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Comment by aphexairlines | Hacker News Reader

What's wrong with people choosing CS for the money? The more people become literate in our field, the better off we are as a society, probably.

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While that's true, I feel like there's going to be plenty of awful programmers in the group that's just in it for the money (although that's not to say there won't be passionate programmers who are also awful - they're just more likely to want to improve themselves).

With much of CS and programming being so collaborative, those that just don't have the talent or the heart for it generally cause more hassle and grief for the rest of us.

Of course, I'm also not assuming that I'm not an awful programmer myself, but I really do love CS and try to improve myself all the time.

CS weeds out the bad programmers so they never graduate. If you can pass Stanford's CS program you are probably pretty smart.

This is totally untrue.

Why's that? Do you have any information to back this up? I'd be interested in that.

Because you're making a fallacious assumption with Computer Science in relation to programming/building webapps, just like many others here. You're assuming just because one is good at CS, he/she must be a good programmer.

Not necessarily smart but more likely to be at least an adequate developer

Getting a CS degree isn't easy - most of the people who lack the interest or intellect for it wash out before too long. I started going back for a CS degree about a year ago, and quickly found this out when I saw people retaking a 2000 level class and still failing to grasp the mechanics of function calls or basic data types.

Sure, there are some people who finish through sheer bullheadedness and others who stop caring after they graduate, but I still think that if you manage to make it through a 4 year CS program (especially if it is at a place like Stanford), there is a pretty good chance you have potential to become a useful programmer.

I'd argue that one reason we end up with CS graduates who don't end up becoming very useful is that our industry in general isn't that great at mentoring, and there are a lot of things you need to know to be a decent programmer that aren't always taught (or taught very well) in college. Good mentors in the first few years that someone is developing professionally can make a huge impact, and we should figure out a way for this to happen more often.

I guess it depends on the person, but I think, many of such people will become bored and unhappy after some time.

I curse the day I chose computer science! If only I was a liberal arts major, my life would be carefree and happy! Woe is me, being able to quit a job on a whim and get a six-figure salary elsewhere a whole week later!

You'd be surprised how adaptable people can be. It wasn't long ago that most of us spent our days finding and growing food. Compared to the skill change in the agriculture to industry transition, learning about computation isn't a big deal.

Not all people like sitting in front of a computer for many hours a day. If you don't like it, its unlikely you'll be good at the job in which case getting a new job is not guaranteed.

Most entry-level jobs involve "sitting in front of a computer for many hours a day".

The difference, for programmers, is that they get to do interesting stuff with those machines.

Yea, but its not what a lot of people like and what seems interesting to us is not necessarily interesting to them. Lot of people prefer interacting with other people than sitting in front of a machine all day.

As I said, it depends on the person. Personally, I can't imagine myself happy as a lawyer or financial consultant for instance, no matter how much money I'd make.

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