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Comment by sliverstorm | Hacker News Reader

Honestly speaking, if he played around on an Apple II, this happened almost 30 years ago when the computer industry was still brand-new. Not to denigrate him, his achievements, or MIT, but the world is different now.

It's an awesome anecdote, and I am a big fan of MIT, but consider this my preemptive counter-argument to the inevitable, "Here, see, more proof of why you should drop out of high school!"

(though, after all's said and done, I do hope MIT is not too different from the MIT that accepted him back then)

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In California, you can take the CHSPE

http://chspe.net/

to enroll in community college as young as 16. California has made it really easy to transfer from community colleges to UC schools. Transferring in to UC Berkeley's computer science program is very doable, especially if you apply through its College of Letters and Science (which you want to do anyway, since they are a lot more lenient than the College of Engineering in terms of letting you take time off and choosing the classes that interest you).

Advantages of this route:

* You can skip 2 years of high school and graduate with a BA while your high school friends are finishing their second years of college.

* You save money living with your parents and going to community college for the first 2 years.

* Your chances of getting in to a prestigious UC actually increase quite substantially.

This is roughly what I did and I've been extremely happy about it. Feel free to contact me for details/individual advice: [my username] at gmail dot com

Which leaves you with a BA instead of a BS and on a less technical level than the alternative route would take. This appears no different than CIS through Arts & Sciences versus CSE through Engineering at alma mater.

Honestly though, will this really mean anything a year after graduating? Sincere question. I don't have a CS degree (or any bachelors degree) though I am pursuing one. The drumbeat seems to be that the most important lessons one learns with a BS in CS is the algorithms classes. Would a BA not deliver those classes to its students?

As a recruiting manager, I never really made any distinction between BA/BS/B.Sc/whatever. A degree from a good school with good grades is good enough, it isn't critical what the degree is called exactly. CS isn't Physics where you should have lots of years of study to actually be able to do something useful.

It matters some. I've done some hiring, and in a technical field where the BS is commonly done a BA makes me a little skeptical. Like you couldn't handle or avoided the spectrum of harder science classes. Might not be fair, and it wouldn't rule you out in my book, but it matters some.

You can't judge this simply based on the degree name. A lot depends on the school and how they do things. I'm not entirely sure but I think my CS degree is a BA. But I've taken enough high level math classes to have a BS in math (I had to pick either or, they wouldn't give me both), and I also took all the hard CS courses: Algorithms, OS, Compilers, Computer Graphics. If having a BA gives you pause for a candidate, I would strongly suggest you simply ask them what courses they took.

I had a BA because every first degree at my alma mater BA. I guarantee you it's at least the equal of any science course anywhere in the world.

(They give you an MA for free later, but that's a weird historical accident; I have a proper Masters' and a PhD as well.)

  > I had a BA because every first degree at my alma mater
  > BA. I guarantee you it's at least the equal of any 
  > science course anywhere in the world.

I assume it's a bit different for European universities. In general, the BA/BSc distinction tends to be a meaningful one in the US.

  > (They give you an MA for free later, but that's a weird
  > historical accident; I have a proper Masters' and a PhD
  > as well.)

Weird? Try cool. They're seriously considering abolishing that particular quirk, though.

And why couldn't you just take the CS classes that the BS requires anyway? The BA/BS non-major classes are the ones where the BS/BA are going to matter for CS. Do you have more background knowledge in Arts? or Sciences?

At Berkeley, the BA and the BS degrees have the same associated CS classes--the BS just requires you to take physics and electrical engineering.

I certainly depends on the school, but at least as important as Algorithms, course-wise, are Architecture, Operating Systems, Networking, and in some fields, Numerical Analysis. I'd say a BA with those first three is just as good most BS'es. If you're looking to work in industry building real systems (not just gluing Java API's together), you need at least a cursory understanding of those topics, which a BA may not provide.

To add a frame of reference, Berkeley also gives a BA in Math.

The difference between BA in CS vs. BS in EECS (there is no BS in CS!) is that BA CS is more grounded in mathematics, algorithms, logic etc... BS EECS is more grounded in hardware/engineering. Nonetheless, all have to take courses in algorithms, computer architecture, machine structures, etc... The rest is up to you. You can do a BA with somewhat of a hardware focus, or a BS with a software focus. You can take whatever classes you'd like on top of that.

Otherwise, there's no difference. As for getting a job, getting a good internship matters far more than what your degree and where you went to school. A good school will help you find a good internship. Just for $deity's sake, do something technical over the summer vacations (instead of doing nothing or working at the mall).

For what it's worth, interview questions also tend to be more focused on discrete mathematics and algorithms than they are on systems and hardware, so a BA might actually prepare you better.

Finally, the education is for your own sake, not for the sake of your employer.

I can assure you, after graduation virtually no one cares about BA vs BS. All they see is Berkeley.

The level of your technical skills is entirely up to you.

The CS classes I take are the same. The only difference is what I'm taking in addition to my CS classes.

It really differs between universities. In some universities, there isn't a difference between BA and BS, while in others, there are big differences. And in some British universities (like the one I attend), the only choice is BA in computer science.

At Berkeley, the BA and BS for Computer Science are effectively the same. All the core courses are the same, it's just the general requirements are different. The degree designation really doesn't matter. If I'm not mistaken, I believe Harvard also grants Bachelor of Arts degrees (they use AB instead of BA) for Computer Science.

Figuring out a way around the standardized admissions process is the admissions process for nonstandard applicants.

This is no different than anything else in life, from job applications to pitching a client, and the world hasn't changed as much as you seem to imply.

> Figuring out a way around the standardized admissions process is the admissions process.

So true.

I'm only 25 yet I taught myself how to program on an Apple //e in elementary and middle schools. Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism. When the Apple II booted it dropped you at a BASIC prompt.

> today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism

I believe this fact cannot be overestimated.

When I was learning to program there was no Internet and there were preciously few technical books on the market. Often I had to resort to trial and error, where error could easily mean watching my machine rebooting, since there was little memory protection. Obviously I now see the world with different eyes, but it seems to me that today's computing world is much more suited to self-learning.

You're right in that there are more learning resources - ebooks and lectures galore! However, the complexity of software systems has increased quite a bit too. This complexity, and the ensuing layers of abstraction are enemies to learning IMHO.

Here's a personal anecdote ... I remember having a vague understanding of MFC for a number of years, until one day I came across a manual of MFC 1.0. For whatever reason, I went through the old book and came out with a strong understanding of main class structure and motivation behind the framework. I was a bit surprised that the tomes on the subject (and I had many of the latest at that time) were thick but lack some of the essential ideas.

But web development, while very abstract, is very simple. Sure there are tons of frameworks, but you can still do great stuff with just css/html/jquery/server. And the amount of stuff on the web makes it that much easier.

Still, you have to understand a lot of very abstract stuff to get what _ means in Jquery.

There is a world of difference between that and 8-bit BASIC.

While learning 8-bit BASIC may not be the optimal path between a neophyte and a computer scientist, it strikes a nice balance between high and low level.

Just for debate sake (because I tend to feel as you do) letm e take the other side (although we could be arguing semantics around the world simple.... so leaving that aside)

Is making a web page simple? Yes. Is making a web page do cool stuff simple? Yes. And it's way cooler than the logo and basic (and worse) of my youth.

IS "web development" simple? Not in the slightest, as a generalization.

The web is the UI component of an application. That application could be as complex as any other - but instead of a simple visual toolkit for our GUI, we have to understand a bundle of technologies that is constantly changing (HTML, CSS, JS), plus the end user platform (browser) and all it's quirks.... now throw mobile in,now throw in that some understanding of the network itself is required.

Thing are more open now, information is more readily available, and there is certainly a lot to choose from.

Further, there's the audience - you can now publish your apps to the world immediately, you don't need to get recognized and published on paper or through a publisher. So a simple, silly little game hacked up in javascript/html5 by a kid (yay kid! You did more than I did at you age, keep it up!) has more impact and visibility than did similar feats by similar kids back in the 8-bit days when they figured out how to make my CRT do things God didn't intend it to do all for my amusement.

Web development as a full blown software engineering profession is not simple. But what I meant is that I think I'd find it just as easy, if not easier, to teach a 12 year old basic web development; and produce something they'd find interesting, while being educational, as it would be to do this with 8bit BASIC.

And the tools now are so much better. I remember as a kid using graph paper to draw sprites, and the converting the images to hex streams by hand. Not mentally challenging, but tedious and error prone.

I think the web browser is the new place where you can teach yourself with immediate feedback. (I also learned from the Apple BASIC prompt, and simultaneously from the HP-41 command language.)

I don't think I can agree.

I'm 29 and learned BASIC on an Apple II. While remembering what it was like makes me nostalgic for simpler times, I don't kid myself. It sucked.

I had to read out of scrappy library copies of Byte and Compute magazine. There were hours of trial and error. And worst of all, it all went away when you turned off the machine unless you had one of those notoriously unreliable tape machines.

Contrast that to my first experiences with Linux nearly a decade later. I had man pages, Usenet, IRC, and the web; better hardware, an operating system, developer tools, and free compilers! I learned about Perl and dynamic languages (I was into C at the time). I slowly started learning about how operating systems worked. It was a far more conducive environment for learning.

All of this information was right there on the computer. No more trudging down to the library or throwing away my money on thick technical manuals and trial-version compilers.

I'd say modern FOSS computing environments are the most conducive to learning. The Apple II was a toy compared to what we have now.

And, when you booted into GNU/Linux, you also had a web browser, chat programs, games, etc. The possibilities for distractions are numerous. Contrast that to a BASIC prompt. If you go to your computer to learn BASIC, as long as you are sitting in front of the computer and actively staring at it, you're either going to:

    a) get bored as hell by doing nothing 
    b) type some stuff in from your magazine and execute 
        (thereby learning "something" along the way because of
        typos, pattern recognition, etc. (of course you'll /then/ get
        distracted, but you had to work a bit)
    c) write a program from scratch by exploration, or need.

If anyone wants to try something that approximates a computer that boots into a BASIC prompt, try AVR programming or Arduino. It's either C or assembler and you've got to use mainly reference manuals. Arduino has more resources and thus may be more prone to distraction.

Either of these require programming on a computer with web-browser, games, chat, etc. Programming embedded hardware does not solve the problem of working in a distracting environment. Self-discipline, determination, and perhaps other inner qualities are necessary and always have been.

I think that was important for my actually learning to program circa 1978. If I was growing up today, it's very likely I would have been too distracted by all the other cool stuff I could do on the computer. I teach High School programming courses now, and that is something I have to battle.

For some value of conducive.

Distraction is a human problem, not a technological one.

You can just as easily use a type-writer instead of a computer to write your next novel in order to escape the distractions of twitter, wikipedia, et al. But you'll just find something else if you are prone to being distracted.

I measure "conduciveness" differently. For me it's the distance between what I know now and what I want to know. When I was growing up and typing in programs on an Apple II, the gap was really large. Getting information was hard and came in at a trickle. Access to technology was pretty limited; I had what came with my computer and that was it for a long time. Conversely, modern *nix systems are largely self documented. There's no guess-work at what a particular C function does or how it is implemented; there's a man page for it. I have access to the complete source code of my operating system. If I want to learn anything, it's a few key-strokes away.

Discipline is the cure to distraction. Not blunt tools.

> I had to read out of scrappy library copies of Byte and Compute magazine. There were hours of trial and error.

Funny, I look back on the same experience fondly, except it was assembly on an 8088. The "a-ha" moments were exhilirating.

I learned to program on modern FOSS computing environments and I must say that I think a simpler, more constrained learning environment would have helped me out a lot. It's obviously dependent on the student's learning style, but having complete knowledge of a simple system is much better for me than working knowledge of a complex system.

Oh, you actually had an Apple II, my condolences :) The //e actually had disk drives (although I also had the tape deck experience thanks to a TI 99/4A). Anyway:

> I had to read out of scrappy library copies of Byte and Compute magazine. There were hours of trial and error.

That's a great way to build persistence. Many kids lack that skill.

> All of this information was right there on the computer. No more trudging down to the library or throwing away my money on thick technical manuals and trial-version compilers.

Mm, I remember library trips. Taught me how to actually look stuff up. I agree, when I first got Internet access, being able to download DJGPP changed my life.

But on the //e, I learned how to reverse-engineer. Taught myself assembly by reading hex/assembly listings and via trial and error.

I agree modern systems make it easier to learn. But the Apple //e made you learn.

Yeah, I grew up with second-hand everything. The school only had ICON machines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisys_ICON). It wouldn't be until 93 or so when I'd finally set eyes on a 286 and it was 94 before I got my own 386. I still had that Apple II up until then (but the school had gotten rid of the ICON machines around 91 or so and acquired decent PCs... the school had better computers than I did!). I "programmed" then, but it was really just "punch it in and mess around with the values."

> Furthermore, today's computing environments are arguably less conducive to autodidactism.

You might be interested in this if you haven't seen it before:

http://viewsourcecode.org/why/hacking/theLittleCodersPredica...

To rekindle the nostalgia, headless linux gives you bash prompt.

I think compilers today have much better error messages, and you can always turn to sites like Stack Overflow and Google. Back then, if it wasn't in some undecipherable manual, you had to figure it out by trial and error.

When I first learned to program, I recall struggling with run-on loops. I'm not sure if that is even really an issue with modern compilers. There wer things that it was just hard to figure out.

Today, I can just go to Google.

This.

I, too, got into college without graduating high school, based on some software I wrote on an Apple II. It wasn't MIT, but that's kind of the point-- many schools are open to non-traditional students who impress them in some way. And back in those days, I imagine the bar was a lot lower in terms of what kind of code it took to impress (due to Moore's Law, as much as anything else...)

Guess I should have submitted my Apple II code to MIT in the mid-80's... Too bad that, even if I did it now, they probably won't be able to read my Apple II floppies (I am afraid I won't be able to read them anymore - and I have a couple Apple IIs in my collection)

:-/

How many of us wrote a window manager with 1K of 6502 code?

Z80, using HEX only. That was great. And no internet needed, just some magazines and BBS printouts.

I confess I kind of cheated. I used William F. Luebbert's "What's Where in the Apple II" to find routines in ROM suitable to what I wanted to do.

You can grab yours at http://apple2scans.net/apple-ii/whats-where-in-the-apple/

I did on the C64, prob more than 1K mind you.

It allowed you to create a bordered window of any size and colour, write text directly to it and when it was closed, as if by magic, the text that was behind it was still there! I think you could have 8 such windows open at the same time.

I was rather pleased with it at the time.

This blog post makes it sound like he didn't fill out an application. However, I'm guessing he did and also sent in code as supplemental material (which is quite common).

College admissions is a game. I currently go to MIT and it's definitely more meritocratic than many other institutions of similar "prestige" but it's not an exception.

  High school students today optimize their grades and SATs   
  and after school activities. They speak French and  
  Chinese, play piano and paint abstract art.  They dance  
  around and play hockey and act like they help homeless 
  people.

It's ultra-competitive. That said, the number of kids who do this sort of thing is waning. I think people realize that being extremely good or having insane dedication to one thing or "theme" is key.

On the other hand this stereotype arose from an era where admissions committees were trying to create a class of well-rounded students. It still occurs to some degree. However, things are trending towards creating a well-rounded class instead (lots of highly specialized students).

>Honestly speaking, if he played around on an Apple II, this happened almost 30 years ago

The only Thomas Pinckney in the Alumni directory has a graduation year of 1996/1997 (two degrees, so it fits with the linked story).

"Here, see, more proof of why you should drop out of high school!"

I actually love these stories for a different reason. If your interests are specific, you find most classes boring, repetitive, unhelpful and you have passion for your interests - the school system fails you big time.

It pains me to see our society viscerally and religiously touting high school education when it doesn't satisfy a high minority of minds. If we can add some light to that and possibly change the system for the better, less of us would be dropping out and actually touting high school as useful because it actually would be.

Not to belittle those whom the school system is the failing, but he wasn't in the school system. The blog post notes there was no school close enough for him to go to. It could be since the area was rural the majority of the kids engaged in agriculture/worked after 8th grade with a minority leaving to attend school in a nearby town.

Perhaps you could argue the school system did fail him because there wasn't one close by. However, I think your comment was meant in the spirit of schools that fail there students like so many do in Cleveland (where I live).

Not quite 30, closer to 18. Tom appears to have been in the class of 97.

I played around on an Apple ][ and I was class of '94.

I suspect Tom and I just started in our early teens.

Actually, someone I know got into MIT after Grade 11 due to mathematics competition achievements/math work in general. That happened this year.

Agreed. My dad didn't have a high school degree- or even a GED- and he got a full scholarship to UMass Amherst. It wasn't that unusual.

the guy built the exokernal project at MIT. you work with the tools you have. Apple 2 at the time and later radically new OSs.

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