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0 pointskamjam13y ago0 comments

I know plenty of programmers without degrees, I was extremely surprised some of them didn't because they were so bloody good! The thing is with having an IT degree, this industry moves so quick how much of what you learnt is still relevant (aside from the OO and SQL)... You have to be CONSTANTLY re-learning new tech otherwise you're not going to be a very good/relevant programmer for long!

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gizzlon13y ago

Obviously you can't stop learning, but the thing is that by obtaining an IT degree you'll often learn fundamental things you wouldn't learn otherwise.

mattdeboard13y ago

You're projecting. I have no degree. I've taken the time to teach myself the fundamentals. Dueling anecdotes here obviously but we all know plenty of people with CS degrees who are worthless when it comes to tackling a problem, and plenty of people without who are credits to their profession.

Programmers program. If someone programs, they're a programmer. My daughter uses scratch to write software. She's 8, the software is not sophisticated but it's software. She's a programmer.

reinhardt13y ago

This sounds as serious as claiming your daughter is a civil engineer because she builds LEGO buildings or she's a biologist because she knows to feed her goldfish. At the end of the day we need some terminology that distinguishes the guy that took a semester to learn MS Access from the one that took 4 years to study CS in university.

It's an unfortunate common theme in HN but I can't think off the top of my head other white collar professions with such contempt for degrees and formal education. Are all the other fields doing it wrong or is programming so much easier than everything else that justifies the constant pat on the back for roll-you-own education?

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