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Comment by greatquux | Hacker News Reader

I was pretty flabbergasted to hear she's learned more at hackathons than her AP Computer Science class. What the hell are we doing in our educational system then? Is any of it actually worth anything if it's not resulting in real learning?

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AP Computer Science isn't very challenging. It's essentially a watered down version of the introductory programming class you have to take in college the last I checked. It's also geared towards the AP test so it doesn't exactly foster that much creativity and innovation.

Sadly, a lot of high schools don't even offer this class in the first place. I think the program at my old high school even got shut down.

Introductory (aka prerequisite) computer science classes seem to be aimed at people who're learning from nothing. If you already know C++ in depth (or whatever language is used), a lot of it is just language-specific feature review.

YMMV, this is judged from local state college/community college.

about the education system, I'm of the opinion that high school is mostly a waste of time; I dropped out 2 years early and got a GED instead. (Don't try this at home.)

How did getting out of high school early go for you? I'm finding that high school is seriously lacking. To supplement, I've been working on my computer science major at a local community college. Unfortunately, doing both college and high school is extremely time consuming and I've been looking for alternatives to high school.

Depending on what you want to do and how overqualified for school you are, a GED is a valid alternative to graduating IMO. That said, you potentially lose a lot of social interaction and sports/clubs which I found to be the most valuable parts of high school.

Personally I was easily able to get 3650 on the GED (out of 4000) which is enough to automatically get into state schools. I have no clue how it would work at a more prestigious school, but at the time that really wasn't something I was concerned with.

I don't feel qualified to say whether it was a good idea because I dropped out after I ended up in foster care (long story, my parents kicked me out after I told DHS about some incidents). Regrettably I wasted several years after this doing nothing but smoking weed and playing video games due to a general lack of motivation. I'm back working on stuff now after quitting games altogether - splitting focus is apparently an impossible task for me.

I'm not surprised. I can imagine a doctor saying they learned more from doing a few surgeries than from years of education on anatomy and surgical techniques. It says that hands-on practical experience provides far more information than theoretical concepts in a classroom. I don't think it would be wise to have doctors skip their education, however, as the education provides the framework of understanding which enables the hands-on experience to be so beneficial.

I was also of the understanding that CS courses were more about the "why things are this way" than the vocational "this is how you make the magic happen". In the doctor example, you can train a paramedic and a doctor to do the same emergency procedures, but when you come to an edge case, it's the doctor that you turn to for an opinion formed from deeper understanding.

AP classes are intended to let you pass a test that's equivalent to the introductory university class in that subject, not to be equivalent to a degree in that subject.

In other words, I'd expect the AP Computer Science class to be roughly equivalent to "CS 101" or "CS 1A", or whatever they happen to call the CS class where you learn what about conditionals, loops and basic variables is.

Different sorts of lessons. A lot of formal education is limited by the need to produce moderately competent fodder for cubical farms. It isn't always about producing the best individuals but satisfying the needs of society. Society needs many more Java burger flippers than it needs Turing award winners. There are obviously academic pathways within formal education to pursue individual excellence but they don't suit everyone, especially if they are more practically minded. Competitive activities like hackathons or participating in open source projects seem like a great place to pursue individual excellence. Even better if you are fortunate enough to work in a challenging area. I think our expectations of formal education are often unreasonable. It is a foundation, not the complete answer.

Have you ever seen the AP Computer Science materials? They have always been garbage.

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