...and have seen many, many 1.0's, shelfware, etc.

A CS grad from a top-flight school with excellent experience is worth their weight in gold, at least on teams of multiple people developing big systems - you want at least one, they will take care of data design, software architecture, etc., and likely cause your code to be more robust, more maintainable, etc.

But motivated college grads (I'm Canadian, not sure what the US term would be), talented engineers, and autodidacts can crank out code like nobody's business. I don't know that I'd want to built a multi-year "core services" library out of it, but PoCs, MVPs, 1.0's, and demoware? Why not? And the top-flight CS grad might be wasted there.

I'm torn because I care about quality, but really high quality only matters for the really long-lived system, the health-and-safety-critical system, and the system that must survive on its own with minimal human intervention and maintenance.

Were I building a radiation control for healthcare, I would want electrical engineers and CS grads from top-flight systems. Ditto military avionics.

If I was building apps, apps, apps, servers built atop well-architected OSS libraries, etc., I'd want code, fast, and I'd balance quality Vs lifetime to maximize profit, and probably hire less experienced, less well trained devs who "give good face", understand requirements, and code fast.

The libraries themselves? Good question....

I don't have a conclusion. But j45 is right, customers don't care so much - but they don't want 3AM bugs, either. It's a trade-off.

That observation is not restricted to coding or comp sci.

So do I, but CS degrees are not about memorization. At least not in North America or Europe. For my CS degree, I had to follow the math and deliver code. Toy code of course, but its a long way from "recalling and reciting references." If it had been about memorization I would probably have failed.

I also know people who say they got CS degrees through memorization and the ability to recall and recite references. They are Indian and Chinese. And they can code (even if they believe their degrees do not help.)

I find that quite insulting. This may be true if you go to some shoddy university that teaches things by rote and memorisation. I did an engineering degree where we had practical laboratory sessions that required you to build experience to get a good mark and the exams were not about remembering formula, you had to apply the knowledge that had been taught.

Experience cannot be taught. However, a good teacher will teach you a lot of useful skills that help you acquire experience quickly. I have learnt foreign languages where I have done a lot of studying at home but with much less opportunity to practice using those languages. When I visited the countries where they spoke those languages I struggled at first but it didn't take long to recognise the differences between my self practice and the real pronunciation/way of using a phrase.

Frequently we see these posts that say you don't need a degree to code. It's true, but if you have a good degree in programming then it's so much easier and probably your code will be much better because you know why things are done a certain way and you do them properly.

There can also be a bit of an attitude, like the person is thinking "of course this is good, I went to Stanford". But maybe that's my imagination. Another explanation is that these people are just so good that they are able to read messy and convoluted code no problem, and us mortals need to step up our game.

On the other hand, these people would easily be able to reason about complex performance and security issues beyond me. I think that the hardcore CS issues are a science, while writing clean code in a web framework, browser, and API design is more of a craft.

If you hire too many computer scientists, your code base could be full of fascinating technical tricks, but creaky and hard to work with. Too many craftsmen, and you'll get stuck on simple problems. It's a balance.

EDIT: Downvotes? Please explain. Perhaps I am not able to fully comprehend the issues at hand.

I graduated with the equivalent of a minor in CS. When I started coding for an web-based gaming start-up in 2007, it was mostly irrelevant. You don't need a CS degree to learn Ruby on Rails, nor is it necessarily useful (beyond your basic intro courses) to have taken CS courses.

Flash-forward a year, after we raised our seed round. Our online game had grown in complexity quite a bit, and we found ourselves having to deal with things like complex image rendering, AI, and pathfinding. While it's possible to get a decent grasp of these topics through Google and O'Reilly books, it's definitely an order of magnitude more difficult than figuring out a new web framework. As mentioned before, I only have a minor in CS so my exposure to these topics was minimal, and there were definitely nights where I found myself wishing I had taken another AI or advanced algorithms course.

The terms coding and computer science do get used interchangeably by a lot of people though, since most may not understand the difference. I've learned to live with it (occasionally I point out the difference, if I think the person misusing the terms actually cared to know).

1) Many of the top coders, programmers and data scientists that I know don't have CS degrees. (The top coder I know never finished school. He could move from Assembler to C to Objective C effortlessly, and could do everything from games to operating systems. He wasn't lacking for theory or versatility)

2) Despite this, a Computer Science is more difficult rigorous than most non-engineering degrees. Even at open admissions schools, getting a CS degree means being forced to solve difficult problems.

3) Because of #2, a higher % of CS majors make good programmers than most any other major. (I've seen English majors make good programmers, but at a much lower %)

4) Despite #2 and #3, there are still many unqualified CS majors.

5) There is no typical CS programs. Some are very flexible, some very structured. Some have an engineering focus, some are part of liberal arts schools. Some are too narrow, some are not specialized enough.

6) A few years after college, your grades don't matter. A few years after that, the school doesn't matter. A few more years and your major doesn't really matter. At that point, it's all what you've done with your time. (Though it can help to say, "I have a CS degree. I used to be technical.")

in a data structure class,you learn the basic structures like PODs,structs,vectors and linked lists.

in algorithm class,you learn various basic sorting algorithms plus the big O notation and thats pretty much it.

Then you will take a few physics classes,then chemistry classes,then maybe calculus one and two,then probably discrete mathematics class,one or two writing class,if you a lucky,maybe a single semester of operating system class.

you may learn the basics on haskell in one class,the basic of java in another,maybe assembly in another class and you get your degree.Basically,you will leave school knowing only the basics of a bunch of things but not enough of anything.

The above it how it felt to me as a CS major.

As you work with more and more people in this industry, you frequently run into people without a degree, or, more importantly, no true know how, as I do stand by the fact that it's not required to have a degree to learn this stuff, who behave as if they are experts regardless of their poor mental model of how computers work.

It's important for these people to know what they don't know. Reminding people that Code is not CS is a good way to make that happen.

According to wikipedia:

> In 2000, he graduated from Colorado State University with a Computer Science degree

I suspect, like with most fields, that the school definitely matters (and that he may not have arrived at the same conclusion had he attended a school with a better CS program)

If you feel you got nothing out of your education or that your education was mostly worthwhile, that may not reflect on computing science in general but just of one particular implementation of it.

In fact, I see this title as the wrong way round, it should be: computer science is not coding. Too many people think codes know all about computers. In my experience, they dont. They have a limited skill set. Just like support staff who usually cant really code.

Having a CS degree myself, I have always felt at an advantage over people who, for example, only program but know knaff all about hardware, OS's, servers, etc, and support people who only have things like MCSEs, and don't know the low level fundamentals.

For me, having a CS degree makes me a jack of all trades, all be it, master of none.

I know, because I have a mastered in CS and considered getting my Phd. I decided to join industry instead, because I wanted more money. I hardly use any of my CS knowledge on a day to day basis working as a web developer. Yet I make $160k in my mid 20s while my 60 year old professor has never cracked 6 digits... It's sad in a way, but to each his own I guess.

If someone told me now that I can spend 4 years just learning things, have access to intelligent people, and great resources/facilities without worrying about a gap in my cv, I would jump at that chance.

I am going to hacker school in Feb, so hopefully it will be kind of like that. Albeit for a much shorter amount of time (3 months).

The only way you can reasonably believe that college was "a rip off" is if you didn't have ANY fun that whole time. If you can honestly say that, then I am sorry. You allowed a part of your adolescence become robbed by people who told you what to do. But if you had even an ounce of enjoyment throughout college, if the idea of learning computer science made you smile even one bit, then it was absolutely not a rip-off or a waste of time.

"Your time was not wasted if you were happy" - John Lennon

Having a CS degree won't make you a genius, or guarantee you write beautiful code.

There are 3 factors at play. Brains, Fluency, and Theory.

If you have good theory you won't spend 100 years trying to figure out things people already have figured out.

If you have good Fluency you will write like people in that language write. "Your code is very Pythonic".

If you have brains you may solve a problem no one thought was possible.

I don't have a CS degree, but I'm a "grey beard" as a result I have good theory. I don't speak Python as a first language, or the language I think in, so I don't have good fluency. As a certified Genius I have a big brain and often solve things people didn't think were solvable. So I make up for a lack of fluency.

Computer Science is more than just coding. It involves graphs, complexity, math, theories, and much more. Which is a lot. And is hard.

Like math, anyone can do math. But not anyone can be a mathematician. Anyone can code, but not anyone can be a computer scientist.

Nowadays academia is under ever increasing pressure to produce fit-for-work experts, and seen from such a perspective it really can look pointless. I personally strongly disagree with such a view. IMO, it should appear to be pointless! It should broaden your thinking and introduce you to the cutting edge of the field, not just specialize you for a certain line of work. There should be programs which will do only such a specialization, but a full-on CS course is supposed to be more. In the end, how well you will work will depend on a lot more than just the school, but a good school will help.

The Law of Leaky Abstractions is, perhaps, a good argument for why it is useful to learn all that theory even though in practice it is rarely needed. Sometimes, you just need to know what is going on behind the scenes.

P.S. I always have the feeling that the Dunning-Kruger effect is strongly present in these discussions. The first programmer that I heard claiming that a degree is useless is also the guy who didn't know what a DB transaction is for and when he should use it. It's not a huge deal, we fixed the bug, taught him, and then he knew. But - not knowing such basics, how could he possibly know what else he is also oblivious about?

We need good schools to teach us that we don't know shit.

Personally, I would advise young folks who are already passionate about programming and technology to either go all-out in a true engineering field or pursue something that will equip them with a very different skillset. For example, if you have programming skills but get a degree in business and focus on accounting, you could easily be the most productive member of your department. Meanwhile, you'd have the savvy and knowledge to spin up your own side business doing software consulting or, say, mobile apps.

I would go so far as to say that, assuming you are motivated and already coding and have a decent math background, a CS program isn't worth it unless it's from a really, really good school.

The two skill sets don't overlap entirely. However having the latter generally makes mastering the former somewhat easier.

I need someone to please explain this last bit to me. He seems to suggest that it's pretty easy to become a software developer. This idea seems to be pretty common across hacker news. That all it takes is a little bit of research, and anyone can get a job as a software developer. Is this true? I've been trying to change my current career path from engineering to software development, and I cannot seem to get any conversations started. Does anyone have experience changing their early career paths and how they went about implementing the necessary steps?

People learn what they learn, formally or informally, and then they either develop a passion for what they learned, or not. Not everyone who studies art can produce artwork most would enjoy, much less a masterpiece. And, in this regard, having encyclopedic knowledge in the field isn't a solution.

What I am saying is that it is about the person, not the encyclopedia. Developing artistry requires knowledge, passion and dedication. Knowledge alone isn't the entire equation. Knowledge without passion and dedication is useless, no matter where it comes from. And this might very well be the reason a lot of CS grads falter.

I've worked with many people who, while presumably listing Microsoft Office skills on their resume, spend time with repetitive tasks in Excel that could be done in minutes or seconds with a formula and a click-and-drag.

I've found that the hardest part is finding the best way to tell them that there is an easier way without being condescending or making them feel foolish. I usually go with "Hey, um, can I show you something?" But ideally this opens the window to realizing that you can make Excel (and computers in general) do stuff for you.

On the other hand, if your background is top-notch computer science you just may suck at coding ― which would be just ok except that I suggest that not many advances in computer science happen unless the dilemmas at hand stem from practical programming problems, after which they can be explained and modelled theoretically and theoretical solutions be devised.

It reminds me of the old xkcd: you can get by without it, but the fun things in life are always optional.

Why not just learn these areas when needed? Taking an Advanced AI course in just a 2-3 month semester is how many hours? Just spend a week or two hitting the books and you'll be good to go, and you're knowledge will be bleeding edge and up to date. Plus, you'll have been paid to learn it!

Believe it or not, some people pick up merge sort or balanced binary trees faster than they can learn Rails (which has a BIG amount of content to master, by the way).

Stuff I've done in the real world:

AI: I've lost count of the number of times I've had to implement A*

Graphics: wrote a ray tracer; matrix transformations

Data structures and algorithms: wrote an approximation algorithm for the travelling salesman problem (christofides); fancier data structures like bloom-filters, lru caches; and just every day coding

Databases: query optimization

OS: Made me aware of systems (context switching, caching performance,...). Scheduling algorithms and how they affect the embedded software I write. Concurrent programming.

Networking: Super helpful for everyday stuff when you understand the underlying principles. I've had to implement an RFC from scratch (DNS).

Linear algebra: Used extensively in a path planner I wrote---with it I was able to reduce the state space by orders of magnitude compared to the standard grid approach.

Statistics: wrote an online algorithm for adaptive windowed linear regression

Even computability theory has been helpful, as it has strengthened my proving and reasoning skills---helping me find holes in requirements, or proving algorithms/invariants. Same with all the theoretical math courses I took (Analysis, Set Theory, First Order Logic ...)

The list goes on...

Above all, my CS degree taught me how to learn CS and beyond.

Sometimes I worry about the potential solutions I am overlooking, because I never fully branched into the continuous domain (control theory, etc).

You know, I keep hearing that, but nobody has ever been able to convince me of it. Those are, indeed, the things that fall sideways out of "computer science" (for want of a better name), but it's a near-equivalent to the statement fundamentally, fluid dynamics = boats and airplanes.

"Computer science" is about developing a method for reasoning about process. For the most part, we're still stuck in a world where intuition plays a larger role than it ought to when developing processes, both in the computing world and in the physical world. Investigations into process have yielded algorithms and heuristics (what to do), of course, and those, in turn, depend upon data structures (what to do it to), but we're still pretty much at the level where we're dealing with specific instances rather than a more general formal language. Chemistry without knowing much about the atom yet, in a way.

What you learn in school (at least at the undergrad level) is "here's what we've found out so far" (as it is in any subject). And while that can be a big help, allowing you to more easily recognise classes of problems, there is still more intuition than reason involved in attacking the really hard problems. Both "software engineering" and "computer science" are about reducing the amount of fuzzy, squishy, intuitive parts, but in different ways. "Software engineering" is about robust application (finding and understanding the use of the equivalent of "materials" in the field); "computer science" is about understanding the fundamentals of process (and may well extend beyond computing).

It wasn't until getting into the "real world" that I realized the full value of my data structure courses. Those were the ones I kept returning to when trying to learn and understand new skills on the job. (Sadly, my 2-year degree didn't cover any algorithm learning.)

So, now I have the advantage of a few years of "real world" experience to try and plot a course for how to get formal education on the remaining pieces that seem to actually have direct correlation to a career in computer programming.

Not sure if it's a blessing or a curse for me, but I just have to keep moving forward.