This post makes me sad in a way I can't quite articulate.
OP is in Austin. Anyone else at SXSW interested in buying him a drink and talking about how we made our own stuff? (And how important a CS degree is in silicon valley?)
OP is in Austin. Anyone else at SXSW interested in buying him a drink and talking about how we made our own stuff? (And how important a CS degree is in silicon valley?)
Yeah, the article is pretty scattered and whimsical, so I may be deciphering it wrong, but it is my guess that part of the author's disdain for CS degrees and most of his concern about making others rich rest on a lack of appreciation for division of labour.
Yes, there are still opportunities where one person can have an idea (shit or not) and make money by implementing it.
However, much more potent and myriad are opportunities requiring multiple collaborators each with their own domain of knowledge. Bioinformatics wouldn't get off the ground without a computer scientist and a biologist. Yes, as the article points out, the bioligist might just learn to code because it's hard to get a computer scientist to work with you. (This is the story of how tools like R and Mathematica came to be: statisticians and physicists dissatisfied with their computational tools set out to build their own.) But author is endorsing this problem!
As for the autodidact elitism and the importance of CS degrees, the article misses out on the fact that the ability to 1) study philosophy 2) learn to code and 3) make money with some cool idea, relies on computer scientists studying the deepest depths of computing to make step 2 possible. And like it or not, advancements in specialized CS areas mostly happen in academia thanks to people with CS degrees.
"College almost makes me sick, but I attend because it gets me out of my apartment."
I think that the author of the article should work on his interpersonal skills a little bit. It makes life more interesting, and leads to better prospects.
The whole piece gave me the impression of a rather isolated person.
Second--how important is a CS degree in the Valley? I lived there for 10 years, was extremely successful there by almost anyone's definition, and built, bootstrapped, and ran a tech company for 6 of those 10 years. Yet I don't have any college degree.
I think the OP sees people like me in his daily life (we work out of the same building, and chat a lot) and thinks a degree is probably not as worthwhile as society thinks it is.
There is a value in a CS degree, but there's also a lot of value in being forced to make a business work or you don't eat this week. That's where I was when I first started in business. Both paths have merit, but many CEOs and successful people don't have, or need, a degree to get there.
(I'd still never tell anyone not to get a degree though. The skills and connections are undeniably useful.)
Also, I know and know of gobs of people in CS who were educated in physics.