Le Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:12:36 +0200, John Bokma <j...@castleamber.com> a
écrit:
David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> writes:
John Bokma <j...@castleamber.com> writes:
David Kastrup <d...@gnu.org> writes:
John Passaniti <john.passan...@gmail.com> writes:
Amen! All this academic talk is useless. Who cares about things
like
the big-O notation for program complexity. Can't people just *look*
at code and see how complex it is?! And take things like the years
of
wasted effort computer scientists have put into taking data
structures
(like hashes and various kinds of trees) and extending them along
various problem domains and requirements. Real programmers don't
waste their time with learning that junk. What good did any of that
ever do anyone?!
It is my experience that in particular graduated (and in particular
Phd)
computer scientists don't waste their time _applying_ that junk.
Question: do you have a degree in computer science?
Since in my experience: people who talk about their experience with
graduated people often missed the boat themselves and think that
reading
a book or two equals years of study.
I have a degree in electrical engineering. But that's similarly
irrelevant.
Nah, it's not: your attitude towards people with a degree in computer
science agrees with what I wrote.
That has not particularly helped my respect towards CS majors and PhDs
in the function of programmers (and to be honest: their education is not
intended to make them good programmers, but to enable them to _lead_
good programmers).
I disagree.
That does not mean that I am incapable of analyzing, say quicksort and
mergesort,
Oh, that's what I was not implying. I am convinced that quite some
people who do self-study can end up with better understanding of things
than people who do it for a degree. I have done both: I already was
programming in several languages before I was studying CS. And my
experience is that a formal study in CS can't compare to home study
unless you're really good and have the time and drive to read formal
books written on CS. And my experience is that most self-educaters don't
have that time.
On the other hand: some people I knew during my studies had no problem
at all with introducing countless memory leaks in small programs (and
turning off compiler warnings, because it gave so much noise...)
Donald Knuth never studied computer science.
Yes, yes, and Albert Einstein worked at an office.
Those people are very rare.
But my experience (see for plenty of examples: Slashdot) is that quite
some people who don't have a degree think that all that formal education
is just some paper pushing and doesn't count. While some of those who do
have the paper think they know it all. Those people who are right in
either group are a minority in my experience.
As for electrical engineering: done that (BSc) and one of my class mates
managed to connect a transformer the wrong way around.... twice. Yet he
had the highest mark in our class.
So in short: yes, self-study can make you good at something. But
self-study IMO is not in general a replacement for a degree. Someone who
can become great after self-study would excel at a formal study and
learn more. Study works best if there is competition and if there are
challenges. I still study a lot at home, but I do miss the challenges
and competition.
Hi all,
I quite agree with the fact that self learning is not enough.
Another thing you learn in studying in University is the fact that you can
be wrong, which is quite difficult to accept for self taught people. When
you work in groups, you are bound to admit that you don't have the best
solution all the time. To my experience, self-taught people I worked with
had tremendous difficulties to accept that they were wrong, that their
design was badly done, that their code was badly written or strangely
designed.
Because self teaching was done with a lot of efforts, in particular to
figure out complex problems on their own. Most of the time, the self
learned people are attached to the things they learned by themselves and
have difficulties to envisage that being right of wrong is often not an
issue provided the group comes to the best option. They often live
contradiction as a personal offense while it is just work, you know.
That's another interest of the degree, confrontation with other people
that have the same background. And letting the things learned at the place
they should be and not in the affective area.
1001
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