Any programmers around?

[iri]

a "new job"?

?? I'm confused now

hahaha

[Thimplum]

a "new job"?

?? I'm confused now

April 1st

[daerid]

Yea after they gave me my start date I checked with them a few times to make sure they weren't pulling an April Fool's joke on me.

[Grimey]

C#, F#, C++, Objective-C for work.

I'm so, so sorry

Honestly it is a nice change of scenery when anything iOS actually comes up.  I spend the majority of mine time split between XAML C# desktop apps for windows and C++ stuff for the cluster.  When I am feeling annoyed with anything I am working on, I just remind myself that at least it isn't Scheme (school).

[Thimplum]

C#, F#, C++, Objective-C for work.

I'm so, so sorry

C isn't supposed to be objective. And Apple shouldn't make their own languages.

[DamienG]

I've been a developer as a job for 20 years... eek... and longer than that as a hobby.

Currently doing C#, Objective-C, SQL and PHP in Santa Clara area south of San Francisco.

Have done projects in Java, Groovy, Python, Z80, 6502, 8080, C, C++, Delphi... COBOL ahem.

[)amien

[DamienG]

C isn't supposed to be objective. And Apple shouldn't make their own languages.

Apple didn't make Objective-C although they did add support for it to GCC and base their tools around it.

[)amien

[daerid]

The capabilities of Objective-C are actually pretty cool. The language itself is just so...ugly

[nuclearsandwich]

CS/Mathematics undergrad working at GitHub.com. All CS Programs are terribad unless you actually want to know theory or hope to work at a stuffy, momentum-driven company like IBM, Google, or Microsoft your time is better spent teaching yourself and actually working on toy projects. I've learned a whole lot more making and breaking stuff than class has ever taught me. It would probably help if my school had a decent CS program.

Ruby is my bread and butter and has been for the last few years. I have a fondness for Lua, C, and 6502 assembly. Go, Rust, and Volt all seem promising but each has stupid flaws.

[iri]

scheme is wonderful!
and cs / math education starts working for a programmer when he moves from "toy projects" to creating serious things.

[daerid]

CS/Mathematics undergrad working at GitHub.com. All CS Programs are terribad unless you actually want to know theory or hope to work at a stuffy, momentum-driven company like IBM, Google, or Microsoft your time is better spent teaching yourself and actually working on toy projects. I've learned a whole lot more making and breaking stuff than class has ever taught me. It would probably help if my school had a decent CS program.

Ruby is my bread and butter and has been for the last few years. I have a fondness for Lua, C, and 6502 assembly. Go, Rust, and Volt all seem promising but each has stupid flaws.

You stole our designer.....this means war!!!

J/k... <3

[DamienG]

The capabilities of Objective-C are actually pretty cool. The language itself is just so...ugly

It's not just the ugliness of all those square brackets - it's the fact that before you can start writing a line you have to know how many messages you'll send or be prepared to move the cursor back and forth as you figure it out.  e.g.

NSArray *subviews = [[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] valueForKey:@"statusBar"] valueForKey:@"foregroundView"]subviews];

[)amien

[daerid]

Wow... didn't even think of that. That's horrendous. Very Lisp-y.

[iri]

[vyshane]

The capabilities of Objective-C are actually pretty cool. The language itself is just so...ugly

It's not just the ugliness of all those square brackets - it's the fact that before you can start writing a line you have to know how many messages you'll send or be prepared to move the cursor back and forth as you figure it out.  e.g.

NSArray *subviews = [[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] valueForKey:@"statusBar"] valueForKey:@"foregroundView"]subviews];

[)amien

Yes, it looks hellish having to code in Objective-C at first brush. However, in practice it's not that bad.

1) The IDE adds the brackets for you, and its autocompletion is very good. The verbosity that comes as a result of the conventions used isn't a hinderance to writing code, and it helps when reading code. You never have to look up function definitions to figure out what exactly parameter 3 is supposed to be.
2) This applies to more than just Obj-C. I don't like to deeply nest function calls in other languages, so I don't do that in Obj-C either.
3) Dot notation helps somewhat if you're adverse to brackets.

[daerid]

Having to rely on an IDE for language constructs is just bad language design.

[bueller]

CS/Mathematics undergrad working at GitHub.com. All CS Programs are terribad unless you actually want to know theory or hope to work at a stuffy, momentum-driven company like IBM, Google, or Microsoft your time is better spent teaching yourself and actually working on toy projects. I've learned a whole lot more making and breaking stuff than class has ever taught me. It would probably help if my school had a decent CS program.

Totally agree here. I've actually only had about 5 years of formal education in my entire life so the majority of what I've learnt has been self taught. Took a course about a decade ago doing C and found it stuffy as hell, learned a bit over 2 years but I still didn't really feel prepared to tackle any real projects. Fast forward to today and I'm learning Java and GWT with the help of my mentor, 6 months in and I'm already well ahead of where I thought I'd be when I started. Then again everyone is different, I don't mind using books for reference when I break something but I'd much rather 'learn by doing' otherwise.

[Thimplum]

CS/Mathematics undergrad working at GitHub.com. All CS Programs are terribad unless you actually want to know theory or hope to work at a stuffy, momentum-driven company like IBM, Google, or Microsoft your time is better spent teaching yourself and actually working on toy projects. I've learned a whole lot more making and breaking stuff than class has ever taught me. It would probably help if my school had a decent CS program.

Totally agree here. I've actually only had about 5 years of formal education in my entire life so the majority of what I've learnt has been self taught. Took a course about a decade ago doing C and found it stuffy as hell, learned a bit over 2 years but I still didn't really feel prepared to tackle any real projects. Fast forward to today and I'm learning Java and GWT with the help of my mentor, 6 months in and I'm already well ahead of where I thought I'd be when I started. Then again everyone is different, I don't mind using books for reference when I break something but I'd much rather 'learn by doing' otherwise.

Same here.

Except I find C fascinating and Java stuffy.

[nuclearsandwich]

I don't mind using books for reference when I break something but I'd much rather 'learn by doing' otherwise.

Books are great for independent learners! I own a ton. I should add my library to a repo and let people check some of them out.

If you're digging Java now I can't wait til some other languages blow your whole mind. (Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby)

[bueller]

I don't mind using books for reference when I break something but I'd much rather 'learn by doing' otherwise.

Books are great for independent learners! I own a ton. I should add my library to a repo and let people check some of them out.

If you're digging Java now I can't wait til some other languages blow your whole mind. (Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby)

Yeah since taking my studies more seriously my library has grown a ton. Still find it hard to sit down and read them though, I usually just skim the interesting chapters and check out the sample code until I hit a problem

Keep hearing a lot about Ruby, care to give me a bit of a rundown on what you like about it? Bit torn between learning Ruby and Python for the next language.

[nuclearsandwich]

What follows is this programmer's opinion, like switches, it will eventually come down to personal taste.

Python prides itself on consistency "there's only one right way to do anything", but in reality there are two object systems, two exception systems, and two different major and incompatible versions of the language out there because they can't agree on when the old language should stop being Python. Python is very much like BASIC because the language is easy to get started with but it's a major pain in the ass to explore the language.

In contrast, Ruby is a language that mandates you understand object oriented programming. Literally everything in the Ruby runtime is an object that you can mess with. Including the garbage collector and interactive console! If you thought Java was Object Oriented, hold on to your butt. In Ruby you can create a new class with code like

MyEpicClass = Class.new

That said, if Object Oriented programming is not your favorite thing, you probably won't enjoy Ruby as much. When you learn one or two things about Ruby, it's really easy to infer a few more things, and from that kernel of knowledge learn about the entire language. However, you have to dive in and really understand *why* Object.class => Class, Class.class => Class, and Class.superclass => Object

If you want to see how and why I love teaching Ruby, check out a conference talk I gave last year: http://confreaks.com/videos/1112-gogaruco2012-sugar-free-ruby-an-experiment-in-object-first-teaching

The last and best thing about Ruby is the concept of MINASWAN. Matz wrote Ruby so programmers like him could be happy. That means Matz must be a pretty nice guy. Ergo in Ruby, Matz is nice and so we are nice. MINASWAN.

[bueller]

What follows is this programmer's opinion, like switches, it will eventually come down to personal taste.

Python prides itself on consistency "there's only one right way to do anything", but in reality there are two object systems, two exception systems, and two different major and incompatible versions of the language out there because they can't agree on when the old language should stop being Python. Python is very much like BASIC because the language is easy to get started with but it's a major pain in the ass to explore the language.

In contrast, Ruby is a language that mandates you understand object oriented programming. Literally everything in the Ruby runtime is an object that you can mess with. Including the garbage collector and interactive console! If you thought Java was Object Oriented, hold on to your butt. In Ruby you can create a new class with code like

MyEpicClass = Class.new

That said, if Object Oriented programming is not your favorite thing, you probably won't enjoy Ruby as much. When you learn one or two things about Ruby, it's really easy to infer a few more things, and from that kernel of knowledge learn about the entire language. However, you have to dive in and really understand *why* Object.class => Class, Class.class => Class, and Class.superclass => Object

If you want to see how and why I love teaching Ruby, check out a conference talk I gave last year: http://confreaks.com/videos/1112-gogaruco2012-sugar-free-ruby-an-experiment-in-object-first-teaching

The last and best thing about Ruby is the concept of MINASWAN. Matz wrote Ruby so programmers like him could be happy. That means Matz must be a pretty nice guy. Ergo in Ruby, Matz is nice and so we are nice. MINASWAN.

Cheers for the opinions and the video, slow day at work so I'll definitely watch your talk! Ruby is looking like a winner, I'm a big fan of object-oriented programming (it just makes so much SENSE to me) so it sounds like that's the way to go 

[nuclearsandwich]

At GitHub we have a javascript function for our chatrooms that ensures folks in the southern hemisphere appear upside down. I should whip up a dotjs for GH that does the same thing.

(context: I was nonplussed when you said slow workday at 9:30pm)

[daerid]

Totally agree here. I've actually only had about 5 years of formal education in my entire life so the majority of what I've learnt has been self taught. Took a course about a decade ago doing C and found it stuffy as hell, learned a bit over 2 years but I still didn't really feel prepared to tackle any real projects. Fast forward to today and I'm learning Java and GWT with the help of my mentor, 6 months in and I'm already well ahead of where I thought I'd be when I started. Then again everyone is different, I don't mind using books for reference when I break something but I'd much rather 'learn by doing' otherwise.

Hell, I'm a high school drop out and I ended up landing one of the better jobs you can get in the biz. Self-taught programmers tend to be much more skilled than traditional CS students (there are always exceptions, but this tends to be fairly accurate).

[KangarooZombies]

Curious daedrid,

How did you teach yourself? I know there's no one formula to success, but i'm interested in learning, but it seems like a big task to tackle.

[bueller]

At GitHub we have a javascript function for our chatrooms that ensures folks in the southern hemisphere appear upside down. I should whip up a dotjs for GH that does the same thing.

(context: I was nonplussed when you said slow workday at 9:30pm)

Haha yeah I'm lucky in that respect, I can do my day job with my eyes closed. Pretty much the reason why I'm studying to move into programming, I need a challenge.

Totally agree here. I've actually only had about 5 years of formal education in my entire life so the majority of what I've learnt has been self taught. Took a course about a decade ago doing C and found it stuffy as hell, learned a bit over 2 years but I still didn't really feel prepared to tackle any real projects. Fast forward to today and I'm learning Java and GWT with the help of my mentor, 6 months in and I'm already well ahead of where I thought I'd be when I started. Then again everyone is different, I don't mind using books for reference when I break something but I'd much rather 'learn by doing' otherwise.

Hell, I'm a high school drop out and I ended up landing one of the better jobs you can get in the biz. Self-taught programmers tend to be much more skilled than traditional CS students (there are always exceptions, but this tends to be fairly accurate).

Yeah the reason my mentor got in contact with me is because the last few people he'd hired out of the local pool were bloody useless. Said he'd much rather teach me everything I need to know because at least I'm interested in programming, the other guys only did it for a paycheck (not that there's anything wrong with that).

Curious daedrid,

How did you teach yourself? I know there's no one formula to success, but i'm interested in learning, but it seems like a big task to tackle.

Pick a simple application that you want to write and get to work!

I tried following tutorials and all sorts of videos but the best way to learn was just to jump in the deep end. I started out a while back by writing an application that would pull a row from an SQL database and display it in a table. From there I added editing, PDF/excel exporting and a bunch of other functionality until it was a full timesheets application. Only started learning Java like 5 months ago and I'm already working on proper projects, no WAY would I be at the same level if I was 5 months into a CS degree.

It is a lot of work though and you need to be very disciplined and motivated to teach yourself, I work a 40 hour week but I still wind up studying for 10-15 hours a week on average. Luckily I love programming so it doesn't really feel like work 

[iri]

cs education unneccessary, ruby mind blowing... oh my goodness.

[belac]

Hell, I'm a high school drop out and I ended up landing one of the better jobs you can get in the biz. Self-taught programmers tend to be much more skilled than traditional CS students (there are always exceptions, but this tends to be fairly accurate).

It sounds like you're the exception ;-) and it's because of the views of the founders of your company that you ultimately have that opportunity. Most places today expect that piece of paper, and if nothing else, it's worth getting to remove a barrier to entry for someone that's currently in school. As far as who's better between cs and non-cs students, it doesn't matter. Getting a cs degree doesn't guarantee you'll be a terrible programmer any more than dropping out of high school and hacking on your own guarantees you'll be an excellent one. Ultimately, all education is self-education meaning that a person only truly learns when they explore and internalize the concepts on their own. This is true in any discipline. Currently, it is impossible to have knowledge and understanding injected into your brain, so it must be put there by mentally wrestling with concepts. It doesn't matter whether those concepts were presented by a tutorial on the interwebz or a lecturing professor. The idea behind a cs program is that there is a relatively comprehensive and systematic presentation of the concepts one needs to know to be successful as a computer scientist. The fact that many people get these degrees while failing to understand the concepts is irrelevant and no reason to shun the whole system. In the same way, the fact that someone intelligent dropped out of school in their past is irrelevant when evaluating what they can do today and no reason to shun them.

[vyshane]

Having to rely on an IDE for language constructs is just bad language design.

Sure. I'm not a big fan of Objective-C's brackets either. I was simply saying that, from my real world experience, brackets are not a problem. I rarely type a left square bracket while writing Objective-C. The IDE takes care of it - so what.

The problem with Objective-C is that Objective-C-is-a-strict-superset-of-C. Most of the warts stem from that. Would I give up the ability to drop down to C at any time in order to gain a cleaner language? I've dabbled in RubyMotion, but so far haven't felt that it's worth my while just to be able to use Ruby to write iOS apps. And here we come to the truth of the matter. Not many people would bother with Objective-C were it not for Cocoa and Cocoa Touch. The framework is 3/4 of the story. Cocoa and Cocoa Touch are pretty awesome.

Objective-C is far from perfect. But it is pragmatic, and it does have two big things going for it. It's got C's performance, available on tap, anywhere, anytime. And it's got Cocoa and Cocoa Touch.

[bigx333]

Hell, I'm a high school drop out and I ended up landing one of the better jobs you can get in the biz. Self-taught programmers tend to be much more skilled than traditional CS students (there are always exceptions, but this tends to be fairly accurate).

It sounds like you're the exception ;-) and it's because of the views of the founders of your company that you ultimately have that opportunity. Most places today expect that piece of paper, and if nothing else, it's worth getting to remove a barrier to entry for someone that's currently in school. As far as who's better between cs and non-cs students, it doesn't matter. Getting a cs degree doesn't guarantee you'll be a terrible programmer any more than dropping out of high school and hacking on your own guarantees you'll be an excellent one. Ultimately, all education is self-education meaning that a person only truly learns when they explore and internalize the concepts on their own. This is true in any discipline. Currently, it is impossible to have knowledge and understanding injected into your brain, so it must be put there by mentally wrestling with concepts. It doesn't matter whether those concepts were presented by a tutorial on the interwebz or a lecturing professor. The idea behind a cs program is that there is a relatively comprehensive and systematic presentation of the concepts one needs to know to be successful as a computer scientist. The fact that many people get these degrees while failing to understand the concepts is irrelevant and no reason to shun the whole system. In the same way, the fact that someone intelligent dropped out of school in their past is irrelevant when evaluating what they can do today and no reason to shun them.

While I do agree that most places today want the piece of paper, I've to say that I see the same pattern as daried, for some reason all the people that I hired in the last 5 years, 2 different countries in 2 different continents and had CS graduations got fired in less than 3 month while most of the "CS-less" still working with us and we are quite satisfied with.

I probably just have bad luck but this is a quite interesting effect.

[bueller]

cs education unneccessary, ruby mind blowing... oh my goodness.

Care to expand upon that thought?

[Thimplum]

cs education unneccessary, ruby mind blowing... oh my goodness.

Care to expand upon that thought?

This^^

[belac]

While I do agree that most places today want the piece of paper, I've to say that I see the same pattern as daried, for some reason all the people that I hired in the last 5 years, 2 different countries in 2 different continents and had CS graduations got fired in less than 3 month while most of the "CS-less" still working with us and we are quite satisfied with.

I probably just have bad luck but this is a quite interesting effect.

I don't doubt that. Just like I could tell you about the past two places I've worked that no longer hire people without degrees because they've been burned by hiring self-taught programmers. Again, my point is that the method of education is irrelevant and shouldn't even be considered when hiring a developer. However, where I live and work, degree-less programmers face a huge, almost insurmountable barrier to enter the job market. For that reason, if a high school or college student asked me whether they should drop out of school to learn on their own, I'd say stay in school AND learn on your own and have a much easier time of entering the job market.

[Tarzan]

While I do agree that most places today want the piece of paper, I've to say that I see the same pattern as daried, for some reason all the people that I hired in the last 5 years, 2 different countries in 2 different continents and had CS graduations got fired in less than 3 month while most of the "CS-less" still working with us and we are quite satisfied with.

I probably just have bad luck but this is a quite interesting effect.

I don't doubt that. Just like I could tell you about the past two places I've worked that no longer hire people without degrees because they've been burned by hiring self-taught programmers. Again, my point is that the method of education is irrelevant and shouldn't even be considered when hiring a developer. However, where I live and work, degree-less programmers face a huge, almost insurmountable barrier to enter the job market. For that reason, if a high school or college student asked me whether they should drop out of school to learn on their own, I'd say stay in school AND learn on your own and have a much easier time of entering the job market.

Yep, sound advice.

I suspect one factor that differentiates scholastically taught candidates versus self-taught is the specificity of the training.  If you want someone with good general knowledge of software programming concepts, then looking for applicants with CS degrees is the way to go.  If you're trying to fill a specific job requirement, and you need a skilled programmer in Tc/Tkl, or Tuxedo, or Ruby, or Python, etc., then interview candidates with those skills on their resumes, and test their capabilities on the application you need their skills for.  Degrees in the latter case are relatively unimportant.

One difference you may find in the job market is that recruiters/human resource personnel may winnow stacks of resumes by broad criteria like degree level, so the hiring manager may never even see the candidates with programming experience but lack of formal educational certificates.  The justification for this strategy is that people who have shown they can buckle down and complete a degree are more likely to stay with an employer longer, reducing training and hiring costs in the long run.

No axe to grind, just presenting some perspective gained by being a job seeker, and also by being a hiring manager.

[wiredPANDA]

Software Engineer for a big healthcare solutions company based in Kansas City.  A big company but for some reason though I am known as the keyboard guy around my cube space

Can only think of one company that could be out there and fit this bill.  And if it's the one I'm thinking of, I've dealt with them before in my current job, and I have an old classmate that works for them, too, doing dev work.


Back on subject:  can't say I've delved into the meatier languages.  I've done some HTML/CSS/PHP/JQuery here and there for work.  Back in college, I did some C and VB.net.  Now, though, I'm primarily just doing scripting with PowerShell.

[hashbaz]

Coding and engineering are two different things.  You don't go to school to learn how to code, you go to learn about the science of computation and the practice of designing large systems in efficient, proven, maintainable ways.  I'm not looking down on anyone here in particular who doesn't have a degree, but it's not fair to say that formal CS programs are worthless.  They teach you how to think about problems, about design and analysis, etc.

[bueller]

Coding and engineering are two different things.  You don't go to school to learn how to code, you go to learn about the science of computation and the practice of designing large systems in efficient, proven, maintainable ways.  I'm not looking down on anyone here in particular who doesn't have a degree, but it's not fair to say that formal CS programs are worthless.  They teach you how to think about problems, about design and analysis, etc.

This is a very good point, design patterns are something that I definitely want to do some reading on.

[nuclearsandwich]

it's not fair to say that formal CS programs are worthless.

If I said that, then I completely misspoke. Although I can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that San Jose State's CS program is worthless  . There are fantastic programs out there. However, it's no longer the case that you *need* to go to university to learn these things. In traditional engineering fields like Mechanical, Civic, and Computer engineering, you really rely on the resources of the college to help you make your way. You can't decide as an amateur engineer to build a bridge.

For software engineering, there's no scarcity of raw materials. Anyone can get started building an application and if they decide it's not for them, or they love it but it's terrible and they need to rewrite it. The only investment was their time.

Computer Science is special, sacred to me even. But I don't believe for a second that a traditional education is required to be a computer scientist, software engineer, or programmer.

[hashbaz]

I wasn't responding to you in particular, just to the general path this thread has gone down.  I felt like we were confounding languages and technique with theory and analysis.

[iri]

cs education unneccessary, ruby mind blowing... oh my goodness.

Care to expand upon that thought?

upon which one? the latter one does not need much expansion: as long as you are more or less educated in the field, there is nothing in ruby which can blow your mind. on the usefulness of academic education for programmers i will post later. i never thought such posting would be neccessary.

[hashbaz]

I totally misread your post, iri.  I thought it was meant as "cs education is unnecessary.  ruby, on the other hand, is mind blowing".

[Thimplum]

I totally misread your post, iri.  I thought it was meant as "cs education is unnecessary.  ruby, on the other hand, is mind blowing".

haha same here.

[daerid]

Curious daedrid,

How did you teach yourself? I know there's no one formula to success, but i'm interested in learning, but it seems like a big task to tackle.

The only way I can answer this really is I kept asking questions. If I didn't understand something, I'd do research and read up and experiment until I understood it (or thought I did). If I later came across a new piece of information that didn't make sense, I studied the hell out of that until either a) I understood it as a valid piece of information that contributed to more understanding, or b) it understood it as an invalid and therefore false piece of information.

I know that's terribly abstract, and I'm sorry, but that's the best way I can explain my approach.

And I wasn't trying to insinuate that CS degrees are worthless, I'm sorry if it came out that way. I was merely stating that it shouldn't be a deterrent to learning the field, nor should it be a factor in determining whether somebody knows the field or not. That's all.

[daerid]

Oh, and I know that tons of great projects have been created with Ruby, and I'm sure there are tons of great things in the language... I just have yet to find any. :-P

[belac]

I was merely stating that it shouldn't be a deterrent to learning the field, nor should it be a factor in determining whether somebody knows the field or not. That's all.

+1

[bueller]

Curious daedrid,

How did you teach yourself? I know there's no one formula to success, but i'm interested in learning, but it seems like a big task to tackle.

The only way I can answer this really is I kept asking questions. If I didn't understand something, I'd do research and read up and experiment until I understood it (or thought I did). If I later came across a new piece of information that didn't make sense, I studied the hell out of that until either a) I understood it as a valid piece of information that contributed to more understanding, or b) it understood it as an invalid and therefore false piece of information.

I know that's terribly abstract, and I'm sorry, but that's the best way I can explain my approach.

This is pretty much how I work. Find something interesting that confuses the hell out of me, sit there until I understand it and then move on!

[iri]

cs education unneccessary, ruby mind blowing... oh my goodness.

Care to expand upon that thought?

on the necessity of proper cs education for a programmer.

actually, history proves i was wrong. it is not necessary at all. one might create popular, world   famous programming projects even completely not having any software related education. just look at drupal.

and surely, a piece of paper named degree certificate doesn't mean its owner can do their job well. and surely, there are people who are good in self-teaching, and successful autodidacts (like the creator of pugs) do exist in the programming world. however, software development, though young, is a very broad subject difficult to be embraced by an individual without proper programme. proper programme is the first big plus of a good cs course in a good university. another one is that a student has a few years to learn pure aspects of computer science without pressure, managers, deadlines, and so on.

"learn by work" approach could work nice in areas not very demanding for a programmer's skill. like web application development, for instance. start with learning some html, then add some procedural  php, then basic sql, then learn some oop, then maybe a framework (not necessary), and you're an accomplished programmer! i've seen dozens of such on job interviews. as an interviewer, i asked everyone who applied for a web developer position to write the simplest possible implementation of  singleton in any programming language. one out of five could. those people somehow manage to pirsue programming career and not to be hungry. but there are areas closed for them: anything related to realtime, embedded, systems programming and so on. these areas require fundamental education. and when you are getting the basis for such education, it's much better for you to be a student and focus on learning.

[Phillip_J_Fry]

cs education unneccessary, ruby mind blowing... oh my goodness.

Care to expand upon that thought?

on the necessity of proper cs education for a programmer.

actually, history proves i was wrong. it is not necessary at all. one might create popular, world   famous programming projects even completely not having any software related education. just look at drupal.

and surely, a piece of paper named degree certificate doesn't mean its owner can do their job well. and surely, there are people who are good in self-teaching, and successful autodidacts (like the creator of pugs) do exist in the programming world. however, software development, though young, is a very broad subject difficult to be embraced by an individual without proper programme. proper programme is the first big plus of a good cs course in a good university. another one is that a student has a few years to learn pure aspects of computer science without pressure, managers, deadlines, and so on.

"learn by work" approach could work nice in areas not very demanding for a programmer's skill. like web application development, for instance. start with learning some html, then add some procedural  php, then basic sql, then learn some oop, then maybe a framework (not necessary), and you're an accomplished programmer! i've seen dozens of such on job interviews. as an interviewer, i asked everyone who applied for a web developer position to write the simplest possible implementation of  singleton in any programming language. one out of five could. those people somehow manage to pirsue programming career and not to be hungry. but there are areas closed for them: anything related to realtime, embedded, systems programming and so on. these areas require fundamental education. and when you are getting the basis for such education, it's much better for you to be a student and focus on learning.

+1 for fundamental education! programming languages are tools (imho)

[codymaust]

Currently an undergraduate CS student, and have been doing C# development full-time for two years now. I really love what I do

Not being able to work on my personal projects during the school year is a big drain, though I don't get enough sleep as it is

[nuclearsandwich]

Currently an undergraduate CS student, and have been doing C# development full-time for two years now. I really love what I do

Not being able to work on my personal projects during the school year is a big drain, though I don't get enough sleep as it is

I know the feel. Work is basically my pet projects right now. I've had no time for anything but schoolwork and volunteer work lately. No time to hack on work stuff. :sob: