Do you need a college education to be a programmer?
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I consider it an excellent idea. But that being said, there needs to be some sort of standard associated with a profession. In a sense, a college degree is a contract; it tells an employer that a candidate has shown competency in this and that area of knowledge. It doesn't guarantee that the individual is a good worker, or honest, or cares about doing quality work, but it does establish a level of expertise as a minimum. There's no reason that this can't be extended to apprenticeship, but without it I'd be cautious about what I hired a programmer to do. Would you want to entrust programming a safety-critical function to someone who is self taught and has no certain background? I've known a number of excellent engineers in my career who lacked an engineering degree. They were excellent at their jobs, since most engineers never need half the stuff they teach us. But what if a job came up that really required an in-depth understanding of physics, or a theoretical understanding of the limits of a technique that most pick up as a rule of thumb, along with general engineering judgement? I wouldn't want one of these guys in that position, especially if public safety was an issue. I've caught a number of serious errors before they've happened because of my degree, things overlooked or not adequately explored by engineers who lacked my education. I would be surprised if such things didn't happen regularly out there in the real world. Programming is a similarly demanding job - at times. Most of the time, though, it just requires a bit of reasoning skill, and a good understanding of a language or two, and a good set of requirements to program a task. Apprentices, and even completely self-taught individuals are entirely capable of doing most routine assignments. I think a set of skills that can be demonstrated via testing, or demonstration to other professionals - a review board, of sorts - would be perfectly acceptable way to train most programmers. Even the reviews people receive here at CodeProject I would consider in evaluating a programmer; we have some of the most skilled programmers on the planet here, and I'd bet that few of them have any formal programming degree. I like the idea! :)
Will Rogers never met me.
You're now evaluating a graduate based on the institution where he graduated. You'd do the same with apprentices "graduating" from Adobe, Google, IBM, Microsoft or Oracle - you'd know what and how they do by knowing where they come from. The only different thing would be a shorter feedback loop: you're know evaluating an institution based on the overall success of its graduates in various enterprises, and then evaluate fresh graduates based on the rating of the institution. You'd evaluate apprentices directly based on the success of the companies where they did their apprenticeship. No amount of standards compliance would be able to convince you to hire a former apprentice from IBM if all feedback from the industry is that IBM trains people in a way you can't use.
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Fabio Franco wrote:
I agree, but usually graduates have a good foundation and get up to speed very fast on real world problems.
I don't know about where your "graduates" come from but here those graduates always have "real world" expertise because they have already worked at real jobs. Now the fact that those jobs were acquired via a connection with the school doesn't alter the fact that the experience originated from the job and not the school.
jschell wrote:
because they have already worked at real jobs.
Which is the case of many graduates, but not all of them. It's up to them to decide whether they want to start working on internships right away when they start college (or the first couple of years). And there's still the case of people who simply weren't born for the job.
jschell wrote:
experience originated from the job and not the school
That's the idea.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson "Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction." ― Francis Picabia
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What do you think: Does someone really need to rack up huge student debt and spend 4 or more years in dry college classes just to become a programmer? What about bringing back apprenticeship? Wouldn't it be great for you if you had some smart kid learning from you and helping you out for a few years? Wouldn't it be great for him or her? Here's an article discussing the apprenticeship movement: Let's bring back Apprenticeships[^] I went to college, then to law school. Then I quit that business, took a course in C programming, and made a career of it. I'm not the greatest programmer out there, but I can do the job. Are we investing our treasure wisely spending it on formal education (perhaps wasted in my case), when there are more direct ways of learning a profession. In Texas, where I got my law degree, you could be licensed to practice law based either on formal education or an apprenticeship with a lawyer. Is this such a bad idea?
Tom Clement Serena Software, Inc. www.serena.com articles[^]
Not necessarily. The degree WILL help you get your foot in the door with most companies because the HR departments typically screen out applications without their minimum credentials. But that doesn't help you keep the job an ultimately it's usually your performance (and that of your code) that matters. It helps to know someone, or to have the recommendation of someone in the industry that is resepected or who already works for the company. Sometimes you can circumvent the standard process if you know someone who can vouch for you. Short of that, small companies and startups are much more likely to take on someone without a degree if you can show an aptitude for the work. If you know your stuff and it shows instantly to the hiring manager (who is likely to be your boss in a small company) they may be willing to roll the dice with you even without a degree. Keep in mind though, that without a degree you are likely to earn less even if you can get a position. This is especially true with small companies and startups where budgets are tight or non-existant. You'll have to prove your worth to the company very quickly.
Dan Dingus
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Yes, lets bring back Apprecticeships! It has been an excellent experience for me. While I had been taking the odd programming class since highschool, it took me a minute in college to realize what was my true passion. I first majored in Art, Business, English, before taking an Html refresher course, and a computer art class for Flash (both for fun) and realizing that I needed to get back into programming. I applied for the comp. sci program directly and studied at it for a solid year. Disaster struck (I got married), and my wife didn't want to live in my parent's basement while I finished school. I did the only thing I could afford to do (and remain married to my lovely wife). I dropped out of school and started working construction. It was definitely the worst 3 years of my life. Then, I got super lucky. I had a friend who had worked for me in the restaurant industry. He had gone a shorter route, and received a 2-year degree from a technical school based on programming. I was always telling him about my woes working construction, and eventually he was telling me about his woes dealing with unreliable programmers who couldn't not manage to focus, or do a decent job at all. I said "Hey, surely I can do that." He agreed to teach me on our own time, and I bought some books and would study in between working long hours at my construction job. He brought it up in passing to his boss that I had been learning the language, and he said "We should do an apprenticeship." Lucky, blessed, whatever you want to call it, that's what I was. I've been working with one of the best (though small) companies in the world, and I got to learn a bunch of the "tricks of the trade" from my good friend. Because of how good the boss was to give me my chance, I have an intense loyalty to those guys and am willing to work extra-hard so that we can all enjoy continued success. He told me in our interview "Anyone can get a programming book and learn from it, but what it takes in this industry is a passion for computers." Without that I certainly would have failed (or probably not have been interested in the first place). Anyway, sorry to ramble on a bit. I just wanted to share my story since I was lucky enough to have first hand experience. None of what I learned during my apprenticeship could be replaced by what I learned at the university, just as my acedemic learning cannot replace what I've learned through work experience. I still yearn to go back to school so that I can learn more about the theory, and t
Great story Vaughn!! Thanks for sharing it!
Tom Clement Serena Software, Inc. www.serena.com articles[^]
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KP Lee wrote:
The advantage of college is that it gives the perception that you are smart.
I disagree with this. I don't know what college your co-worker went too, but the college I go to makes me feel dumb. Some of the courses & projects I have done in college have been extremely hard. I mean I had a 4.0 when I graduated high school, but I do good to keep a 3.5 in college now.
~ Somebody left a footprint...o0=... here...
KP Lee wrote:
...the perception that you are smart...
What I meant by that was the perception of others, not your own. At the same time, I mentioned that reality can be different. The first day of college, I felt swamped. I went into a class thinking I was really smart in math. Because of this, I jumped into a course where everyone else had already taken a year of training. The teacher jumped into training where he had left off before, everyone else knew what was going on, I thought college was MUCH tougher than high school and for the first time in my life I was really challenged. Two days later I'd had 4 hours sleep and dreading trying to keep up with the next ton of new stuff to learn. Wondering if I had to drop out. To my surprise, nothing new had suddenly popped out again. I realized the first class had been a review, he was just refreshing everyone's memory. I kind of skated through the next two years fighting my adviser all the way. He wanted me to take courses to finish my AA, I only wanted to take courses that would transfer to university because I was going to get a BS. In high school I had a 3.0 because I refused to put in any effort, popped up to 3.5 in college because I thought I had to work at it in the beginning and maintained 3.5 in university because the courses there forced me to work even harder. It's OK to feel dumb, just keep on going. I've read texts where I thought they were trying to string together 12 to 15 character words in order to SEEM smart. By the time I had deciphered the meaning, I had come to the conclusion that was precisely what they were doing.
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What do you think: Does someone really need to rack up huge student debt and spend 4 or more years in dry college classes just to become a programmer? What about bringing back apprenticeship? Wouldn't it be great for you if you had some smart kid learning from you and helping you out for a few years? Wouldn't it be great for him or her? Here's an article discussing the apprenticeship movement: Let's bring back Apprenticeships[^] I went to college, then to law school. Then I quit that business, took a course in C programming, and made a career of it. I'm not the greatest programmer out there, but I can do the job. Are we investing our treasure wisely spending it on formal education (perhaps wasted in my case), when there are more direct ways of learning a profession. In Texas, where I got my law degree, you could be licensed to practice law based either on formal education or an apprenticeship with a lawyer. Is this such a bad idea?
Tom Clement Serena Software, Inc. www.serena.com articles[^]
I think the answer comes down to definitions. If you're defining a programmer as a person who just writes code in one language according to a specification created by someone else, then no; a college education is of marginal value in that case. The more involved a person is in design and architecture decisions, the more valuable the education becomes. And, let's be honest here: the "I just hack code" guys are the one's whose jobs are getting outsourced, and even that is just a temporary stopgap until they can be replaced with code generators. To be fair, though, I don't think apprenticeships have ever really disappeared, they've just gotten shorter and more informal. No one who understands the college/university education system expects a recent CS grad to already be a competent programmer. That isn't the point of any serious CS degree program, nor should it be. The point of the degree is to provide a solid grounding in the theory of computing so that the graduate is better equipped to get up to speed in whatever work environment they end up in. The difference is that you don't have to spend all that time teaching the new guy the basics of algorithms, data structures, graph structures, matrix/vector operations, etc. Sure, you could do all that in an apprenticeship program, but is that an effective use of the mentor's time? Furthermore, who says that the mentor is even good at mentoring? Teaching and doing are two completely different skillsets. They aren't mutually exclusive, but being good at doing something does not mean that you're able to explain it to someone else. One more observation, from my previous career in construction: there is a marked difference in certain personal traits between people with different levels of education. In my experience, there is a strong direct correlation between education and things like reliability, perseverance in the face of adversity, and emotional stability. I won't argue causality here, since I don't think it can be clearly separated in this case (a person with those traits is more likely to be successful academically, and formal education also tends to reinforce those traits). However, it goes to my overall point that that it's silly to try and calculate the value of a CS degree based on how well the average new grad can hack code.
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jschell wrote:
because they have already worked at real jobs.
Which is the case of many graduates, but not all of them. It's up to them to decide whether they want to start working on internships right away when they start college (or the first couple of years). And there's still the case of people who simply weren't born for the job.
jschell wrote:
experience originated from the job and not the school
That's the idea.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson "Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction." ― Francis Picabia
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Fabio Franco wrote:
That's the idea.
Accept of course that it is is still the experience, and not the school, that delivers the value.
jschell wrote:
still the experience, and not the school, that delivers the value.
This statement implies that the school does not deliver any value and I disagree. School is not only about the diploma.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson "Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction." ― Francis Picabia
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Disclaimer #1: I didn't give you the 1-vote. Disclaimer #2: I have a B.S. degree in computer engineering: Wright State University class of 1984, go Raiders! I've found your type of contempt for formal education to be pretty common among long-time developers that don't have a degree. Your experience with college folks with little or no concrete work background is that they over-complicate things with fancy sh!t that fails to get the job done. This is made worse by the college kids themselves, who think their degree grants them superhuman powers and act like it. My experience with non-degreed developers is that they tend to have a narrower range of responses to a given problem. Through trial and error and a lot of hard work they've discovered a sheaf of approaches to the problems they encounter. It's the old "when you have a hammer, every problem is a nail" thing. Time is the great leveler. Once a developer has 15 or 20 years of experience, that background is much more important for deciding whether they are a good fit for a team than whether or not they have a college degree. I'm of the opinion you're still not worth a crap as a programmer when you graduate if you didn't work as one during school. I started working as a programmer in 1980, after only two programming classes. The company that hired me used me as slave labor on contract. I wrote FORTRAN, various assembly languages, and did system management and technical writing for a pile of customers by the time I graduated. My work experience was as valuable as my education.
Software Zen:
delete this;Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
I've found your type of contempt for formal education to be pretty common among long-time developers that don't have a degree.
Naturally however that statement doesn't in fact address at all whether education by itself confers any real practical benefit. And in my experience those with a degree, regardless of the degree, always seem to think that the degree itself confers ability onto them and others. I suspect that places that place importance on a degree are more likely to prejudge based on the lack itself.
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
My experience with non-degreed developers is that they tend to have a narrower range of responses to a given problem. Through trial and error and a lot of hard work they've discovered a sheaf of approaches to the problems they encounter. It's the old "when you have a hammer, every problem is a nail" thing.
That description covers most programmers - regardless of degree. Flavor of the month and jump on the latest bandwagon is the usual mantra.
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
I'm of the opinion you're still not worth a crap as a programmer when you graduate if you didn't work as one during school
I agree.
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
I've found your type of contempt for formal education to be pretty common among long-time developers that don't have a degree.
Naturally however that statement doesn't in fact address at all whether education by itself confers any real practical benefit. And in my experience those with a degree, regardless of the degree, always seem to think that the degree itself confers ability onto them and others. I suspect that places that place importance on a degree are more likely to prejudge based on the lack itself.
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
My experience with non-degreed developers is that they tend to have a narrower range of responses to a given problem. Through trial and error and a lot of hard work they've discovered a sheaf of approaches to the problems they encounter. It's the old "when you have a hammer, every problem is a nail" thing.
That description covers most programmers - regardless of degree. Flavor of the month and jump on the latest bandwagon is the usual mantra.
Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
I'm of the opinion you're still not worth a crap as a programmer when you graduate if you didn't work as one during school
I agree.
I believe a college degree at least has the potential for making you aware of a broader range of responses to problems. Whether or not you take advantage of that potential is up to you.
jschell wrote:
I suspect that places that place importance on a degree are more likely to prejudge based on the lack itself.
Unfortunately H.R. departments in large organizations that receive a lot of resumes are going to filter based on characteristics like a degree, or lack thereof. Smaller outfits are a lot more likely to give a resume individual attention.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
What do you think: Does someone really need to rack up huge student debt and spend 4 or more years in dry college classes just to become a programmer? What about bringing back apprenticeship? Wouldn't it be great for you if you had some smart kid learning from you and helping you out for a few years? Wouldn't it be great for him or her? Here's an article discussing the apprenticeship movement: Let's bring back Apprenticeships[^] I went to college, then to law school. Then I quit that business, took a course in C programming, and made a career of it. I'm not the greatest programmer out there, but I can do the job. Are we investing our treasure wisely spending it on formal education (perhaps wasted in my case), when there are more direct ways of learning a profession. In Texas, where I got my law degree, you could be licensed to practice law based either on formal education or an apprenticeship with a lawyer. Is this such a bad idea?
Tom Clement Serena Software, Inc. www.serena.com articles[^]
Does the industry now expect this? From experience, that is a "Yes". In reality, no, I don't think so. Personally, although I have been programming professionally for about 15 years, I have an Electrical Engineering degree, and took no computer science classes in college. I am 100% self taught. I am currently a senior C++ programmer, but have also done C#, Delphi, and even VB6 (egads, I know, but VB6 was used quite a bit for some business applications in the pre-DotNet days). Everything you need to know to program or architect software you can learn out of school. However, now comes the personal experience part. Most companies these days think that a degree means everything. Every interview I have to overcome my lack of a degree, especially the C++ heavy/exclusive companies. Thankfully I have been lucky and have only had to change jobs a few times in my career.
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KP Lee wrote:
...the perception that you are smart...
What I meant by that was the perception of others, not your own. At the same time, I mentioned that reality can be different. The first day of college, I felt swamped. I went into a class thinking I was really smart in math. Because of this, I jumped into a course where everyone else had already taken a year of training. The teacher jumped into training where he had left off before, everyone else knew what was going on, I thought college was MUCH tougher than high school and for the first time in my life I was really challenged. Two days later I'd had 4 hours sleep and dreading trying to keep up with the next ton of new stuff to learn. Wondering if I had to drop out. To my surprise, nothing new had suddenly popped out again. I realized the first class had been a review, he was just refreshing everyone's memory. I kind of skated through the next two years fighting my adviser all the way. He wanted me to take courses to finish my AA, I only wanted to take courses that would transfer to university because I was going to get a BS. In high school I had a 3.0 because I refused to put in any effort, popped up to 3.5 in college because I thought I had to work at it in the beginning and maintained 3.5 in university because the courses there forced me to work even harder. It's OK to feel dumb, just keep on going. I've read texts where I thought they were trying to string together 12 to 15 character words in order to SEEM smart. By the time I had deciphered the meaning, I had come to the conclusion that was precisely what they were doing.
KP Lee wrote:
It's OK to feel dumb, just keep on going.
I know what you mean, but I don't think I'm a dumb person. I just meant there have been classes I have taken that made me feel dumb, because I had did a lot of work & still came short of a B.
KP Lee wrote:
What I meant by that was the perception of others, not your own.
Ha, I agree with that because people do think that college makes you smarter. For example, my mail man told me that I looked smarter when I told him I was still in college. Although, I do believe you can go to college and really not be that much smarter than before you went, depending on what your learning & doing during your college.
KP Lee wrote:
I've read texts where I thought they were trying to string together 12 to 15 character words in order to SEEM smart.
I've thought the same thing & I can't stand when they do that. I like read text that is easy to understand & uses simplicity to explain concepts & theory behind algorithms.
~ Somebody left a footprint...o0=... here...
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One does not study Shakespeare for career prospects except, say, in creative writing or (likely theatrical) acting. Also, I daresay most programmers do not study the nuances of the Platonic solids, least of all at university-level. As it happens, some people choose to study a subject because they have an interest in it. Even if a graduate finds their degree to be of little help in finding a job, they will still have matured from several years of the student life. Further, I wouldn't gauge a university's effectiveness or reputation by its number of graduates, nor the quality of programmers it produces. As with all things, programming or otherwise, with a degree or a handful of GCSEs, an individual can find the right job for them if they look in the right places and apply themselves properly. If they are not the right candidate for the job, their choice of education + institute should not be condemned if they are rejected.
Sometimes a fist in the face says more than a thousand honeyed words.
StephenPhillips wrote:
Even if a graduate finds their degree to be of little help in finding a job, they will still have matured from several years of the student life.
They will be more mature if they have a full time job and have been paying their own bills for server years.
StephenPhillips wrote:
Further, I wouldn't gauge a university's effectiveness or reputation by its number of graduates, nor the quality of programmers it produces.
Either a university provides benefits that are useful for a job or not. If it does then different universities will differ in that ability.
StephenPhillips wrote:
If they are not the right candidate for the job, their choice of education + institute should not be condemned if they are rejected.
Pretty sure that has nothing to do with what I said.
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StephenPhillips wrote:
Even if a graduate finds their degree to be of little help in finding a job, they will still have matured from several years of the student life.
They will be more mature if they have a full time job and have been paying their own bills for server years.
StephenPhillips wrote:
Further, I wouldn't gauge a university's effectiveness or reputation by its number of graduates, nor the quality of programmers it produces.
Either a university provides benefits that are useful for a job or not. If it does then different universities will differ in that ability.
StephenPhillips wrote:
If they are not the right candidate for the job, their choice of education + institute should not be condemned if they are rejected.
Pretty sure that has nothing to do with what I said.
I'd say there is a great deal of variation between different people in terms of what is more effective for their future. Some people are less suited to university, while others don't feel ready for a career when they finish school/college. I reiterate that regardless of their degree and where they studied for it, some people simply aren't suited to particular kinds of jobs. A talented mathematician and coder may struggle on writing database queries, and therefore be seen as a poor programmer when starting a job.
Sometimes a fist in the face says more than a thousand honeyed words.
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jschell wrote:
still the experience, and not the school, that delivers the value.
This statement implies that the school does not deliver any value and I disagree. School is not only about the diploma.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson "Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction." ― Francis Picabia
Fabio Franco wrote:
This statement implies that the school does not deliver any value and I disagree
School might deliver value. However in terms of hiring a graduate for a job, the graduate's previous work experience is going to make the school insignificant. Unless of course there is no previous work experience.
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Fabio Franco wrote:
This statement implies that the school does not deliver any value and I disagree
School might deliver value. However in terms of hiring a graduate for a job, the graduate's previous work experience is going to make the school insignificant. Unless of course there is no previous work experience.
jschell wrote:
the graduate's previous work experience is going to make the school insignificant.
So, which guy are you gonna hire? 1 - Graduated at Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2 - Graduated at New York City College of Technology You can't simply dismiss what school someone attended to. I do agree that unknown colleges will not make much of a difference, but the course will usually. In Brazil, many jobs or positions require Engineering degree. While a Technology degree will land you into jobs, having a degree in engineering can really make the difference on the position you land for a job.
"To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems" - Homer Simpson "Our heads are round so our thoughts can change direction." ― Francis Picabia
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What do you think: Does someone really need to rack up huge student debt and spend 4 or more years in dry college classes just to become a programmer? What about bringing back apprenticeship? Wouldn't it be great for you if you had some smart kid learning from you and helping you out for a few years? Wouldn't it be great for him or her? Here's an article discussing the apprenticeship movement: Let's bring back Apprenticeships[^] I went to college, then to law school. Then I quit that business, took a course in C programming, and made a career of it. I'm not the greatest programmer out there, but I can do the job. Are we investing our treasure wisely spending it on formal education (perhaps wasted in my case), when there are more direct ways of learning a profession. In Texas, where I got my law degree, you could be licensed to practice law based either on formal education or an apprenticeship with a lawyer. Is this such a bad idea?
Tom Clement Serena Software, Inc. www.serena.com articles[^]
You can only be good learning programming by yourself, but the 4 years of college teaches you about theories which are necessary to become great!