Sorry to just drop in suddenly but I am 14 and everything I know about programming, hardware and computers in general is self taught from books and the internet. Of course I had help from others but I definitely didn't pick it up in school (I am in class 9).
Thanks On Thu, Sep 29, 2011 at 10:26 PM, Tim Mensch <[email protected]> wrote: > ** > On 9/28/2011 11:13 PM, John Coryat wrote: > > I agree with the concept that people who get in computer science are as > likely to be good programmers as those who get their education for something > else. > > > There are relative levels of "good". Huge ranges of good, in fact -- at > least a factor of 20, according to the literature, and in my experience > there are skill levels that, if you haven't reached them, there are some > problems you can't solve no matter how long you take, and the problems you > take longer to solve won't have nearly as good of a solution. > > And some of those things you don't tend to learn without having a degree. > Yes it's POSSIBLE to acquire any skills you want without a CS degree (I > don't have a computer science degree myself, fyi, but I took most of the > upper division CS class sequence), but finding someone who's the level of > good I'm looking for (video game development, high performance code, > generally can do anything) who doesn't have a degree is extremely rare. And > it tends to be obvious in the few cases someone is self-educated to that > level, because they will have tons of accomplishments they can point to. > > I'm not looking for someone who can just code a UI in Java. I don't even > use Java on Android -- everything I'm doing is C/C++ and Lua, so it can also > run on iOS. When I'm hiring, I look for people who can not only program in > straight C if necessary, they could drop into assembly language if they > needed to. Which is pretty much how you need to be able to think if you're > ever going to write, say, a pixel shader or vertex shader. > > Unless I'm just looking for a game scripter. In that case, degrees are > irrelevant to me. It all depends on what kind of programming you're really > talking about, and I think a lot of people will debate with each other > endlessly about how to hire "programmers", when each side is talking about > people with completely different skill levels. I wonder if we wouldn't > benefit from some kind of "certification level" so that when someone says > they're a Programmer Level 4, say, you can know whether they're capable of > copy-and-paste JavaScript/HTML development, or vertex shader and high > performance/real-time code development, or somewhere in the middle. > > > That's why the idea of hiring kids out of high school is ludicrous. > > > A well known blogger disagrees: > > "By the way, it's because of this phenomenon—the fact that many of the > great people are *never on the job market*—that we are so aggressive about > hiring summer interns." [1] > > Honestly, I was a better programmer fresh out of high school than many of > the people I've worked with since then, "real" experience or not (having > coded entire games in assembly language by that time, since BASIC wasn't > fast enough for me). But I learned a lot of important things in college that > made me even better. YMMV. > > Tim > > [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2005/01/27.html > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Android Discuss" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en. > -- ------------------ Raghav Sood CEO/Founder/Owner/Dictator/Tyrant at Appaholics (Basically all titles required to have complete control) http://www.raghavsood.com/ https://market.android.com/developer?pub=Appaholics http://www.appaholics.in/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
