KermMartian wrote:
I'm the first to agree that you don't need a lot of experience to be a good coder and a good hacker (in the positive sense), but there are some fields and concentrations where graduate work reading all the existing papers on a subject, learning a lot about that area, and implementing and publishing novel systems will make you a highly sought-after expert in an area.
Exactly. Having problem solving abilities is great, but having a lot of knowledge will save potential employers time training you in a specialized area.
KermMartian wrote:
I'm the first to agree that you don't need a lot of experience to be a good coder and a good hacker (in the positive sense)
Who are you agreeing with on that? I couldn't disagree more. There is no such thing as a good coder/hacker with little experience. The only good coders are the ones with lots of experience (not necessarily work experience, mind you). When it comes to coding, experience >>>>>>>> degree.
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but there are some fields and concentrations where graduate work reading all the existing papers on a subject, learning a lot about that area, and implementing and publishing novel systems will make you a highly sought-after expert in an area.
Yup, there are. Programming isn't one of those areas, though.
Kllrnohj wrote:
KermMartian wrote:
I'm the first to agree that you don't need a lot of experience to be a good coder and a good hacker (in the positive sense)
Who are you agreeing with on that? I couldn't disagree more. There is no such thing as a good coder/hacker with little experience. The only good coders are the ones with lots of experience (not necessarily work experience, mind you). When it comes to coding, experience >>>>>>>> degree.
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Quote:
but there are some fields and concentrations where graduate work reading all the existing papers on a subject, learning a lot about that area, and implementing and publishing novel systems will make you a highly sought-after expert in an area.
Yup, there are. Programming isn't one of those areas, though.
KermMartian wrote:
Being a code monkey is not one of those areas. Being able to code well and design new system architectures is.
No, it isn't. System architecture design and coding well is all about experience. Formal education is only useful in giving an overview of the existing algorithms and designs out there - it takes lots and lots of experience to actually know which approach to pick for a given set of constraints. It takes lots and lots of experience to know how maintainable various designs are. It takes lots and lots of experience to be able to balance development time vs. design "correctness".
Absolutely, but one way you can get that experience is through learning and then implementing in a research sort of environment (although of course not the kind where you just learn about algorithms and theoretical bounds and never actually hack code together).
Kllrnohj wrote:
KermMartian wrote:
I'm the first to agree that you don't need a lot of experience to be a good coder and a good hacker (in the positive sense)
Who are you agreeing with on that? I couldn't disagree more. There is no such thing as a good coder/hacker with little experience. The only good coders are the ones with lots of experience (not necessarily work experience, mind you). When it comes to coding, experience >>>>>>>> degree.
It kind of annoys me when people equate experience and knowledge. They're certainly highly related, but you can be the most experienced person in the world in a particular area and still be a moron. It's what you know that allows you to solve problems, not how much you've experienced. It doesn't really matter whether your knowledge was gained by an alien knowledge ray or through experience, the possession of it is what's important, not the method of acquisition. So, your statement is incorrect. If you replace the terms with what is intended (As far as I can tell), it reads "knowledge >>>>>>>> knowledge," something that's patently ridiculous.
EDIT: Pretty much confirmed in your next post, but I started writing this thing several hours ago when I got pulled away 
Yes, but there's knowledge that you've learned from reading and knowledge you've learned from years of doing. In education, they're often linked together but you still continue to learn after your degree and you find yourself in the field, thus experience >>> degree.
I'm fascinated that you guys are seeing a dichotomy between education (getting degrees) and experience, which has been very far from my experience with my education. May I ask where you guys have gotten this impression? Your own educations, perchance?
KermMartian wrote:
I'm fascinated that you guys are seeing a dichotomy between education (getting degrees) and experience, which has been very far from my experience with my education. May I ask where you guys have gotten this impression? Your own educations, perchance?
Are you trying to say that a year of education is directly equivalent to a year of industry experience?
KermMartian wrote:
May I ask where you guys have gotten this impression? Your own educations, perchance?
Indeed, but I went to a university and studied a science rather than going to a trade school or studying engineering.
I just landed a pretty good Web and Mobile Development job for after graduation this May. In my interviews, it didn't matter that I was in the Honor's College and had a good GPA. It usually didn't matter what classes I took. Everyone went to related work and asked me all about those experiences. Granted, those jobs wouldn't have been available to me if I wasn't a student (all grant funded or school budget).
Or maybe employers just already know what a BS means and don't need to ask questions on it. I just know that a degree alone isn't enough to land an epic job. But conversely, I doubt that experience alone is enough, as well.
I think what everyone here is forgetting is that the majority of people who study computer science actually want to be studying software engineering. "Experience" doesn't teach you about design and analysis of algorithms, proof techniques, computational geometry, or any of the other mathematical foundations (and applications) of computer science. Getting a experience will help you to be a better programmer, but it won't help you with the things that a computer science degree is intended to teach.
KermMartian wrote:
I'm fascinated that you guys are seeing a dichotomy between education (getting degrees) and experience, which has been very far from my experience with my education. May I ask where you guys have gotten this impression? Your own educations, perchance?
The problem, Kerm, is you have very little real world experience, as you are still a full time student Personal projects only marginally count - they work for how you think and work, but may not work well with a team of other people who work and think differently. There is also no one to challenge the design and choices you make on personal projects, so you may have experience doing things poorly which can be worse than no experience at all.
The reason is simple, you can't do proper large scale projects in school, there just isn't enough time. You simply can't fit an enterprise scale application design and development in the period of a semester (or even two). And you *definitely* don't have anywhere near enough time to learn first hand how maintainable that design actually is, or where the pain points will be. Likewise, school projects never have to tackle the issue of years of additional features, cruft, and bugfixes.
Qwerty.55 wrote:
It kind of annoys me when people equate experience and knowledge. They're certainly highly related, but you can be the most experienced person in the world in a particular area and still be a moron. It's what you know that allows you to solve problems, not how much you've experienced. It doesn't really matter whether your knowledge was gained by an alien knowledge ray or through experience, the possession of it is what's important, not the method of acquisition. So, your statement is incorrect. If you replace the terms with what is intended (As far as I can tell), it reads "knowledge >>>>>>>> knowledge," something that's patently ridiculous.
EDIT: Pretty much confirmed in your next post, but I started writing this thing several hours ago when I got pulled away
Experience and degrees give very different kinds of knowledge. Obligatory car comparison: reading about the rules of the road and what to do in various situations is very different from actually being able to do them when behind the wheel.
Kllrnohj wrote:
The problem, Kerm, is you have very little real world experience, as you are still a full time student
Personal projects only marginally count - they work for how you think and work, but may not work well with a team of other people who work and think differently.
KermMartian wrote:
However, I do have some experience in the industry from my summer internship at Bloomberg (where our very own veteran Chipmaster is going to be working starting in June!), and I feel I got a good idea of what goes on in the real world from that. I was working with their actual employees on projects that got deployed within the company for server maintenance and monitoring, and as far as I know, are still being used.
Psst, ~3 months counts as "very little"
"Little" experience, maybe, but I think "very little" experience is overstating it a bit.
Especially since you've only been working a grand total of eight or so months at Google.
KermMartian wrote:
"Little" experience, maybe, but I think "very little" experience is overstating it a bit.
Especially since you've only been working a grand total of eight or so months at Google.
I spent about 1 year doing internships (3 internships, 1 for 6 months, 2 for 3 months), followed by a year and half at a startup, followed by 6 months at Google. So ~3 years of industry experience at a pretty diverse mix of companies, too.
And, of course, Google experience counts for at least double 
Raylin wrote:
What say you on the topic? Are you all for going to college and getting that coveted degree or would you rather pursue projects that interest you? Said projects could possibly be added to resumes.
As a freshman, I'm really not in a position to talk - but from my perspective/limited-experience, while pursuing a degree in CS, one gets plenty of hands-on experience via internships, research, coding competitions, and personal projects. While it may not be the same as working on a project for Google, college exposes you to group development, maintainence of legacy systems, and lots of raw coding that you wouldn't ordinarily get.
For example, I interned at Disney Research this past year, which exposed me to _so_ many different technologies, and I'm currently one of the developers for CMU's autograder/course management system, which also involves a fair amount of maintainence. While it may not be "industry work", it still involves getting alerted in the middle of the night when people are having issues submitting homework... what I'm trying to say is that while it may not be "industry experience", it's still more experience than you would normally get if you decided to screw college and just code in your basement.
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