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Discussion on: Why Not Having a CS Degree is Awesome

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Chris Raser

Great stuff here. I often feel that I learned a lot of my most rare & valuable skills not in my CS program, but in music school. How to take a deep breath & walk on stage like you own the room, (demos, interviews), how to understand requirements & translate them into a formal spec (reading/writing sheet music), how to focus under pressure, how to break down difficult sections/features into component parts & build back up to a finished product. How to switch languages/frameworks (I played two different types of tuba, plus a little piano).

I really do feel that I learned a lot of valuable stuff in getting my CS degree, but I don't think any of it can't be self-taught. Grab the Dragon Book, or The Little Schemer, or Cracking the Coding Interview, etc. On the other hand, there really is no substitute for walking on stage & performing. (Which has helped me with pressure situations & difficult conversations my whole life.)

As an industry, tech has a serious problem recognizing great candidates & knowing what makes them great. I understand why people doing the hiring sometimes ask for a CS degree, but I think they're missing out on a lot of outstanding devs that way. I agree that it's best to have some kind of qualification, but I don't see any reason to prefer a CS degree over a bootcamp cert, a portfolio site, an example project in github, etc.