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Comment by laddng | Hacker News Reader

I second this - I'm 3 semesters into the online MS in CS program at GATech and it's been a huge level up for me. I highly recommend the investment IF you have the time - it is a large time commitment.

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As a full time employee (9-5 job) in an MNC and father of new born do you think it is still doable? How many hours do you have to dedicate on a weekly based?

PS: Already have a Bachelors in Computer Science

It heavily depends on the courses you pick. I'm a full time employee (9-5 job) but no family and I usually dedicate a hour or two of my mornings and early evenings to the course as well as a couple hours every weekend, but I pick what others consider to be the more intense courses (compilers, distributed systems, operating systems). I also go all in on these courses since you get out of it what you put in.

This site is very accurate when it comes to the hours per week breakdown on courses: https://omscentral.com/ You'll see that some courses are drastically easier than others, the more intense ones being more rewarding. In all, you can make it as hard or as easy as you want and pick your courses that way. Having the BS in CS (I do) helps since you may recognize some of these topics from undergrad.

Thanks for sharing. Do you think it's doable without a CS background? I have a Math MS and do use some programming (mostly SQL, Python and some CLI) in my job but never had any formal CS education.

It depends on the courses you pick. With your Math MS, you might actually do really well in the Machine Learning/AI courses that they offer. The projects are mostly in Python and a lot of students do not have a CS undergrad, so you won't be alone there. https://omscentral.com/ is a good resource if you want to see per-course reviews on what the courses are like or how much programming you do. The systems engineering courses (compilers, distributed systems, operating systems) are heavy in C/C++, but the machine learning courses are heavy in Python (AI for robotics for example, which is a great course). You can go to Udacity or Youtube and check out the videos if you want to try it out.

Thanks. I'm actually more interested in the CS courses. Will take a look.

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