You've managed to perfectly illustrate what I truly see as the biggest issue with the way CS is taught and why I would never advise someone that wants to code to spend the time and money on college. To put it succinctly, the neckbeards at Universities are simply too resistant to change and refuse to acknowledge that Javascript has grown up, and they're damning their students because of it. This is a generalization, but I personally never had a professor prove me wrong.
Also, I want to note that "I am a normal guy, I don't really code at home, or work on a personal project," isn't a good sign, IMO. Granted, most personal projects most people would have any interest in are going to be web-based, and that means Javascript. Personal projects are where you learn the most, and if you're not coding at home, you don't love it, and if you don't love it, there is a greater than likely chance you will burn out. In all honesty, if you don't develop in your off time, I'm hesitant to call you a developer at all. Perhaps that's harsh and I'm just a zealot, but alas.
With that out of the way, check out YDKJS. It's arguably the best, most comprehensive JS guide online. Then, once you've got the basics of JS down, React is the way to go. The community is huge, documentation plentiful, and the ecosystem is an absolute joy to work in.
The issue is that HR/recruiters still mostly expect people to have degrees. Most of the time your application will just end up in the garbage bin for not having a degree. This process might even be automated in many places. Beyond that there is a bias towards degrees from specific institutions. It doesn't make much sense on a technical level, but that's just how it is here in the US. There was a point in time that I was considering dropping out of school, because I was making extremely good money coding. It was my boss actually that convinced me to stay in school. After going through a couple rounds of job searching and seeing how tough it can be even with qualifications, I'm really glad that I had that voice in my ear telling me to stick with it.
I never finished school (I stopped at half of high school), because my informatics and systems teacher gave me an F as final valuation in both the matters. Looked like programming stuff wasn't my destiny at all.
You know what? I worked for 3 USA startups in the past 5 years, the one I'm working for now was in the 2017 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies.
At work I am one of the most performant developers and my (graduated) teammates seek for my advices often.
I get at least a (serious) job offer each 1/2 weeks and nobody ever complained about my lack of school degree (except for when they want me to relocate to the USA and I can't because your laws suck).
School, for programmers, is a huge waste of time.
If you can afford to waste all that time then good for you, carry on and get your piece of paper.
If you want to get a job and start producing stuff, just prove your skills creating some cool projects on GitHub and the rest will come.
I'm US based, and never finished school. I think you'd be genuinely surprised what a healthy GitHub account attached to your LinkedIn can do. Degrees seem to be a stopgap for having actual code published. In my experience, once you've published even a small amount of usable, well documented code, they're pretty willing to overlook the degree. My LinkedIn is a joke when it comes to "professionalism," yet I've been bombarded with recruiter emails since linking my GH, even when I only had a small number of projects. It does make that first contact harder to establish though, I will admit that.
Establishing a reputation on StackOverflow and HackerRank can aid a LOT as well.
With all due respect, being bombarded by recruiters on LinkedIn and actually getting the job you want are two entirely different things. I'm glad things seem to be working out for you though.
This is very true. I don't want to seem like an advocate for dropping out, or like college is entirely pointless. Rather, pointing out that I think much of what is taught is antiquated with regards to most of the jobs on the market.
At the end of they day, what it takes for you to learn the skills and get code published is the path you should take. For some, myself included, college wasn't it. If you're the type of person that functions better in a self taught environment, diving head first into open source and contributing wherever possible can work. IMO it's one of the things that makes this field great. The path you take is less important than the fact that you get there.
For the sake of completeness, I want to note that pretty much all of what I've said could very well be exclusive to the web. It's my niche, and in all honesty I don't stray far because it's what I love. The rise of coding bootcamps, and even projects like FreeCodeCamp, seem to have liberated web development from the traditional CS model.
I agree entirely. College is overrated and generally poor at actually teaching vocational skills. Hopefully people will eventually catch onto the fact that an undergrad liberal arts education isn't all it's cracked up to be, but I still recommend people get degrees for the time being.
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You've managed to perfectly illustrate what I truly see as the biggest issue with the way CS is taught and why I would never advise someone that wants to code to spend the time and money on college. To put it succinctly, the neckbeards at Universities are simply too resistant to change and refuse to acknowledge that Javascript has grown up, and they're damning their students because of it. This is a generalization, but I personally never had a professor prove me wrong.
Also, I want to note that "I am a normal guy, I don't really code at home, or work on a personal project," isn't a good sign, IMO. Granted, most personal projects most people would have any interest in are going to be web-based, and that means Javascript. Personal projects are where you learn the most, and if you're not coding at home, you don't love it, and if you don't love it, there is a greater than likely chance you will burn out. In all honesty, if you don't develop in your off time, I'm hesitant to call you a developer at all. Perhaps that's harsh and I'm just a zealot, but alas.
With that out of the way, check out YDKJS. It's arguably the best, most comprehensive JS guide online. Then, once you've got the basics of JS down, React is the way to go. The community is huge, documentation plentiful, and the ecosystem is an absolute joy to work in.
github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS
The issue is that HR/recruiters still mostly expect people to have degrees. Most of the time your application will just end up in the garbage bin for not having a degree. This process might even be automated in many places. Beyond that there is a bias towards degrees from specific institutions. It doesn't make much sense on a technical level, but that's just how it is here in the US. There was a point in time that I was considering dropping out of school, because I was making extremely good money coding. It was my boss actually that convinced me to stay in school. After going through a couple rounds of job searching and seeing how tough it can be even with qualifications, I'm really glad that I had that voice in my ear telling me to stick with it.
I never finished school (I stopped at half of high school), because my informatics and systems teacher gave me an F as final valuation in both the matters. Looked like programming stuff wasn't my destiny at all.
You know what? I worked for 3 USA startups in the past 5 years, the one I'm working for now was in the 2017 CNBC Disruptor 50 companies.
At work I am one of the most performant developers and my (graduated) teammates seek for my advices often.
I get at least a (serious) job offer each 1/2 weeks and nobody ever complained about my lack of school degree (except for when they want me to relocate to the USA and I can't because your laws suck).
School, for programmers, is a huge waste of time.
If you can afford to waste all that time then good for you, carry on and get your piece of paper.
If you want to get a job and start producing stuff, just prove your skills creating some cool projects on GitHub and the rest will come.
I'm US based, and never finished school. I think you'd be genuinely surprised what a healthy GitHub account attached to your LinkedIn can do. Degrees seem to be a stopgap for having actual code published. In my experience, once you've published even a small amount of usable, well documented code, they're pretty willing to overlook the degree. My LinkedIn is a joke when it comes to "professionalism," yet I've been bombarded with recruiter emails since linking my GH, even when I only had a small number of projects. It does make that first contact harder to establish though, I will admit that.
Establishing a reputation on StackOverflow and HackerRank can aid a LOT as well.
With all due respect, being bombarded by recruiters on LinkedIn and actually getting the job you want are two entirely different things. I'm glad things seem to be working out for you though.
This is very true. I don't want to seem like an advocate for dropping out, or like college is entirely pointless. Rather, pointing out that I think much of what is taught is antiquated with regards to most of the jobs on the market.
At the end of they day, what it takes for you to learn the skills and get code published is the path you should take. For some, myself included, college wasn't it. If you're the type of person that functions better in a self taught environment, diving head first into open source and contributing wherever possible can work. IMO it's one of the things that makes this field great. The path you take is less important than the fact that you get there.
For the sake of completeness, I want to note that pretty much all of what I've said could very well be exclusive to the web. It's my niche, and in all honesty I don't stray far because it's what I love. The rise of coding bootcamps, and even projects like FreeCodeCamp, seem to have liberated web development from the traditional CS model.
I agree entirely. College is overrated and generally poor at actually teaching vocational skills. Hopefully people will eventually catch onto the fact that an undergrad liberal arts education isn't all it's cracked up to be, but I still recommend people get degrees for the time being.