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Comment by jdmaurer | Hacker News Reader

I think the worth of a college education varies so much from person to person, as well as field to field. If you are becoming a doctor, going to college is 100% necessary for obvious reasons. But for a programmer, it may not be, depending on the person.

More than helping you learn how to code, a college education helps you learn HOW to learn how to to code. You won't get much useful experience until you are in an internship or doing actual work in the field learning from people that are better than you. You can spend forever on theories, but it will never actually get you anywhere unless you put it to use. For the people that need to learn how to learn, the price of college can be worth it. For others, it can be a waste of time and a LOT of money.

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Not so; medical schools are somewhat unique in only requiring certain college coursework. One can complete a medical degree whilst never finishing a bachelors degree. The most prominent example of this is the Kentucky Senator Dr. Paul who graduated from Duke with an M.D. and has no bachelors degree.

That's not very common-its very much a corner case.

Sons and daughters of political figures tend to be the ONLY ones to be afforded that. Every few years I hear of a senator's kid getting in w/o MCAT scores or some other requirements skirting.

Does "going to college" exclusively mean getting an undergraduate degree in the US? "Graduating from Duke" and "completing a medical degree" both sound inherently going-to-college to me.

Here in Australia we'd sub in "uni" for "college", but it just sounds weird to "complete a degree" without "going to [tertiary education]".

Without thinking about it too much, I think I'd say "going to college" for undergrad (even at a university), "going to grad school" for a graduate degree, and "going to med school" for a medical degree. (For reference, I'm from Michigan.)

In the US a significant proportion of every undergraduate degree is "general education", ie what in Australia would be an Arts degree. AFAIK, specialized degrees like law and medicine are exclusively post-graduate degrees.

Well I use the term "going to college" loosely, it can be applied to getting any kind of degree (whether it's an MD or a bachelors) vs. self-learning, which is not pursuing a degree at all.

I think it depends on the circumstances of your self learning. In general I think its harder to get a programming/software engineering job nowadays than it was 15-20 years ago without a degree. I mean, if you were self taught on PHP/Perl/Linux in the 90s, then you could've gotten yourself in on the ground floor without a CS degree. Likewise for any new tech stack that gets introduced, immersing yourself in it can certainly make up for not having a CS degree.

While I think it has gotten harder for non-CS degreed people to compete with CS-degreed people when viewed in terms of how hiring used to happen, due to limitations in ways to show experience, I think there are now many more ways to show equivalent experience other than a prior job in the same industry. A good Stack Overflow reputation and/or a Github account with some projects or contributions to known open source projects that have been accepted would go a long want in my book towards asserting someone could function as a programmer.

I'm not sure if it's true or not (and I was one of those self-taught in the late 1990s devs) that it's harder now, but I can tell you that even back then it had challenges even beyond getting a foot in the door: https://medium.com/@opirmusic/why-software-developers-should...

It was possible then, and it's possible now; it is definitely a lot more work than with the degree, though.

Interesting article. If you can go to university on a full-ride scholarship without getting yourself into debt, then by all means, you don't have anything to lose. But when you say that self-learning is a lot more work than a degree, I have to disagree with that. Getting a bachelors in CS is no cake walk, and after you graduate, you'll have to spend years getting actual experience with a company anyway. Either way, to be successful in a field, you'll have to work extremely hard. For some, paying for a college degree can be self-motivation to work harder, but in the end, everyone will have to work hard to make it.

I have several friends without university degrees that are software devs. The difficulty seems really variable. If you get that first job and can stay there for a couple of years, I would say it is often easier than going to University. Personally, I didn't consider comp sci to be a particularly difficult degree (in comparison to physics or pure math for example), but exams and assignments are definitely more stressful than what you normally run into in a job.

There is a lot of risk with going without a degree, though. Take the example of the person who posted a few days ago about working as an intern for 8 months, getting into a fight with his boss over money and finding himself without a job. I'll take the stress of an exam over that any day. Trying to find a junior position without an academic background often means putting yourself at the mercy of unscrupulous people :-(

I got a free ride through school, but I went through in the 80's when it was also comparatively cheap. At that time, I don't think there was much of a downside to getting a degree. If I were to do it again (on my own dime), though, I would seriously think about trying to get an apprenticeship at 18 instead. If you can work for those 4 years, I think you would be considerably ahead financially.

I'm glad to hear you had a more positive experience in that area. I'm speaking from my own experiences, and from conversations with degreeless peers over the years (started in 1997), whose opinions concur with mine; what I've witnessed may be more prevalent than you might think. Consider that not everyone may inclined to discuss it openly. It's not a particularly comfortable subject.

Very true--it does take much more motivation and skill nowadays to get into a job without a degree. But it can still be done. Getting a degree doesn't give you a good Stack Overflow or GitHub profile. It's experience in the field that gives you that. I've interviewed coders for dev jobs at the agency I work at, and 99% of the time, I won't even ask/care about a degree if they have an impressive portfolio.

How important is it to have a CS degree in particular, as opposed to any other 4-year degree?

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