed of 3 seniors and me. One was super competent, I noobed hard but contributed working code and the other two were very eager to do the write-ups.

That wouldn't work at my university, unless it changed a lot on the last 20 years.

A lot of people fail CS, but I have friends who go through without having a real passion for it, and just doing enough to get through it.

And in the workplace there are plenty of people who know enough to do their programming jobs, but don't have a real interest in it, don't code at home, etc.

People with passion for it will shine eventually, whatever road they take.

Must be a minority then you know they built the raspberry pi to try and get kids to have some programing experience at GCSE and A level (15-18)

This was so they didn't have to teach the basics on CS and EE courses

You are talking about UK.

On my Portuguese university, we got to code in standard Pascal, C, C++, Prolog, Smalltalk, Caml Light, PL/SQL, 80x86 and MIPS Assembly, Java.

Many of the lectures were composed by exam + mini-project.

Anyone that made it without much coding was getting a ride in workgroups, on single projects it was either code or fail.

I don't think you really need to go to a computer science school to study computer science at this point. It can be done, perhaps much better, on your own with the amount of courses and information available online.

If the issue is purely financial, could you crowd fund part of your CS education ? People are starting to crowdfund healthcare [1], some are crowdfunding their university education [2].

That being said, I feel like CS is one of the few things you can study in depth for free using the internet. I'm not saying its the only one, but I really do feel like you can. Actually, that's why I decided to go with engineering at university, because I felt learning CS without school would probably be easier than learning rocket science without school because of the material freely available online. This way I could learn both aero engr and CS! (the hard part with this reasoning isn't finding the material, it's having the work ethics to read, understand, and apply what you learn alone).

Maybe your law school has an online library also ? Back when I was doing my Bacherlor's, I wanted to learn more about math, aero engineering wasn't broad enough and wasn't in depth enough either. So I went on my online library and read pretty much every graduate textbooks in math I could find. It was so simple, I'd just type what I wanted to study, and I would read the books accessible online. I didn't even need to be on campus anymoe. I'm saying this because if you can find CS books that you can read for free and that are easily accessible/legal, you can learn CS this way. Of course, it'll be a lot harder to learn CS (anything actually) alone than by being 'forced' by your prof to read the books, turn in homework, and study your stuff for the exams. But with discipline, of course it's possible. I didn't learn engineering by going to class, I learned and earned my BS in engr by reading the books, doing my homework, and studying for my exam; not by going to class. I actually only very very rarely showed up to class. It may be very hard while also going to law school though :(

Anyway, if math isn't a barrier/scary to you, definitely look into alternate ways to fund your CS education/making your own

[1] https://watsi.org/ [2] https://hubbub.net/p/eotoimperial

Do you find the law degree interesting? If so, I'd recommend continuing with it, and focus on doing well. You already have the interest in computing, you don't need to go to school for it. My personal opinion, if I was in your situation, would be to continue mastering the law, and working on computation in my spare time, and then start getting involved in computational law. Having a niche like that is great, since it helps you focus.

After kicking and screaming for a while, I do find the law degree interesting. I think this issue is a turning point in many hackers' lives. I feel much better now. Thanks for all the help and support you guys showed. Especially thank you for making me realize that nothing is lost by not majoring in comp-sci. It was really an existential paradox for me.

A programmer with a law degree can be really useful to a company. Particularly if a company uses open source. You have a perspective on software licensing that many do not have. Programming remains a profession where certifications and degrees are much less valued.

If I were you I would leverage your unique perspective as both someone who understands law and code.

Being a fellow law student who decided against a formal CS education, I can second that. It also works the other way around, a lawyer who knows about computer science is (in my experience) pretty rare, and issues that also require a thorough understanding of technical processes (e.g. privacy legislation) are becoming more and more important.

Hi. This is Ian Murdock.

I struggled for nearly two years after I found Linux before I changed my major to computer science. I thought I was too far along toward my degree to make any change. After three semesters of hand-wringing, Advanced International Tax Accounting helped me realize it wasn't too late actually. :-)

The other commenters are correct: You don't need a degree in computer science to do what we do now. In fact, as other have already pointed out, these days, a more well-rounded background / education is a major advantage, whether that background / education is law, design, writing, etc.

Best of luck to you.

-ian

Almost all of the programmers, coders and internet guys I have worked with or know have not studied computer science at university.

Almost all of them have the same interest, passion and enthusiasm as you have. Studying computer science won't get you as far as that.

Plus because they have varied backgrounds, they can bring additional colour, learning and stories.

I wish you could experience how much this reassurance meant for me. Living an isolated hacker life can lead to harmful presumptions such as me thinking that I had to give up my dream of continuing to work with computers 'cause I couldn't study it at a Uni. Now I realize how unreasonable and childish that was. Nevertheless, this very idea caused a depressive episode for more than a year. I am leaving this comment here because I know that there are other hackers out there struggling with the same problem as me. The solution to it can be as brief as the few sentences in your comment. I am sure that I will bring additional colour, learning and stories to the hacker community. Thank you again.

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