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Discussion on: Why Not Having a CS Degree is Awesome

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_ezell_ profile image
Ezell Frazier

"Web stuff. That's all bootcamp teaches you, the bare minimum to do basic web development."

According to what? Who? You? 🙄

"Bootcamp barely scratches the surface of CS, and it usually uses crutches to make the web apps anyway (React, Bootstrap, frameworks, etc)."

Define computer science. 🤔

"Bootcamp grads are typically given the shit work that nobody else wants to do, like CSS, HTML, JavaScript stuff."

Maybe because the "CS guys" either:

A. Over-engineer what's supposed to be a basic webpage or app
B. Have no clue on as to what they're doing (A reason why a company hires a web dev in the first place? 🙃)

"If web devs like that stuff that's great, but if they don't they should seriously consider getting a degree or rigorous self-learning"

If someone doesn't like a Bootcamp they should go to college? I'm sorry, what? 😕

I'm going to stop quoting the post here.

Reading your post sounds like what's indicative of the more toxic parts of our community. Hasty generalizations and gate-keeping.

It's scary to know people like this are tasked with projects of any scale. Making broad assumptions is generally what can make project development a living hell for all parties involved.

It's not the degree or educational background that makes a developer great. I shouldn't have to say that to another dev, but here we are.

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jkhaui profile image
Jordy Lee

I'm not sure if that person sees the irony in the fact that all their comment does is support the author's point: that having non-tech skills, such as social skills, can be valuable for a developer.

It's as if we'd be living in some kind of utopia, if only everyone one on the planet was trained as a computer engineer

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trandana profile image
trandana • Edited

What you call "over engineering" is called doing it correctly.The reality is most bootcamp grads make really bad code that needs to be fixed by a someone.

I agree that not every bootcamp grads is bad. Many have CS degrees or years of development experience.

But to think that a bootcamp alone is going to put you on the same level or close to the same level as a CS grad is insulting to every CS grad who worked hard for 4 years to grasp the knowledge. Passing a CS degree off as just "theoretical" fluff just shows the narrow-minded focus of web devs these days. A bootcamp is less than one semester of a CS degree. A CS degree has another 7 semesters on top.

"Define computer science"

Graphics programming, physics engines, game development, real time simulation, high performance computing, databases, embedded, networking, artificial intelligence, software engineering, human computer interaction, cloud computing, security, algorithms/data structures, computational sciences. Those are just some of the sub fields of CS. I can go on...and then you have web development.

Bootcamps are a scam. They take often a lot of money (upwards of 15k sometimes) and promise you the world. They teach you how to hide the fact you are a bootcamp grad. When you finish you find there are no jobs, (except maybe basic web stuff, and even that is rare). A bootcamp promises to turn you into a software engineer without ever doing a single software engineering course. Its a joke. Bootcamps create software technicians at best. You learn a framework or two that last you until the industry no longer uses it. ( Which doesn't take long in the software industry).

And yes, any good university does in fact teach web development using new frameworks.

As for saying CS guys have no clue what they are doing, don't kid yourself

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thecaitcode profile image
Caitlyn Greffly

There are a lot of things I could discuss here, but I just want to disagree with the suggestion that bootcampers need to learn to hide the fact that they came from a bootcamp. I suppose one of the reasons I wrote this article is I want to advocate for people who decide to make the career transition via bootcamp to be proud and see what skills they can bring to the table.

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lpainton profile image
Lee Painton • Edited

Computer Science is the science of computation; that is literally taking a piece of information and applying a series of transformations to it based on pre-defined relationships in order to produce another useful piece of information.

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theodesp profile image
Theofanis Despoudis

There is a good article about that:

Computer Science: Not about Computers, Not Science

www2.lawrence.edu/fast/krebsbak/Re...

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lpainton profile image
Lee Painton

Excellent read, thanks for sharing that.

Krebsbach makes a strong argument and I mostly agree with it. If I had to quibble it would be with the idea of algorithms being the fundament of CS. An algorithm is prescriptive, but like a recipe to the culinary arts it is the act of going between ingredient and product which is our primary subject of study.

Computation is a natural phenomenon, even if it isn't usually a physical one.