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Comment by hd4 | Hacker News Reader

Entrenched thinking in the UK is why certain degrees seem to be the 'correct' or desirable ones for any given field or why the route in life seems to be cut out for people who take a certain degree.

In countries other than the UK, I've heard of many people entering the programming field through a non-CompSci degree, but here if you don't have some kind of related degree you wouldn't get considered for a job in that particular field. This goes for many other fields, not just programming. But not here (UK). Out-of-box thinking just isn't the way industry operates here and that's never a good thing, to always operate in a very predictable way to create a weakness in the system.

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Err, there are loads of (employed) programmers without CS degrees in the UK. I myself managed to get a (full time) Web development job without a degree at all, and I am by no means the only one. I'd say roughly 1/3 of the developers I've worked with have done a CS degree. Another chunk have done a degree in a related subject like maths or engineering. But there are many others who have done completely unrelated degrees, or none at all.

In Web development maybe. But I've seen very few programmers in deeper areas (backend, system engineers etc.) without some kind of formal CS education.

I'm not sure that's entirely fair. Very few of the professional programmers I've worked with during my career had Computer Science or other directly "computery" degrees. Most did have a degree and most were in one technical subject or another, but that doesn't seem particularly surprising.

I wanted to do Compsci at university (I'm in my second term of my first year now), but I missed out by a few marks. I was offered Electronic and Computer Engineering (which is what I'm doing now at a UK uni), though the kind of jobs I want to do are almost entirely programming, and not necessarily embedded programming.

I don't know what my job prospects are like; hell, I don't even know what electronic engineers do.

EE & CE are very good courses for programmers, as they give a really strong understanding of the underlying platform.

However, if you're doing ECE and don't know what electronic engineers do, something is wrong.

To be fair, engineering students in any discipline not knowing what engineers actually do is not uncommon, and might even be the majority case.

An explanation for the lay person of why this is.

Engineering degrees typically start off with a couple of years of general science education, with minimal contact with the engineering faculty. It's often not until halfway though the degree that the engineers branch off from the science students, into engineering specific courses, and find out what makes an engineer different to a scientist.

Not entirely true - at least from my experience studying in Australia. The first year of my degree was about a 50/50 split between the Engineering faculty and other faculties subsequent years were almost entirely (95%+) engineering faculty.

Year 1 was courses like: Calculus, Linear Algebra, Statistics, Physics, Chemistry, intro to comp sci (non eng faculty) Statics/Dynamics, intro to Electrical eng., intro to Materials, Engineering Management (eng faculty)

Years 2-4 were devoted to your specific engineering major there was some cross major subjects. I.e I majored in materials engineering I Studied fluid Dynamics and Welding alongside mech eng students, studied Benefication alongside mining engineers. Solid mechanics was with civil engineers.

The course was pretty tightly proscribed we got very little choice in terms of electives. I took one elective outside of the engineering faculty and that was in my fourth year (particle physics).

Many of the engineers I've worked with in the UK carry EE degrees (I'm unsure how different this is to electronic and computer engineering). It's certainly not seen as a bad thing or a reason to not get interviews compared to a pure CS degree from my experience.

Plenty of developers come out of non CS degrees, enjoy your degree, it will give you a more in depth understanding on computational substrates (electronics) which is a good advantage. On the other hand... you should do your self a favour and take some Algo courses in coursera or elsewhere if you really want to pursue a purer developer career. It will leave you better positioned when you graduate.

You'll be just fine.

I graduated with a degree in electronic and computer engineering in 1996 in the U.K.

We did minimal software: a bit of Ada, Prolog, Z and Occam, 6502 assembler. Nothing substantial really. Tons of math, analog electronics and microprocessor design.

I had a deep interest in electronics but went straight into software development. The degree gave me a valuable foundation, it has been tremendously useful at various points in my career. And in side-projects. It gave me an understanding of what lies beneath. And a skillset that many software dev contemporaries did not have. Some of the most interesting software is the stuff that connects to the physical world.

Never worked in the UK. Spent a bunch of time in Germany now I'm in California, via Massachusetts.

I wouldn't worry :-)

Thank you for your insight. My worry is more to do with fear of not being able to make my 40% pass mark for this year. There's simply so much to know and learn, from the analogue (which I find the hardest) to the programming (which I find the easiest). Unfortunately the analogue stuff is the highest weighted out of all of the modules.

Unless you were applying for Oxbridge I'd consider EE/CE a harder degree than plain CompSci. You'll probably do a lot more maths and modelling, and less CS essentials like standard algos and compiler design.

IMO anyone who can master control theory, data compression, RF design, and/or analog filter design should have no problem picking up algos and compiler theory relatively quickly.

I disagree. I have worked in software teams that employed people with non-CompSi degrees, such as maths, physics and mechanical engineering.

How about people without degrees?

I haven't worked with any, they probably don't make it past the HR/recruiter filter.

As an engineer who has had to assess other engineers as part of the hiring process, I wouldn't turn down someone if they didn't have a degree.

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