Having a "formal" CS education, the only thing that keeps me current, relevant, is being perpetually self-taught and self-directed.
Having and building this discipline is the single master skill that unlocks everything else.
As soon as we think we're done, arrived, or have a "foundation", we're dead. What we know today will be relevant in a different way tomorrow.
It's true there are intangible skills like design, usability and architecture, but it only comes from building lots of small and larger software projects, not in the classroom, textbooks, projects, or theories.
Algorithms are important, but I contest that the majority of web/mobile apps don't even come close to needing premature optimization.
I wouldn't think twice at hiring someone who's self-taught and self-directed over someone with a CS degree.
Why? Self-taught people seem to have more of a track record of things they've built, instead of school projects on a resume. Self-taught programmers also tend to like to build things customers like and focus on the customer a lot more instead of optimizing their own world and tools.
I would definitely argue that the only thing that gets in the way of my learning is my "education"
One handicap my CS education gave me until I realized it was the "start fresh" syndrome. In CS you start pretty much everything from scratch, and think that's normal. Get into the post-graduate world and scrapping existing codebases isn't exactly normal, nor is always starting from scratch.
Comments
Having a "formal" CS education, the only thing that keeps me current, relevant, is being perpetually self-taught and self-directed.
Having and building this discipline is the single master skill that unlocks everything else.
As soon as we think we're done, arrived, or have a "foundation", we're dead. What we know today will be relevant in a different way tomorrow.
It's true there are intangible skills like design, usability and architecture, but it only comes from building lots of small and larger software projects, not in the classroom, textbooks, projects, or theories.
Algorithms are important, but I contest that the majority of web/mobile apps don't even come close to needing premature optimization.
I wouldn't think twice at hiring someone who's self-taught and self-directed over someone with a CS degree.
Why? Self-taught people seem to have more of a track record of things they've built, instead of school projects on a resume. Self-taught programmers also tend to like to build things customers like and focus on the customer a lot more instead of optimizing their own world and tools.
I would definitely argue that the only thing that gets in the way of my learning is my "education"
One handicap my CS education gave me until I realized it was the "start fresh" syndrome. In CS you start pretty much everything from scratch, and think that's normal. Get into the post-graduate world and scrapping existing codebases isn't exactly normal, nor is always starting from scratch.