Self taught programmer here
How do I convince my parents that university is a waste of time and money
they're afraid I won't get a job without a degree
Land a job.
>>17051687
Consider community college or some sort of vocational school if you don't already have some programming job or a full college scholarship lined up. It'll be hard finding a job with just a high school degree.
>Self taught
Do you have any projects actually finished and published? Otherwise, it'll be very hard to convince others that your skills compare to someone who has done four years of university.
You also should make sure you're fairly active in the open source community. Good companies often look at Github contributions to evaluate programmers, especially those without a college degree.
>>17051687
They're probably right. It's not enough for you to know the stuff. You have to bring a prospective employer some evidence that you know the stuff, and a diploma serves that purpose.
>>17051734
This.
>>17051748
And these are good suggestions on how to do that.
As someone in software, I'll say you can definitely get a job without a degree, but you'll quickly lose it if there are huge gaps in your knowledge that a degree would've filled in. It's not enough to be a self-taught programmer if your self-teaching consisted of learning a bunch of language constructs and frameworks.
>>17051687
Make a portfolio and get a job.
Start college. Get into a computer science program, but ideally one where you can earn a 2 year certificate. Then, as has been said, land a good computer job. That said, schooling isn't necessarily a waste of time - at this point, most every established industry has a "boys' club" mentality - in other words, having a useless, bullshit degree makes them decisde "okay, this person is legit and we can let them have status". Systems administrator degrees, data science degrees, and tech-related MBAs are extremely valuable - with no schooling, if you're a good programmer you can be earning 50-60K a year. With a good degree to go with that, you can be looking at 120K.
Admittedly, I'm not a techy, but my father is a successful one and his last job was paying him 200K/yr
As someone who has a degree and works as a programmer, I would be very hesitant to hire or even interview a "self taught" programmer. You would need to be pretty damn good.
I've worked with "self taught" programmers before. It's a total nightmare. I've had to spend hours and hours debugging shitty code that they have written, because they didn't even understand basic concepts.
So, yea, good luck OP, maybe some moron will hire you. But most won't.
>>17051687
Explain some data structures to me, OP
>>17051687
No way. When I've tried this they expelled me from home for 2 days without keys. So try to do fast your homework and do what you wanna in free time. If be honest when I have full of free time I have spent on learning about 6 hours per day. Now when I waste my time on "high education" I have about 5 hours per day what exactly the same. But I have a really tough mom, maybe you are more lucky than me.
>>17051908
I guess he can learn basics when he will be an intern.
>>17051687
>self taught
IBM engineer here. Good luck finding a job at RadioShack, even less a legit computer related job, with no degree OP. Is competitive nowadays.
I'm doing it right now OP, just accept any job that will take you. The experience is worthwhile. On the other hand it might do you well to be picky at first so you start higher and have a higher ceiling. I did my best to get interviews and after a year sold myself cheap to get where I am now (comfy position). I also know a lot more than I did back then.
>>17052200
There are a couple things I want to say. Your learning time is way more important than your time doing menial labor. Always recognize this. Also know that your learning time is sometimes better than on the job time even in a programming job. Basically you will transition from job to job in the future. Once you feel you have "learned everything" and the job gets dull it might be time for a switch. Just keep plugging away at whatever it is you are learning, it will pay off.
>>17051687
Why would a company hire a guy who claims that he self taugh, when they can hire a programmer with a degree from a nice university to back up them?
>>17052170
I've worked with people who did just that. It was horrible. You can't just learn programming by yourself and expect to have the same aptitude as someone who has a degree in CS.
>>17052218
You would be surprised to find out how many employers are looking to hire now and have no decent applicants, self-taught or not. At least in some areas.
Uni is def. not a waste of time and it will help you understand things better and get a good job, but it's not mandatory. You can learn everything on your own and eventually land a good job, but it may be slower/more difficult.
>>17052236
Why not? What's so magical about uni that would put knowledge in your head you otherwise couldn't get? I understand that most self-taught people are lacking, but it's definitely not impossible, not even unlikely to get to the level of your average CS graduate on your own.
I know people with a CS degree who can't land a decent job to save their lives because they're fucking morons and people who learned on their own who make 6 times the minimum wage on their first job. It goes both ways.
>>17052258
I think the biggest problem is uni gives you a very clear curriculum, and most of it is what companies expect you to know. Some people who self-teach just learn languages and frameworks to get shit done, but don't learn shit about algorithms, data structures, software patterns, how to abstract things well, etc. Yes, you CAN easily follow a uni's curriculum on your own and self-teach, but a lot of people who call themselves 'self-taught' don't do that.
It's not unlikely or impossible, but it's common for self-taught people to have major gaps in their problem solving abilities.
>>17052258
Why not? What's so magical about uni that would put knowledge in your head you otherwise couldn't get? I understand that most self-taught people are lacking, but it's definitely not impossible, not even unlikely to get to the level of your average medical/law/physics graduate on your own.
You are talking about people who write webpage crap, who can barely be called "programmers". I'm an actual programmer, and work on mission-critical systems for a big financial institution. There is simply no way a self-taught programmer can have an understanding of things such as parallel computing or handling huge amounts of data from SQL queries.
Sure, OP can find some jobs. But the demanding, high-skilled jobs are closed to anyone who doesn't have a degree.
Dunno if I can offer THE BEST advice but I'll give something of an anecdote:
When I enrolled in school the first semester we were going to learn C. Knowing that, I decided to practise C all summer to get some knowledge crammed into my head before the school year started.
The thing was, my practise made it difficult for me to write decent code for my assignments. While I undestood the concepts well, I had developed some really shitty habits by being self taught, and because I took some of what was said during class for granted, these shitty habits permeated through what I was writing.
The first year has ended and I'm personally really happy that I decided to enroll in school vs. taking time off to teach myself. By having my learning process guided by professionals in the industry, my code is a lot cleaner/robost than it would have been otherwise. I also saved time, because by being taught certain concepts in a particular order, advanced concepts came a lot easier to me than they would have otherwise.
That being said there's still a lot of self teaching I need to do, and if I were completely self taught maybe I would have more experience in the most profitable languages, but the basis I had from school made me a stronger programmer and helped ensure that my code complied with industry standards even though I haven't worked in the industry yet.
>>17051687
you get a job.
Depends where you are, I'm Canadian
I have a degree in Design, I do Interaction, Prototyping, some dev stuff as well as UX/UI
Problem is canada is dry compared to the US
But if you want a work VISA in the US you need the damn degree. So self taught is useless in that regards.
>>17052300
Seems like a sweet job you have there. It it easy to get it without a degree in design? Also is it just the UX/UI market that's dry compared to the US or most of the software development industry?
Looking at job adds I always thought UX was doing really well (at least in Toronto), it's kind of weird to read that it isn't doing as well as the US.
>>17052279
You haven't explained why. You just said you can't. Again, why?
>>17052273 is right, the problem isn't that people can't learn on their own, it's that they don't put enough effort into it. Seriously, you have all the material needed at a click of a button, it's not the same as medicine, you fucking retard. And the thing with programming is that plenty of companies are willing to actually teach you along the way as long as you have some basics, or in some places, even if you know nothing but are willing to learn. The demand is that high. Internships are very common, especially in programming.
>>17052313
UX you need a solid portfolio, showing pretty much all stages between Research to final prototypes (a good thing to do is create an app from scratch and show every single stage in the portfolio). You don't need a degree but they tend to favour those with a degree if you have no experience.
The issue moreso is salary and options with big IT companies, UX designers are paid a lot better in the US then in Canada. Also the big companies mostly base out of the US, so there are more options. I'm currently in a UX position in Toronto with a fairly large software company, but thinking of moving because USD/CAD and the opportunities out in San Francisco.
>>17052319
Nice info, thanks for the response based anon
>>17052273
You are very right. I was one of those self-taught programmers but I refused to read advanced books about patterns and structures and such. It took college to force me to read them. However, nowadays I'm much more interested in that stuff so if I had waited a few years I might've learned it on my own anyway. College kinda sped it up for me.
>>17052333
No problem.
It's a really good field to get into, in comparison to most jobs it's fairly easy to land something if you have the right portfolio because no one seems to know about it quite yet. Sure it'll be overun in a few years though.
Question, guys: do colleges list all the materials that one needs to learn to finish a degree or something? I heard about this a couple of times, but I've never seen a college website list (for instance) all the stuff you need to to read to become good at Physics.
Do you have to pay or request this information, or is it listed on websites? (I live in Europe btw, maybe that's the problem)
>>17052316
How can I make it more clear? There are many, many concepts that take a long time to learn. It's simply not possible for a self-taught programmer to understand them all.
The issue seems to be that you still think a programmer is only someone who writes simple webpages. It gets far more complicated than that.
There are two guys I'm interviewing. We're looking for someone who can be trusted with programming critical systems that process huge amounts of realtime data. One has a PhD in CS. One is self-taught. Why do you think that anyone in their right mind would even consider the guy who can only say "hurr durr I know how to code, that's like javascript right?"
>>17052360
Might depend on the school. A good method: find the course codes for the classes, then type 'couse code school name overview/outline'. If you're lucky, type the same thing without the outline part and you'll find the courses' materials.
Example:
Page for my program http://www.senecacollege.ca/fulltime/CPA.html
Type IPC 144 seneca or OOP 244 seneca into google
>>17051687
Get a job, prove them wrong.
>>17052351
Kinda. Idk if there's a better way to do it. I'll take my uni for example:
http://www.calendar.ubc.ca/vancouver/?tree=12%2C215%2C410%2C421
It lists all of the courses required to complete a CS degree. If you look up each course code, you can figure out the curriculum. After that it's just kind of searching to see if you can find either 1) the book required or 2) a good book that teaches that.
Ex.: CPSC 221
What is that? Google says Basic Algorithms and Data Structures and brings me to:
http://www.ugrad.cs.ubc.ca/~cs221/current/, which, for books, says it uses
Epp, Susanna. Discrete Mathematics with Applications, 3rd or 4th edition, Thomson Learning Inc., 2004, ISBN 0-534-35935-0.
Koffman, Elliot B. and Wolfgang, Paul A. T. Objects, Abstraction, Data Structures, and Design Using C++, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006, ISBN 978-0-471-46755-7.
A lot of books can be found on gen.lib.rus.ec
>>17052360
Various reasons:
1. A lot of self-taught programmers have reliable work experience at decent companies, or elaborate portfolios that correspond to the company's software.
2. Self-taught programmers often have much more interest and thus practice more on their own. College programmers sometimes just go through the motions. They know their shit but apply it badly because they're just in it for the money.
3. There is stuff out there that they don't teach you in college. For instance, I learned a lot of assembly/C and more low-level programming that was never taught in college. Now I have a friend who has an internship writing firmware for embedded devices, and he's losing his mind. Sometimes he shows me problems that make me snicker.
4. Sometimes the job isn't as critical and complex as you make it seem. Sometimes it's just a simple site or a generic business application.
I realize what you're saying, but it's not always that black and white. If you learn the necessary basics, whether alone or through college, it then becomes all about interest and practice.
>>17051687
>Thinking that college is job training
Yeah don't go to college. Just focus on landing that programming job.
>>17052351
If you're in Europe, why won't you just study physics at the university? It's not like America, where only the rich can get an education.
>>17052360
Mate, what you're saying only applies to people who have no working experience in the field and cannot prove their skills in any other way. Of course that anyone would take the guy with a degree over the one with no degree if they have nothing else in their CVs.
But then again, these people would only have a chance in entry-level jobs. If you think someone with a degree and no experience can handle a senior position you're an idiot and you never worked as a programmer in your life. My point was that people can land entry-level jobs without a degree and they can keep learning from there, on their job and on their own. No one is going to learn on their own and then go directly for a software architect position.
If you're hiring someone for a senior/managing position you're going to look for prior experience and projects, not for a fucking degree.
>>17052388
You've just made claims that self-taught programmers are superior to those who have a degree. That alone tells me you don't have a fucking clue as to what you're talking about.
Yes, many of the best programmers started self-taught when they were teenagers. But guess what, they all went on to study at the university and got degrees. A degree is not just a proof that you went through a curriculum, it's a sign that you can actually deliver when it matters.
If you are a self-taught programmer, you have nothing to show for it. That's just the reality of things. Unless you were very lucky and landed a job anyway, which turned out to be actually important and you managed to build something. But companies don't hire people like you in the hopes you will learn on the job.
>>17052405
My country recently also implemented a "loan" policy. Granted, it's not even remotely as expensive as the US, but I don't want debt and I already have been programming for 5 years (since my 14th, the physics thing was just an example). I know all about data structures, algorithms, effective OOP, concurrency, hardware, etc. I've read through my brother's (he got me into programming) books and they're far too simple for me. The only things I learned from them are names of famous software pioneers and such.
>>17051734
/thread
>>17052426
I gave reasons why self-taught programmers CAN be as good or even better than programmers with a degree.
As for the "nothing to show for it". I think my boss would beg to differ after he has seen my portfolio of home-projects and open source contributions. I'm no Larry Page but I do pretty okay.
>>17052426
I think you're both right, but it really depends on the field and type of work you're applying for. You can still have an impressive body of work when being self-taught, but some things are best taught in school.
You having a degree shows more than just the fact that you can program, right?
>>17052448
People like you can be hired to hack perl scripts, sure. But again, don't expect to be hired for jobs that need a more advanced skillset. You still seem to think that programming is only about churning code. Not at all. There are many other things you need to have learned, about abstract concepts, about math, and so on. Self-taught people will rarely have any such knowledge.
If you claim to be a good self-taught programmer, why not get a degree? You would learn loads of things you didn't know about before.
>>17052469
I think programming is one of the very few fields where you can get away with being self-taught. Maybe economy and freelance teaching a language, but what else?
>>17052486
If you're self-taught, you're still limited. For the more complicated, advanced programming jobs you simply will not have the skills and knowledge needed.
>>17052482
Yes, it shows that you can be an obedient goy who follows the system and jumps when he's told to.
I'm not even joking, this is a very important to companies, that's one of the reasons some employers want people with degrees, even if they are irrelevant for the job.
>>17052492
Like what? I'm genuinely curious. Maybe low-level stuff that requires machinery that they only have at universities. Or maybe really math-heavy stuff. But in general? I doubt it.
>>17052492
By the time you do more complicated jobs you'll know much more from previous jobs than from college.
>>17052486
Front/Back web dev, full stack web dev, UX/UI, App Dev, some forms of Game dev, other stuff
>>17052492
DESU all college does is introduce you to concepts. It doesn't make you a good or even reasonably competent programmer.
You just show them them the technical interviews you've passed. Unless you're not a self taught programmer and more of an thinking-about-maybe-learning-to-program kinda guy.
>>17052485
Why don't you waste time and money "learning" things you already knew?
>>17052499
I have no idea what school you go to if that's all having a degree means to you
>>17052503
General skills.
Things like punctuality, organisation, the ability to work under stress, time management, the ability to meet deadlines and working towards a long term goal and having drive. Having a portfolio can demonstrate your technical skills, but it's not going to demonstrate your general employability skills.
>>17052499
It's more than obvious you are American.
>>17052503
>maybe low-level or math stuff
You do realize that this is a big part of serious programming?
>>17052505
Maybe a bachelor's degree from a small community college. Not a PhD from a reputable university.
>>17052508
It's also pretty good on the projects side, a lot of newbies seem to struggle with that. Uni forces you to do things like reimplement traceroute, paint, minesweeper, make a P2P app, use data mining algorithms etc.
Of course it's also really good for going in academia since you can basically publish papers and work with professors and PhDs to your hearts content.
>>17052514
And here we have the problem with self-taught programmers. Extreme, delusional hubris. This guy actually thinks that he would learn nothing if he actually went and got a degree, because he's self-taught.
Companies that hire people like you are doomed to fail.
>>17052507
>Front/Back web dev
>full stack web dev
Did you just use 2 terms for the exact same thing, or am I having a stroke? This is just regular web development except that you do both sides of the coin, rather than only doing only one.
>UX/UI
That's not advanced. It's design stuff that requires some books and practice as well. No need to get high and mighty about it.
>App Dev
Like for smartphones and stuff? I literally started with that. I'm pretty good with Android. The others are easy enough to learn if you put in the time.
>Game dev
Probably because it requires a lot of math that the average programmer doesn't know. Even then, just having a CS degree probably won't do it justice. You need a specific IT degree like Game Development.
>other stuff
Ok.
OP, you seem to lack general people skills, as is obvious from you thinking you're better than others. No employer wants to hire someone like that, even if they're really good or will be working independently.
Listen to your parents.
Wouldn't go to a US uni though, the prices are ridiculous and the accommodation is bad, some people even share rooms apparently. Look at other places.
>>17052525
Mate, I don't work in programming nor I ever intend to. The point is that after you gather some knowledge it simply becomes a bad investment to go through college since you can learn whatever else you need on your own or while working faster and cheaper.
I realize that you like thinking you're superior to the plebs who don't have a degree in CS, but the simple truth is that anything that can be learned in college can be learned outside it too. Going to college makes learning easier, sometimes a lot easier, but that's all there is to it. You are an idiot if you think the ONLY WAY to learn something is to go to college.
>>17052569
Not that anon, but college isn't just about getting a piece of paper. It shows the employer not just that you have the skills or knowledge, but a lot more than that. And the fact is, degrees are considered a mark of being valuable to society.
>>17052569
And you're an idiot if you think self-taught in some fields is equal to getting a degree from it.
Go have your brain surgery done by a self-taught doctor who learned it from youtube videos.
Self-taught programmers don't realise something a lot of the time:
A person getting a degree in CS spends ~20 hours a week in class, ~20-40 hours a week doing homework/projects, and most CS majors I know go to learn even -more- outside of class, or work on side-projects.
That is, their full-time job is learning computer science and their hobby is programming. They have 4-5 years of that.
Most self-taught programmers don't have that level of dedication/discipline. CS students are forced to have that level of dedication survive school, whereas there's nothing stopping a self-taught programmer from slacking off, or learning things that are easy because they don't want to be challenged by very difficult subjects. What's more is some of those self-taught programmers just do it for an hour or two a night after work or something. That can't possibly keep up.
I'm not saying self-taught programmers can't be good, but not many people have that level of dedication to it. And at the end of that degree, a CS major has a university saying, 'this person has shown at least a grasp of these important concepts', and probably a bunch of projects built up to show off.
Self-teaching is the harder path and not many are strong enough to do well in it.
>>17051687
Pretty simple m8
>how do I prove to my parents that you can get a job without a degree
Get a fucking job.
>>17052596
The point that some have been trying to make in this thread. But you managed to put it in a concise, clear post. My hat is off to you, sir.
>>17052582
Nice strawman, you retard, I never said that. Learn to fucking read. Someone CAN learn to be a brain surgeon without going through college, but because of the nature of the field it's so hard that it's just not worth it, especially when you have the other option. That's why you don't see self-taught doctors. That's obviously not the case with programming, it's one of the easiest professions to learn on your own.
Comparing medicine with programming is just retarded, one works with human bodies, the other with software. You can explore any software all you want as long as you have a computer, you have to dig up fresh graves or kidnap people do to the same with human bodies.
>>17052576
Yes, and that's completely irrelevant to my point. I'm not arguing that having a degree is pointless, I'm saying that everything that can be learned in college can be learned outside it. It's harder and maybe more time-consuming but it can be learned.
>>17052639
>I'm saying that everything that can be learned in college can be learned outside it.
I agree (to an extent), but having knowledge =/= able to get a job. OP's trying to argue that being self-taught is just as likely to get you a job. Whether or not you can teach yourself to the same level is not the issue here, and it's irrelevant.
>>17052647
The thread has been derailed a long time ago, the question has been answered in the first post. I wasn't arguing that it's just as easy to get a job without a degree.
>>17052639
>programming, it's one of the easiest professions to learn on your own.
Only for people who think all programming is the same. Who think that creating a shitty javascript for a webpage is the same as working with high volume computations.
You sound like one of those types who learned how to create a webpage and who calls himself a programmer because of that.
>>17052668
Mate you (or the other idiots who claim programming can't be learned on your own) keep claiming that without bringing any argument. You just say "You can't do it, you don't know enough about it".
The reason why programming is so easy to learn on your own compared to other field is because the materials for it are highly available and it's easy to practice (again, at least compared to other fields).
I'm not arguing that it's actually easy to learn, all I'm saying is that it can be done, it takes effort to become an expert in any field, college or not. And again, for all the advanced programming you people keep yelping about, being self-taught or not is irrelevant. Most of your knowledge at that point would be from actual work experience. College is just a foundation that lays out the basics. The knowledge you (may) acquire there are a must to any programmer, but they represent only a drop in the ocean compared to what someone who can call himself an expert should know.
Get off your high fucking horses mate, the fact that you have a CS degree doesn't make you any better than someone who doesn't. The fact that you know more (if you do) than them makes you better, but that's not only because you went to college and they didn't. There are self-taught "programmers" who can't write a clean code to save their lives and people who have never set foot in a CS class, but know more about the field than the professors that teach those classes.
Not everything is black and white.
>>17052889
The one who needs to get off his high horse is you. You still think you are some kind of special genius who doesn't need any education.
People like you will never be let anywhere near mission critical systems. It would be a disaster.
>There are self-taught "programmers" who can't write a clean code to save their lives and people who have never set foot in a CS class, but know more about the field than the professors that teach those classes.
All of my fucking lolwut. You clearly are just another one of those people who learned a bit of programming on his own and thinks he can challenge university professors about computing theory.
>>17053007
There are people out there in the world today who taught themselves and are getting paid. They are a testament to the possibility because they're doing it already.
>People like you
That's really unnecessary and judgmental anon
I'm not the anon you're talking to btw.
This is offtopic but the main reason I don't like this website is because for whatever reason people get unusually tense and personal in conversations here. Maybe it's because we're talking through text and interpreting text as more insulting than if we heard it from somebody else in person. I don't know. But I don't like it.
When can we learn to be respectful when we have a difference of opinion? Is that so hard to ask?
>>17053007
Mate I never claimed to know the first thing about programming. But I guess yelling about how stupid, uneducated and haughty I am is the only thing you can do when you have no argument.
You will never convince someone over the age of 40 that $30,000+ in debt with an insane interest rate at 22 is not a good investment. They have been programmed from birth to believe this is a smart choice and they will try to make your life hell if you disagree with them.
t. a man who gave into the system and would be paying student loans for the next ten years
>Self-taught
Post your github, you python scrub
>>17053261
> 10 years
Yikes. How much do you owe/how much are you paying monthly? What's the interest rate?
