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Comment by t_mann | Hacker News Reader

Someone without a formal CS education who's selling programming courses telling you that formal CS courses don't necessarily teach you programming (duh).

He has a point that if you do a Master's you might be going without the extremely useful basic algorithms and data structures courses, but that is easily avoided by choosing a program that lets you take that. For other topics that aren't strictly programming, eg AI, ML, game theory, cryptography, quantum computing, probabilistic methods, optimization,... it would take a significant amount of dedication to match the amount of understanding that a rigorous course with problem sets can give you in self study.

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>For other topics that aren't strictly programming, eg AI, ML, game theory, cryptography, quantum computing, probabilistic methods, optimization,... it would take a significant amount of dedication to match the amount of understanding that a rigorous course with problem sets can give you in self study.

You mean, the same amount it would take to do it through a university program? I fundamentally don't believe the material is unavailable. If you've done a CS undergrad at a respectable university, you should have enough instinct to build a curriculum to become well versed in those subjects

I am going through the autodidact process for all of those subjects (except quantum computing) (yes, it's brutal, especially alongside a FT job). But with the amount of MIT open courseware, books, and frankly, just wiki pages available, it's been easier than doing it at the pace of a university course

Yes, following along online can give you as much information as sitting silently in lectures and recitations and completing problem sets while sitting in isolation in your dorm room; but there’s way more to be learned by thoughtfully engaging in discussions with your professors, TA’s, and classmates. In fact I’d argue the bulk of my education came from the latter.

In short: Getting A’s at MIT is simple. Challenging yourself to challenge your colleagues is difficult. Not to mention all the labs.

As a corollary, I’d go on to argue everyone who paid full tuition for online classes during the pandemic got ripped off on a massive scale.

I am someone who has a masters degree and I have taken Distributed systems, Computer Architecture and Advanced Algorithms at Bradfield. In my experience, I would rate Bradfield better than a master degree for these reasons -

1. Was more relevant and practical. It was taught by people who have worked building real things in the real world. 2. Better ROI on time spent learning. In about 8 weeks (roughly 2 hours every week) and some self study I had the confidence to apply the learnings and continue learning more. Time comes at premium to me as I am working full time and have a family to take care of 3. Cheaper than a university course. It costs 2k USD roughly for a course.

During the same time, I also tried OMSCS from GATECH. I felt I got way more from these Bradfield's courses by spending less time and money than OMSCS as well. That said, its just me and YMMV.

Well the material that the authors have collected on teachyourselfcs.com is:

1) free

2) taken from outstanding courses at Berkeley, Stonybrook (the illustrious Steven Skiena), MIT and Stanford.

As I see it, this is evidence that those schools have some good courses. Graduate systems courses are pretty great as well, and of course you can hit other areas such as computer graphics, AI/ML, etc..

For formal education, I'm a bit biased toward multi-year programs (because it takes a while to learn this stuff) and schools (like those above) with good CS courses. But there's nothing to say that the authors' unaccredited graduate program is bad - based on the above I'd expect it's probably decent, although I worry about the 15 hours x 52 weeks though because I don't think that's enough time. In my experience a good systems or engineering course takes about 200 hours.

*Stony Brook (can't fix typo due to HN's aggressive comment freezing)

The author's argument was immediately diminished the moment it became obvious they had something to sell.

Doesn't this line of thinking apply to every university too then?

Only those that put out 'The case against self-study' essays (of which there might be some, I don't know).

For other topics that aren't strictly programming, eg AI, ML, game theory, cryptography, quantum computing, probabilistic methods, optimization,... it would take a significant amount of dedication to match the amount of understanding that a rigorous course with problem sets can give you in self study.

Also, you're going to have an extremely difficult time getting to work on that stuff without a degree, given that even PhDs often end up on regular business bullshit.

In my experience, it's not the degree that gets you the job, it's the research you got published in the niche you're applying for. The number of people with excellent publications in such a niche, but no degree, is awfully small.

"end up on regular business bullshit"? CRUD webapps?

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