At Odds: Hackers at Harvard | Hacker News Reader

At Odds: Hackers at Harvard

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7 pointsevangastman18 comments

>I don’t buy that as an excuse for why there aren’t any intensive courses on Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Objective-C, HTML/CSS and JavaScript.

For the same reason why there aren't any intensive courses on Windows, ASP, or GNOME. Because technologies come and go --- nowhere more so than in software --- and those left standing are the ones who grasped the fundamentals of their field, not the ones who blitzed their way through a Node.js hackathon. The former are the innovators, the latter are the guns for hire.

All the things you mention can be hacked in under a week by a motivated student. If your objective is to hack (and that is entirely fine for many purposes), you don't need a traditional college course to do so. In fact, I would argue that is entirely antithetical to the essence of hacking!

If you're a Harvard student, you have an amazing opportunity to learn the truly difficult subjects with some of the best people in the world, the kind of stuff you won't learn in two hours in an online tutorial. Take advantage of that; for everything else there's the internet.

I appreciate this response a lot, especially the last sentence. My takeaway from it: Search out those things that you can't find on the Internet. Believe it or not, that sentiment really does offer a new way of thinking about things.

Expecting Harvard to teach you how to be a hacker is about as far from the hacker mindset as you can get.

Clarify, please?

It's not something that can be taught. It's an instinct.

In my mind the "hacker mindset" is something along the lines of

"I want to do X, so I'm going to go off and do whatever it takes to figure out how to do X".

Not

"I'm going to complain that no one is teaching me how to do X".

As an undergrad I found myself thinking similarly. Looking back, I definitely think I rushed some things and agree with most people in this thread. The stuff you described won't and shouldn't be taught in schools. You're there to engage in thoughtful discourse that will help you come up with better solutions to the worlds problems. Node, RoR, etc. are just tools to make those ideas come to life. You can be a code monkey, but that doesn't make you a good software engineer. Find the right balance and I think you'll find the quality of your hacks will improve as well.

If what you want is "intensive courses on Ruby on Rails, Node.js, Objective-C, HTML/CSS and JavaScript", save yourself four years and save your folks $200K. Drop out and get a public library card.

Schools like Harvard should have a major (or at least a concentration) in Web Development. Without that, they're missing out on setting up thousands of students for success.

"Setting up thousands of students for success" is not the goal of a university. If it were, they should also offer majors in underwater welding, computer-aided machining, and other currently-understaffed specialist roles where a person with only one or two years' experience can earn good money.

It's worth remembering that "web startup engineer" is to Computer Science what those vocations are to Physics. It is a craft, not a discipline and best learned through experience rather than theory.

I think they were being sarcastic.

Exactly. I think there is a place for applied courses at the tertiary level, but that isn't the role of top-tier research universities.

And I am not being snooty, I only have a diploma from a vocational college (I studied CS a long time ago but dropped out).

"there seems to be some sort of disdain for the inelegant style of cut and paste hacker programming ingrained in the startup community"

Wait, what?

I think that the author means is that Harvard places a high value on "perfect code," when "just ship it," is closer to the mantra of the startup community. Goes hand-in-hand with "do things that don't scale," which is another bit that follows the same ideal of "get it out the door."

I don't think that there is any reason to rush in University though. Take time, learn the fundamentals. There is plenty of time to corner cut later.

I have delved into the theoretical side of computer science, learning about lower-level languages such as C, experiencing faint tastes of web programming, and more recently, an introduction to the beauty of recursion in functional programming languages like OCaml... but I know I haven’t experienced that “hacker” oriented style of programming that I was hoping for through Harvard.

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.

Exactly my thought. People don't get taught to be hackers (at least not by schools), they either have the desire and aptitude to go beyond school work or they don't.

Places like Harvard and MIT produce hackers because of the students they attract, not because they teach "hacker oriented programming".

Zuckerberg didn't study "Social media websites 101" he hacked together a project in his spare time.

I'd like to clarify some things that are not clear in the post. I am finding a lot of value in the CS courses I am taking in their rigor and the way they are changing how I think about problems. I also feel like I am in the company of some incredibly smart, talented, and driven people. I feel awfully fortunate to be in the position I am in. This all said, I also think that being able to build hackable and scalable projects is really powerful, and that the education I want meshes these areas together- instruction directed towards the theory as well as with the projects.

Please upvote when you comment if you find the post interesting, otherwise it will get "controversy banned".

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