The idea of someone skipping a CS degree to learn some Ruby on Rails and start as a web developer makes me ill. It's classic short-term thinking
I'm not sure if you are directing this at me, but I've never been concerned about specific technologies. I spent my "college years" learning how to adapt to anything, which does include, but is not limited to programming. I've also worked professionally in several other industries.
Yet there are surprisingly few people who can create new recommendation algorithms or build massively parallel systems that scale to thousands of nodes without downtime.
There are very few that can do this period, CS degree or not. And even fewer companies willing to pay people to do that kind of research. Re-implementing someone else's algorithm to do recommendations, like, say, a Bayesian recommendation model, is no big challenge though.
Nearly everyone who complains about CS degrees being a waste of time is complaining that college isn't a vocational school.
Again, I'm not sure if this post is even directed at me, but I never made that claim. Formal CS comes with a lot of value. It just would have been a poor decision for my career. If you are willing to sacrifice business to be a better programmer, don't let me discourage you. It takes people who are willing to do that.
"If you are willing to sacrifice business to be a better programmer, don't let me discourage you. It takes people who are willing to do that."
Hah. In the halls of the academe, we call that a "straw man fallacy". As the founders of Google will tell you, to have deep CS knowledge, it is obviously not necessary to sacrifice business knowledge.
That said, I obviously wasn't directing my comments at the specifics of your situation (since I don't know them), but rather, commenting on the general idea of someone skipping out of college to learn Rails and "get into the industry". My argument is that this is short-sighted. The sort of commodity software development enabled by knowledge of a web framework is the sort that is just as easily farmed out to the lowest bidder. Obviously, in-depth knowledge of a domain is much more valuable than knowing how to make a web app in Rails.
As the founders of Google will tell you, to know CS, it is obviously not necessary to "sacrifice business".
Fair, but I was trying to express that in the context of my career. I'm not going to be creating the next Google. If you're only reaching for a 9-5 job, as most outside of the HN crowd are, it is a sacrifice - at least from my point of view.
My argument is that this is short-sighted.
I really don't think it is true. Once you start in Rails, your thirst is going to become strong to learn everything else there is to possibly know about CS. I guess if you actually do stop at Rails, sure, but that indicates a lack of interest in the study, which means the chances of success in a CS program are low to begin with.
With that said, I've been in the industry for about 15 years now and I haven't really seen any change. The languages and frameworks may have, but the stuff most people are being hired for are, in concept, the same as it has always been. That is probably not going to change in the next 15, unless some radical technologies are discovered.
I'm not sure if you are directing this at me, but I've never been concerned about specific technologies. I spent my "college years" learning how to adapt to anything, which does include, but is not limited to programming. I've also worked professionally in several other industries.
Yet there are surprisingly few people who can create new recommendation algorithms or build massively parallel systems that scale to thousands of nodes without downtime.
There are very few that can do this period, CS degree or not. And even fewer companies willing to pay people to do that kind of research. Re-implementing someone else's algorithm to do recommendations, like, say, a Bayesian recommendation model, is no big challenge though.
Nearly everyone who complains about CS degrees being a waste of time is complaining that college isn't a vocational school.
Again, I'm not sure if this post is even directed at me, but I never made that claim. Formal CS comes with a lot of value. It just would have been a poor decision for my career. If you are willing to sacrifice business to be a better programmer, don't let me discourage you. It takes people who are willing to do that.