Has college/university education worked for you in learning to program?

Hey lainons, I come with a question: has college/university level education truly helped you learn to program? I'm on my second year of University studying Software Development, and while I love the subject and programming, I think the environment and way of teaching is so far from how I like to learn. Pre-recorded lectures we're to watch over at home, long long word documents with tasks that don't really go into the meat of the subject area, and overall are just completely unmotivating with how much googling you'll need to do to get your head wrapped around the task, and lecturers who don't check their emails, don't explain things in a way I can understand, and heavily accented so I'm needing to put overtime into hearing them. I don't know if it's because of COVID making getting us in to learn a soykafty time, me just being a lazy ass and not properly applying myself, or if university really isn't the learning environment for me. At this point I would only be doing it for the degree at the end of the road, because I don't feel I'm gonna really enjoy the course. What are your thoughts? Do other lainons going to tertiary education during this COVID soykaf feel like learning is difficult? Are there any alternative routes you feel are good to look into?

>>27981 University is a waste of time, even more now that you can easily learn anything either by watching online lectures or reading books(based be piracy sites). The only advantage is that you can learn extra things from professors based on their experiences, but I have learned that some professors never did anything in programming that is not a simple software for their own research. It's stupid that a professor that is teaching software engineering has 0 experience in building software and the only thing he knows about software engineering is what he learned from his professor back when he was a student. You may even wonder if his professor even had any experience. If you are looking for a job, don't waste your time on university since you can get a programming job without degree. If you are going for the academia route, I pity you since online classes are soykaf, you easily pass any class and hardly learn anything. I fear for the new engineers that are majoring under this new system. There will be a lot of soykaf bridges, buildings and whatnot soon, I guess.

>>27981 It depends a) what you want to learn, and b) how you learn, and c) which college you're going to.

>>27982 I'll definitely be looking into ways to get into the workplace sooner rather than later. Online classes frustrate me because I don't feel like I get a lot of educational value out of them. I've got some friends in the Cybersecurity section of the University, and even they admit they don't remember soykaf and got a free pass because of the course being online-driven. Most of them dropping out this year to get a job because they too think the online way of learning is pure soykaf. I could imagine COVID degrees will be something looked down upon. >>27984 Want to be a better programmer, learn best with a good project in front of me or programming something that genuinely interests me; hands-on work I guess you can describe it as, and I'm going to one of the best universities for computer subjects in Scotland. I think had this been a normal time for humanity, I'd be getting on just fine, but COVID is a bitch and is impeding the Universities ability to teach the students properly.

No. I got very good grades and went through postgrad but feel like it was a huge mistake. I could have taught myself much more effectively in every way, and the credentials were useless so far because I have no interest in working for some megacorp. Even if you want some slave job you should just do some certifications, and the self-study material available for them is better than university materials

I went to the best CS university in the world (no not MIT) and it was extremely useful and far better than learning on my own. What I learned has made me a way better programmer than my coworkers. I think everything below the top tier of CS programs is pretty bad though. If, for example, there's any required courses in Java - then that's an indication that the education you're receiving is soykaf.

>>27989 I don't disagree with you on the Java part, but the ideas presented in courses pretty much always transcend the programming language, so it ends up not really mattering. Anyone who needs practical knowledge just has to do something with the languages they think is great or fitting. I imagine professors know this so they end up caring. Can you disclose which? Was it costly/stressful (and still worth it)? Not a >>27982 kind of poster who rejects the notion of universities, just a curious student who is receiving an average education. >>27981 Other people have raised important points already but I might add, I picked an interdisciplinary path where only half the courses (maybe a slight bit more) are computer science based. Even though I knew many of these topics were interesting, and let me stress this point, I for sure would not have delved into it as in-depth as university requires you to do. Not sure if this work ethic is really possible to have out of pure intrinsic motivation. I work part-time (occasionally full-time) too and the job is just way too narrow. Especially undergraduate degrees have the characteristic that they tend to be broad and show you what exists out there, so if this kind of thing interests you, you should read about it. If you decide to go to university, if I were in your shoes I would wait until the draconian covid measures tone done (hopefully they will), because you can get a lot more out of it if it's not soullessly done online.

>>27990 >so they end up caring fuarrrk, I meant >so they end up not caring

>>27981 I found that the more advanced/specialized classes are definitely better. The general programming stuff you can get pretty much anywhere.

Yes, next time don't try to google so much and proactively search for an approach that interests you, you know there are ton of resources out there. Is there a gap between how you learn/what you learn to do in uni and what the real world out there does? yes, but that's true for every career anyway.

>>27989 > If, for example, there's any required courses in Java - then that's an indication that the education you're receiving is soykaf. Why? I never got the hate against java. Unless you use OOP as a madman, it's a fine language. Pretty much every big service uses it. Amazon, Netflix, Spotify. I guess the only thing it shouldn't/couldn't do it low level programming, but it never was intended for that.

>>28004 >i never got the hate against java it's just contrarians that have to hate on industry standard at all costs, java is fine and it's arguably been the most influential language of the last 20 years, of course it's found in uni courses.

>>28004 Java puts all of its eggs into the same object-oriented basket, mostly to its detriment. It makes simple things hard to write and obvious things hard to understand because you need to describe everything in terms of OOP, even things that have no business being thought of as such. Just compare #include <stdio.h> int main(void) { printf("Hello World!"); } in C to class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello World!"); } } in Java, and hopefully you'll see my point.

>>28015 Python has System-related modules under "sys" which includes stdout. sys.stdout.write("uwu\n") or sys.stdout.writelines(["uwu"]) is functionally equivalent. C requires importing stdio and doesn't need stdio::print simply because it doesn't have namespaces. On that point, Common Lisp actually beats C, you don't need to load/require anything for #'print to work. Scheme also does the same, like this: (display "uwu\n") With Common Lisp, *standard-output* is also available by default in # without having to go through Python does also automatically provide a helper as the print function without calling out to other namespaces. So no, I don't really see your point.

>>28020 cont >With Common Lisp, *standard-output* is also available by default in # without having to go through Shit I thought I had deleted that line. Well anyway, *standard-output* is a special variable (http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lcl50/aug/aug-109.html). It's also available globally.

>>28004 >> If, for example, there's any required courses in Java - then that's an indication that the education you're receiving is soykaf. >Why? Because Java is a horrible language for learning CS fundamentals. For god's sake, it doesn't even have real first-class functions. Even C has that!

Took web dev and kinda glad I did as I am working on soykaf I normally would not do but know I can make an okayosh website.

>>28042 >Even C has that! idk if id say that. you cant, for instance, do stuff like this in C: python class AddModFactory: def __init__(self, m): self.m = m def makeAddNModM(n): return lambda x: (x + 2) % self.m

Yes, because it has given me project ideas. That is mainly it, and the fact that I can talk to others who know about computers irl.

I go to a college with a <10% acceptance rate and the programming classes here are pretty fun. They force me to learn stuff I would have no motivation to do otherwise, and everything is in person.

It was helpful, because it forced me to work on things I wouldn't have done otherwise. I typed that out before reading >>28250 Also it lets you meet other programmers, which by itself is very motivating.

>>28252 >Also it lets you meet other programmers, which by itself is very motivating. That is easily the WORST part of these classes. Everyone programmer is a user. Every. Single. One. They're the type of user that is all cutesy and insufferable as well, making it doubly as worse.

>>28253 Maybe you're at a bad uni?

>>28250 <10% acceptance rate: MIT, Ivies, Caltech, Stanford, Chicago. Or, in other words, be elite, have lots of money / have a scholarship, and uni is worth it. Commodity uni? "The commodity coder is an API plumber. The commodity uni is adult day-care."

>>28267 What's a commodity coder and commodity university? I've never encountered these phrases before.

>>28246 C has function pointers, which is functionally equivalent to first class functions. In C, instead of returning a lambda, you can define a function with a name and return a function pointer to it.

>>28268 Commodity in this context means "average" or "typical" or "crap". I.e, the average dev who comes out of Codeacademy is a commodity coder if s/he's employable, because s/he lacks any exceptional skills and can be interchangeable. Commodity uni would be tier 3 or below, i.e, underfunded, non-selective or minimally-selective, and with badly taught courses. Tier 1 unis, like the one Debbie Cartheris apparently attends, can hire highly-skilled teaching staff who aren't simply dumping content on people but provide challenging courses that expand the talent of their students in unique ways that render their student differentiated within the market, as opposed to being a commodity.

>>28270 Implying high ranked universities dont have lecturers that are good at research but abysmal, lazy teachers

>>28271 Is it easier to avoid bad instructors at higher-ranked unis or to find good instructors at lower-ranked unis?

>>27982 Some work positions ask for a degree, sadly.

>>28253 >Everyone programmer is a user. What do you mean by this?

>has college/university level education truly helped you learn to program? No. I did two degrees, one in commerce, one in humanities. I did teach me beerpong skills though.

>>30610 they ask, but often they ask for a lot of things, they hope for half or two thirds to be met. Whether they'll give a second look to rando guy without degree who looks otherwise good depends on a lot of things. Just because you don't have a degree doesn't mean you shouldn't just skip applying to these things if you're in the market.

>>30615 >>Everyone programmer is a user. >What do you mean by this? most likely he means every programmer is an F. A. G., language enhancer turns it to user.

It helped me get started, at least But you have to learn on your own

What's with all these threads asking how to learn? >how2 lern rusien >how2 lern philosophy >how2 lern 2 progrem How dense are you people? Open a book. Books are free now you know that?

>>27981 I think it provided an ok entry level to where I could then teach myself easily without being overwhelmed. After the first course it wasn't really necessary, you can learn faster on your own. (assuming your goal is only to learn, no to get a job, in which case I don't know)

Low-level coding classes are a waste of time. Teach yourself basic programming then try to skip all the "intro to programming" classes and go right into the hard CS. You need. a solid grounding in theory to do any of the interesting stuff and that's a lot harder to learn by yourself. >>27982 >If you are going for the academia route, I pity you since online classes are soykaf, you easily pass any class and hardly learn anything typically if you're trying for academia you will quickly get to the point where your classes are extremey difficult and have 5-10 people in them and the professor is really invested, because its more fun to teach motivated students.

>>30624 >Open a book You have no idea how hard it is for most people to even open a book. If it's no a 20 minutes video teaching you everything about X, then they are not going to learn it.

>>31076 When I posted that, universities were giving online classes because of covid. They were all easy to pass and soykaf to take because online classes are horrible to learn.

I'm the OP. Thank you to everybody who posted in the rough span of the year, especially to those who told of their own experience and what they got out of it. This thread wasn't a 'teach me' or 'give me the magic solution' thing and those who thought it was are too cynical. I dropped out of university and got a well-paying entry level IT job pretty much solely off my own knowledge of the methodology & technology the company utilises in its day-to-day. I have a very menial 1 year certification on my CV, the rest is unrelated work history. It's the best choice I've ever made since I'm making very good money, getting experience, and already somewhat mapping my way forward inside of the company. The year leading up to getting this job was spent in near-poverty and misery though, my lack of billable experience and qualification made it hard for me to even get to interview, but I think it's valuable for people who were lost like me to know that yes, it's absolutely possible to get in the door, in a good position, with minimal education and experience. The 3 years of studying that I just saved is infinitely more valuable to me that any soykaf you get from a fat degree.

>>27981 Going to school for education is like getting married for love. Sure, it's what everyone tells you that you should do it, but who cares if the state has a piece of paper that you're with another person? And that's what school is. SWE itself is prime example of how to proceed with school: none of it matters. Good school, bad school, you can learn everything on Google. If I cheat on every course and learn nothing from them, I without hyperbole would not have improved my knowledge in programming. What you SHOULD go to school is networking. Suck up to professors for letters of recommendations/resume, go to career center for resume help, apply for internships. If you are paying over 40K to learn how to write C++ and a soykafty professor who teaches you C++98 and never mentions any new C++ features (inb4 new C++11/14/17 is dogshit, I agree and limit my usage, and just use C++ as C with classes/lambdas. But for a new student, being able to just import vector to get a vector array, as opposed to making it himself, ESPECIALLY FOR LEETCODE INTERVIEWS, is an important skill.) as opposed to reading C++ books and asking lainons and even anons help for free, well you can clearly see which side is better. If you learned something that's useful for a job, that's great. But call me a cynic, but relying on schools to teach you what YOU want as opposed to finding it out yourself, seems a bit counterintuitive. And not only that, again, you are most likely going to school for a job, so you should stack it in your favor to get a job as much as you can

>>33008 I would like to add something. If you learn in school, that's great, but that's completely irrelevant. What I mean, is if your goal in school is to get as good as a job as you can get and/or go to a good graduate school. There's no metrics for/against you that check if you learn this stuff, other than interviews (which again, if you all you do is college, and are unable to do internships/research/projects/independently learn, that in of itself is a failure. I went to a FAGMAN and so I can vouch that the stuff that got me hired was a design seminar project (which was a SaaS. If you want a good project "make" a platform for some niche thing like "indie game developers networking app". It shows enthusiasm/business leadership and it doesn't even need to work to scale, just have it have a nice UI and soykaf and it'll be enough. Oh yea, professor didn't help me on the technical side) and my internships. It seems cynical but you the goal is putting all the cards in your table. If you go to a good/bad school, you can either turn it to your advantage, or you can turn it around. But I'm not answering the ultimate question: hell no. I learned more by making soykafty games/scripts/trying to configure my Arch machine. If you want to know the school it's UM Dearborn. God I hate that place

>>31076 Yeah, though some online classes are better than others. Last year I tried an online Javascript course from Khan Academy. And the price was right, it was free, yeah, but oh dear JESUS the hours I put in, wishing there were a way to fast-forward through all the Babby's-First-Exposure-to-the-Concept-that-a-Computer-is-a-Machine-that-Executes-Instructions-in-Sequence stuff. "And this is how you draw a rectangle in Javascript!" "And this is how you draw a circle in Javascript!" Yes, yes, yes. I've been coding as a hobby longer than you've been alive. Tell me about flow control. Tell me about conditionals. Tell me about iterating loops. Tell me about calling a subroutine. After a week I not do it do it any more. I'm just lazy and not sufficiently motivated, I guess. >>33009 >Dearbornistan Oh god. You didn't end up working at Ford, did you? Jesus.

>>33008 >just use C++ as C with classes/lambdas Why not just C++ as C with STL? What do you need classes for besides generic data structures (STL, Boost et al.)? As for lambdas in C++, hot take: if you're already using functors, your code is probably more overengineered than it needs to be without actually solving any real problems.

>>27981 >Hey lainons, I come with a question: has college/university level education truly helped you learn to program? In my experience: Hell yeah. Granted, I could have learned all the stuff by myself, but I would have no idea where to start. I knew the basics and the first two terms were super easy, but my program covered networking, IoT, opsec, linux, etc... Alot more than I would have found on my own. And one of the greatest advantage I had during my time was to have someone review my work. Be it teachers giving grades or showing code to other classmates for laughs. Also whenever I had nothing to do during class, I would try to improve or add stuff to my existing programs. I found projects I could work on in the future. I'd recommend doing your class in person. I had trouble during the beginning of pandemic during online classes and it was pretty rough.

>>33018 That's really motivating to read! I'm currently in a situation similar to where you were in the beginning; Been a hobbyist for the majority of my life by now, interested in a wide range of topics from gamedev/simulation to low-level OSDev, skimming many, but mastering few. I applied to uni mostly because I've heard it's much easier to find(stable) employment, as well as advance your career, when you have a degree. While predictably most of the initial classes are going over stuff I find trivial, a few of them have actually taught me quite a lot(mainly in the realm of abstract maths/foundational information theory, which I'm a fan of), which is really motivating. The biggest differences I'm noticing are a clearly laid-out syllabus, which is great to have, and the pressure to actually get things done on time, as >>28250 and >>28252 mentioned. I struggle with that when left to my own devices, so I appreciate the chance it gives me. I'm still in my first semestre, so I'm hoping I don't become disillusioned or drown in debt by the time I graduate, or decide to drop out.

>>33018 Huh. I always disavow schools. But if anything they provide a setting where to focus on getting stuff done. I remember I used to go to the university library (without being a student there) to study and do stuff. Lain knows at home there are many distractors and it's easy to open a web browser, that kinda stuff.

>>33043 Agreed. Studying at a university library is the most productive moments in my life. And I hate university.

>>33043 >>33080 I feel like a lot of the people who really hate university/college have never been and thus don't get the appeal (not saying this applies to you, I just think your posts make for a good jumping off point). You can learn most everything you need on your own for significantly less money, that's 100% true. But university isn't about providing knowledge; it's about providing an enviroment that helps you to internalize it. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you find you work best in a highly regimented enviroment, I highly reccomend it.

>>33081 >it's about providing an enviroment that helps you to internalize it. That depends on how good your university is.

My entire course had academics from other scientific fields that kept trying to hijack the course and teach students advanced biology or engineering as if they had no respect for computer science at all. You have to choose the university based on what courses they'll teach and the resources they have at their disposal. Unless you just want the slip of paper for a CV & interviews (which I did). For example I noticed MIT's lectures online are much more computing focused than my own. Also it's probably best to make all your projects done at University into showcase projects for a portfolio as the work is already done. Although my university wiped my version control half way through the course and it never worked properly lol.

>has college/university education worked for you? Yes. I'm currently procrastinating my grad school studies. It's very very difficult to study when you have a job and don't have much in-person contact with other people who are immersed in the field. I took a year between college and grad school, I managed to read about 2/3 of an advanced textbook but that's about it. >in learning to program? No. You would be better off doing an engineering degree and learning to program as needed for your projects.

Unpopular opinion: I really don't think you can be a world-class programmer without going to a good university. It's not about the teaching. You will never be around (yes, physically around) such a high concentration of motivated, smart people as when you're in school. Classes will force you to branch out into topics you would never touch with 10-foot pole through self study, and the people in those classes will lead you to new opportunities and projects to pour your heart into.

>>34289 >world-class programmer there's no such thing. you can have experts in specific fields but you gain that through experience and having a passion/dedication for it, not spending a few years in university

>>34289 lmao. Complete nonsense. The "world class" people will move at a pace where that environment only holds them back; they would be choosing to surround themselves with plebs. The gap from university to real/interesting work is huge. Only the internet allows the top 0.01% best people to find each other. Universities are utterly inundated with dumb plebs filter through. University does not pay well or provide good quality of life compared to industry or building your own projects, so you shouldnt even assume the professors are 'world class'

>>27982 Learning things like low level 3D rendering is painful without some form of motivation.

>>34289 I think you would be unimpressed by people with those credentials. Reminder: MIT hackers were an anomaly that bullied graduate students for not knowing or caring about computers.

>>33925 >I have a post-graduate degree and hated all of it. Worst mistake of my life. I wish I never went at all. Sorry to hear that. I have a master's degree in compsci and consider those semesters the best of my time in education. I certainly learned a lot about programming that I definitely would not have been exposed to had I went straight into industry after finishing undergrad. >>34289 >I really don't think you can be a world-class programmer without going to a good university. I disagree. A good university helps speed up the learning process and gives you a good roadmap what subjects and in which order, but you can learn it all through self study if you're disciplined enough. You can discuss any questions you have with competent people online, you don't need classmates or professors in the same room. Many of my undergrad classes were on subjects I had studied before and didn't go into as much depth as my self-studying did. Aside from professors who do thorough code reviews for you, there wasn't much benefit over just reading the textbooks. Personally, if I knew back then what I knew now, I'd probably have gotten my undergrad in a field I couldn't have self-studied as much and then only done my masters in compsci. >>34301 >The "world class" people will move at a pace where that environment only holds them back; they would be choosing to surround themselves with plebs. This just isn't true. Nothing stops you from learning more than what is taught in your classes. I spent many days reading books and research papers (that I could only access from my university's library) on subjects that weren't covered in my courses, and tons of time of personal projects. For me, I couldn't be a NEET after finishing high school, so I had the choice of either going to university where I'd spend 15 hours a week in classes that were mostly related to my interests, spend a couple hours a week on homework, have access to a ton of learning resources, hardware, and academic databases, get a stupid piece of paper at the end that greatly improved my job prospects, and have just enough financial aid money to survive the whole time, or I could have worked 30-40 hours a week at a soykaf job unrelated to my interests and then also have just enough money to survive. It's obvious which option would have held me back more. >surround themselves with plebs Yeah, probably 95% of my peers in undergrad were neither smart nor passionate. It changed in grad school, where at least half of my peers were smart and passionate. Very easy to find a group of high performing peers in grad school. >The gap from university to real/interesting work is huge "Real" work meaning? Industry work is full of plebs and people whose passion and thirst for knowledge is dead. The worst code I've ever seen is code written for "real" work that a team of professionals put together. As for "interesting" work - Lots of interesting work occurs in academia. Contributing new knowledge to the field is a requirement for a graduate thesis, so you're surrounded by people doing very niche and interesting work. Your professors have mostly all written a PhD thesis and spent much of their career contributing new ideas, research, and proofs to interesting fields as well. Not to say that you can't find interesting work out of academia, but just that interesting, rigorous work is quite common outside of undergrad.

>>27989 >I went to the best CS university in the world (no not MIT) Dying to know what school

>>34289 The best programmer I know went to a third rate state school. Now he's working on compilers at a FAGMAN company. If by world-class you only mean famous founders, then yes you need the sort of connections good universities provide to raise capital. >>38200 Only Stanford and MIT graduates have that much arrogance. I hope he did some introspection because if you keep finding yourself in mediocre teams there's one common element...