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Comment by kevintb | Hacker News Reader

> The universities do not know whom you see yourself as in the future, and even you often do not know that at the age of your enrolment. It is believed that it is better to teach you all the basics, than to miss something important.

Definitely agreed. Unpopular opinion: I'm a strong proponent of a CS university education, as opposed to something like a bootcamp, for this very reason. An understanding of how OSes work; basic discrete math, etc - those are fundamentals that shouldn't be ignored just because an engineer doesn't work on them on a daily basis. (Unless if the job description is for front-end development only, in which I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not.)

And, most importantly: a university CS education gives you knowledge on what you don't know about CS. Otherwise, ignorance of your own ignorance just feeds upon itself.

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Isn't this mistaking the path for the goal?

I think it is more accurate to say that the knowledge of how OSes work, basic discrete math, etc. is important regardless of how that knowledge is gained.

A university education is only one way of achieving this knowledge. Even your last point of gaining knowledge about what you don't know about CS is achievable through other means (mentorship, online classes, study groups, etc.)

I think it is perfectly fair to suggest that a CS university education is a great way of achieving this knowledge, and it makes perfect sense to recommend that method if you followed that path yourself.

Personally, as someone who developed that knowledge outside the university system, I suspect that university is probably an excellent approach for most people, but I tend to encourage people to find the hunger for knowledge inside themselves and develop a passion for learning in whatever form it comes.

Ah yes, I see your point. I meant any education that reaches the depth of a CS university education. 3 month bootcamps don’t cut it, but there are of course ways to achieve that yourself. I commend the individual who goes above and beyond to achieve that education for themselves - it’s not easy to achieve the same depth of knowledge by themselves as opposed to being guided by a teacher.

Sorry, but I'll point out a bit of elitism in this post.

> (Unless if the job description is for front-end development only, in which I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not.)

The browser is an extremely complex platform, at least rivaling an operating system. If you're going to argue that advanced knowledge of a platform is required for non-frontend work, you should be comfortable making the argument for frontend.

Except people generally don't make that argument. Frontend devs (I am not one) are looked down on. But it's a double standard.

I'm sure that wasn't your intention, but it's a constant expression I see - that web developers are a class separate from the rest of us. The truth is that OS knowledge is not critical and the general sentiment that frontend devs can do their job without understand the complexities of a browser only reveals this.

More to your point, I taught myself about OS's and x86 outside of class because I wanted to learn how to exploit memory safety issues. I never made a career out of it, but I learned a lot, and it was a matter of buying a few books and talking to people on IRC. I found tons of excellent talks by Herb Sutter and Scott Meyer about CPU architecture and how code maps to it.

There's a ton of resources out there for those who choose to self-teach.

This is true only because there's a huge range of people who consider themselves front end devs. The barriers to entry are next to zero, but it's a very difficult thing to master.

>> (Unless if the job description is for front-end development only, in which I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not.)

> The browser is an extremely complex platform, at least rivaling an operating system. If you're going to argue that advanced knowledge of a platform is required for non-frontend work, you should be comfortable making the argument for frontend.

I didn't read the quoted statement as a position against front-end devs needing CS knowledge, but rather a lack of position in the matter due to the author's ignorance. FWIW as someone working in both the front- and back-end, the front-end stuff can definitely have the same amount of complexity.

I also did not read it that way. I read it as an off-hand remark that unwittingly implied that frontend devs were 'others' with different requirements.

The commenter below (andreareina) is correct, I said I'm less qualified to say whether a CS education is needed or not for FE development because I’ve never done it myself, so I can’t authoritatively make such a statement. It was the opposite of an elitist attack.

I didn't intend to characterize it as an attack. I read it as an assumption, or an unwitting implication, which I don't blame you for because the issue (of treating frontend devs as lesser) is systemic.

No attacking on either side.

> I'm a strong proponent of a CS university education, as opposed to something like a bootcamp, for this very reason.

The value proposition of a university education is something of a moving goalpost for most people. It's not even about what you learned but how exclusive and prestigious the institution was. Or how uncomfortable and sleep deprived your experience was. If the value of a university degree were based on a skillset that could be proven, then the need for exclusive accreditation could be replaced with a simple unit test - and education would be called "training" and everyone would feel much less smug about not being "blue collar". Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

I actually do strongly agree with you on abolishing a degree as a requirement and replacing degrees with a simple test to prove your competence. I only used “CS university education” as a proxy for an in-depth education that can be difficult (but not impossible) to achieve with self-teaching.

And the contents of a CS university education, specifically the subjects you mentioned, can easily be obtained by watching YouTube.

Watching videos passively cannot get you the same depth of knowledge as implementing it, applying it, and discussing it with others.

But the price can't be beat.

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