Ok ok, This starts to scare me. Internet, and this site especially is full of people whose minds are fast. Well what the fuck? Why aren''t you the next Einstain then. When a person declares himself smarter than someone else I call bullshit. Sorry. There has to be something wrong with you.

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Original post by titan2782
I learn at my own pace which is way faster than any class can do. I knwo how hard it is. Luckily I found a local company who does not care about degree''s, only results. I make a very nice living. How many 20yr old people do you know making 37k / yr ? all from self taught skills. Books are the ultimate answer.

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That enhance the self-esteem on which skills is more important than having a high degree. :D

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Original post by K-1
I am self-taught myself and up to now, it turned out that I impressed the interviewers. Sometimes they like self-taught people because they know they can learn new stuff very fast and that they have to be good to have learned all this stuff by themselves.

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I would say that the big issue is that many people that are "self taught" don't really know enough about some of the underlying design issues. I'm not saying it's a given, or anything stupid like that (why we give a little "test" to people who interview).

The issue is, many people just don't know how to write object oriented, extensible code. A lot of people are really good at banging out one shot answers to an issue, but then throw a monkey into the gears, and their solution is toast...a lot of those "grads" with 0 years of experience (and honestly, a grad with 0 years of experience wouldn't get hired, because they ought to have 3 summers worth of internships IMHO) knows a lot more about "idealized" design, and when they get thrown into the mix, they come up with much more extensible designs.

Now, I'm not saying that "self taught" people don't do this too, I'm saying "more often than not." There are a lot of excellent self-taught people. However, if I've got a choice between a kid with a degree in CS and Physics, 3 years of internsips, and a "self-taught" guy...who am I going to put my money on? (Unless the "self-taught" guy sends a good porfolio)

Cheers.

- sighuh?

[edited by - redragon on March 15, 2003 11:15:41 PM]

[edited by - redragon on March 15, 2003 11:16:00 PM]

[edited by - redragon on March 15, 2003 11:16:28 PM]

[edited by - redragon on March 15, 2003 11:16:48 PM]

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Original post by lone_ranger
My opinion:
College and universities are just a piece of sh*t.I am self- taught(9 years experience) and i can see that this is many times better than waiting learning from a course in a college/university.Is a f**king piece of paper and 4 years of "education on computer science" make you a better programmer than someone who started coding from a little age and learned from his own?(Now i am in a university,but i will probably leave it)

[edited by - lone_ranger on March 13, 2003 12:39:26 PM]

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Why leave? Seriously? Why is it so bad? A piece of paper does make a difference to a lot of people.


- sighuh?

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Original post by K-1

There''s a lot more to being a programmer than just writing code, I hope you guys realize that.

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K-1 Productions: Come visit us here.

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Amen.

- sighuh?

I don't want to start a flame war here.

But to suggest that people with degrees are in any way better coders is nonesense. And you're right there's a lot more to software engineering than just writing code. Only experience (not a degree) rounds your skill set.

I can give you a wonderful, and recent, example. My mate is a software engineer. His company needed to employ someone to help him. So they went for a CS graduate. This (very well qualified) person joined the company ... and they found that his entire course taught him how to write Java classes. Which was bugger all use in a real-time environment. He now maintains the company web page - because that's all he can do.

The above is not an isolatd incident either. It seems that CS degrees are becoming two-a-penny. And they seem to focus on the simpler aspects of moderm computing. Ask a CS degree student to do two's complement arithmetic, and they tend to look at you blankly. As for writing assembly, well ... lets not go there.

Just my opinion - based on years of working with CS graduates as well as just plain old experienced ones.

[edited by - Shag on March 16, 2003 10:22:17 AM]

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Original post by Shag
I don''t want to start a flame war here.

But to suggest that people with degrees are in any way better coders is nonesense. And you''re right there''s a lot more to software engineering than just writing code. Only experience (not a degree) rounds your skill set.

I can give you a wonderful, and recent, example. My mate is a software engineer. His company needed to employ someone to help him. So they went for a CS graduate. This (very well qualified) person joined the company ... and they found that his entire course taught him how to write Java classes. Which was bugger all use in a real-time environment. He now maintains the company web page - because that''s all he can do.

The above is not an isolatd incident either. It seems that CS degrees are becoming two-a-penny. And they seem to focus on the simpler aspects of moderm computing. Ask a CS degree student to do two''s complement arithmetic, and they tend to look at you blankly. As for writing assembly, well ... lets not go there.

Just my opinion - based on years of working with CS graduates as well as just plain old experienced ones.

[edited by - Shag on March 16, 2003 10:22:17 AM]

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Wow...I''m amazed how bad so many people''s experiences are with CS grads. I wonder if it''s an issue with poor CS programs? Perhaps you should be asking those students for a list of courses taken, their grades, and the sylabus. I certainly know that the "self-taught" people in our company don''t know a damn about scheduling (an issue covered in depth in operating systems, but also very important for games), don''t know the difference between a singleton and their own shoe (or any other design pattern for that matter...and these are lang. indep.), and those are staples (or should be) in a CS program. I guess it''s really an issue of what sorts of CS grads you guys are finding. Kinda sad if people are getting "degrees" and their just making CS grads look bad.

- sighuh?

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Original post by titan2782
How many 20yr old people do you know making 37k / yr ?

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Every one of the ones I hire (actually they make a good bit more). They all have degrees. They all have good grades. They all have programming experience. And to boot they are all good coders with good communication and team skills (they would never have gotten past me and the rest of the team screening them if they were totally clueless).

Hmmm...I guess my experience is in the minority. Maybe the issue is how people are screened for positions.

No - the issue is the course laid out for them.

Remember Most tutors are less proficient than the grads themselves. They are forced into doing IT because of the demand.

I don''t mean to sound arrogant, but I''d happily go up against anyone with a ''proper'' qualification. Especially in terms of performance. Or even just style.

Regards

It was never about the degree but dedication and hard work. John Carmack doesn''t have a degree and hard work made him successful. Brian Hook talked about this some time ago. Game programming is too difficult for what you get out of it. That''s why it takes extraordinary person to put up with all the crap and still keep going, imo. Just look at all the failed attempts here at gamedev. You get initial high then come back to earth to reality. Enthusiasm and persistance will make everything possible and you need a LOT of enthusiasm in long, boring inbetween periods. You do get sick of it sometimes but you must press on. I don''t know many who would sacrifice so much as to make game programming liable. The few who are left are worshippers of gaming gods and they will make it.