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Comment by bluedino | Hacker News Reader

This is a good example of a CS project you would do at Stanford and wouldn't get assigned at your local university.

I talk to people who think a CS degree has the same content and the same level of rigour and challenge everywhere. Absolutely baffles me.

Is that true for literally any degree from a top 5 university?

What makes you so confident saying this?

Because I’ve been to multiple universities myself and I know it to not be true from my own eyes.

You can also just go to any university website yourself and compare their syllabi and see how different they are.

No. We implemented a 3d software frame buffer pipeline at my non-Standford, non-"elite" computer science school, in C and with no dependencies other than the standard library, for our computer graphics class.

Well, that is a good example of an assignment you'd do at your local university and wouldn't get assigned at Stanford.

They're the same. The only difference here is you have to use an xml parsing library to read the input instead of rolling your own parser and spec.

You can easily do this on your own.

I think the spirit of the post is correct: the quality of instructors can dramatically increase the quality and relevance of course content in the curriculum. Stanford courses tend to produce new, interesting assignments that other schools crib. Same applies to all the top engineering departments.

My friend tried to get a CS degree at Pepperdine and the curriculum was 15 years out of date. To students who are new to the field, it is hard to figure out where to start even if they could do it independently.

If "you" are 19 and can do this on your own, then chances are you are a CS student at Stanford, or a peer institution.

I don't understand your point.

Can you work us through what you don’t understand?

So? You can do anything on your own given enough effort and discipline.

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