Choosing a college degree

Rails
1

I have been programming for the last 3 years, doing web and graphic
design for the last 7. I am starting college in january at a local
community college before I transfer to a 4 year college to get my 4 year
degree. Right now I work full time as a network admin and I do ruby on
rails development inside our company and I do free lance ruby on rails
development.

My goal is eventually to work full-time doing ruby on rails development
and graphic design.

I am trying to decide on a major and I figured that there is not a
better audience to ask then you guys. My heart and passion is in
programming and design but I am wondering if CS is going to be the best
degree for me. I am just curious how many of you out there have
full-time programming jobs and if you have CS degrees or other degree’s
and what your opinion is on having a CS degree vs something like a
Business degree or another type of degree’s.

I know everyone will probably have a different answer or opinion on this
but any help or advice would be appreciated =)

Thanks,

Jason

2

On Nov 29, 2007 11:15 PM, Jason M.
[email protected] wrote:

I am trying to decide on a major and I figured that there is not a
better audience to ask then you guys. My heart and passion is in
programming and design but I am wondering if CS is going to be the best
degree for me. I am just curious how many of you out there have
full-time programming jobs and if you have CS degrees or other degree’s
and what your opinion is on having a CS degree vs something like a
Business degree or another type of degree’s.

I don’t have a CS degree; I have a BA in History and an MBA, both of
which I earned after I had already been in the IT field. Use college
to learn how to write, speak, research, think critically, etc. Don’t
use college for technical training in programming. If you find that
you’re becoming more interested in the “theory” side of computing or
software, or if you want to be teaching in these areas, then you can
steer toward CS. But it’s not needed for the “craft” side of things;
there you just need to stay abreast of developments in the industry
and use the great tools, practices, etc. that the “theory” guys give
us.

Good luck!

HTH

3

Well, there are lots of places that don’t care about a degree… why
spend
$$$ on something you don’t need? :slight_smile: Do that when the bubble bursts
again.

Computer science degrees vary by school, really, so I can’t tell you if
that’s a good major or not. Many of my students are very happy with
their
choice though.

I work at a university during the day and supervise / mentor a group of
web
and app developers - all students. I have some Management majors, a
Graphic
Design major, several Computer Science majors, and one of our web
developers
is a Biology major.

I regret my IS degree. I learned nothing. My students learn more in
working
from me than they do in their classes, and I’ve heard that from them
many
times over the last 5 years. We have a decent CS program, but it
doesn’t
focus too much on real-world issues too much, and is very Java-centric.

If I were able to do it over, I’d do something that would compliment my
skills. Education, marketing, graphic design, etc. I know lots of good
programmers who got good through experience and effort on their own
time,
without formal training.

Look how far you’ve come!

That’s just my .02. I have many colleagues who say they learned a lot
from
their CS degrees too.

On Nov 29, 2007 10:15 PM, Jason M.
[email protected]

4

But if you decide to go to school, choosing the right school is key as
well. For me, I started out going to a large four year college where my
classes were filled with 500 students, I never saw any of my teachers,
none of them even new who I was and you were left on your own to learn.
To me I was paying a large tuition when really the thing that I was
getting all my knowledge from was my books not my teachers or their
skills. So I decided to transfer to a small college where my CS classes
where filled with maybe 10 other students. And while it was a small
college that didn’t have the resources of a large University the
education that I received there were leaps and bounds above that of the
University.

-S

5

On Nov 29, 2007, at 8:15 PM, Jason M. wrote:

and graphic design.

I know everyone will probably have a different answer or opinion on
this
but any help or advice would be appreciated =)

This is a topic I could write pages about! But I won’t.

Assuming you’re sharp enough (sounds like it!) to do well in self
study, you will learn more and faster if you spend $500 on top-notch
books and spend a few hrs a day studying those, reading stuff from
the net as backup, and hopping on a few key talk lists so you have a
place to ask questions.

The key to doing this is coming up with a good curriculum for
yourself. There are some topics that you may not need to use
everyday, but they will help you understand things you’ll see (I’m
thinking of data structures and algorithms here).

Most people should go to college, so your decision to go is probably
a good one. The key is to get as much out of it as possible, and IMO
that is to study things that maybe aren’t your core interest, but to
study things that will help you really take advantage of your core
interest, and that maybe you can’t get access to any other way.

Maybe you like programming, but also find the environment really
interesting. Maybe you don’t want to be a chemist or biologist, but
it would be cool to work for a bio-hazards research company. If you
minor in biology or some other type of thing, now you can go get a
programming job at a very interesting company instead of writing just
another shopping cart. If you’re bent on developing and selling your
own apps, then yeah, business courses could make sense.

Since the university experience today isn’t designed to help you
specialize, but rather to introduce you to options, then use it for
that purpose, and you’ll get a lot more for your money and time. Use
college to learn how to research. Use homework to learn how to write
well, how to present your ideas and yourself well, etc.

–
def gw
acts_as_n00b
writes_at(www.railsdev.ws)
end