Comment by raffi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by raffi | Hacker News Reader

I didn't read the article but I'll be honest... I'm really thankful for my education. I taught myself programming when I was young and I thought I knew everything when I went to college. I was thankfully proved wrong.

College forced me to learn a lot of stuff I wouldn't have bothered to learn before. Stuff I had no idea would become useful and if I ever needed it may not have had an idea to look for it.

I have an interest in programming languages and interpreters--college helped me find and cultivate this interest. I'm working on a startup doing a lot of natural language stuff--college gave me the foundation necessary to teach myself the tools of this field quickly.

The theoretical underpinnings of stuff don't go away. Understanding different string matching algorithms can apply to writing an efficient style checker, not just making an asinine version of strcmp.

Granted this is all oriented towards technical stuff. I suppose if I wanted to be just an entrepreneur I could save money and buy a Subway franchise. I don't think a college education is necessary there either (but I'm sure it doesn't hurt).

I second the "don't think it's necessary, but sure it doesn't hurt" stance; I doubt someone would be docked points on an assessment or interview for having a degree right?

Some of us had parents who never stepped foot near a college or university and having their kids graduate with a degree is one of their dreams. Having picked up programming in high school, Computer Science was really the only appealing option. Overall I don't think it was a waste, though some parts were (most general education requirements.) At that age, I don't believe I would have been ready or mature enough to even work a full-time programming job, let alone start some sort of business.

>College forced me to learn a lot of stuff I wouldn't have bothered to learn before. Stuff I had no idea would become useful and if I ever needed it may not have had an idea to look for it.

So all you needed were a few people to guide you in the right direction. You can get that from the Internet or from other people you may know who are into the same thing or have a certain level of expertise. We don't absolutely need colleges for that anymore.

"I have an interest in programming languages and interpreters--college helped me find and cultivate this interest."

Wow. We never even came close to studying that kind of stuff at my college (Computer degree). We just learned some Java and linked lists and trees in the data structures course, a bit about computer hardware and not much else.

All the really cool stuff like interpreters, compilers, programming languages, unification, Rete, Common Lisp, etc. I had to learn on my own.

Did I simply attend a subpar college or you attended a great one?

Wow. We did the linked list and data structures course freshman year. After that it was all compilers, computability, writing schedulers for micro controllers, designing a processor in verilog, etc. Lots of really cool stuff I mostly haven't used since, but it's a great base of knowledge. And I went to Iowa State, not a top tier computer science school.

Oh my. It seems what you call college I'd call university (I live in Quebec).

In the states, college <=> university. Elsewhere, I believe college is below university.

In Ireland and Britain college = university. I believe the US has a ~distinction that a college is an undergraduate institution, which may or may not be part of a university, but the rest of the Anglosphere follows British usage in that a college is post secondary school though it may not be degree granting, like the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

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