Comment by lemonghost | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lemonghost | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

I'm halfway through the OMSCS in the machine learning specialization. It has been a great experience so far and definitely worth it for me.

A couple of things to consider: As you mentioned, it is more focused on Computer Science than Software Engineering/Development. There are a couple of Software Engineering/Architecture/Testing courses but I haven't taken them so I can't comment on how relevant I think they are to my day job.

It's an incredible bargain... 7-8K for an MS (not an online MS) from a top 10 school in CS. That on it's own makes it worth it for me.

It's not easy and it's not like a typical Coursera/Udacity course. Depending on which courses you take it can be quite challenging (which is a good thing). You typically don't have much interaction with the Professors but there are a lot of TAs and other students to help you along the way.

Here's a reddit in case you haven't come across it that answers many questions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OMSCS/

And here's an awesome course review site that a student built:

https://omscentral.com/reviews

Can you think of any comparable programs that are more focused on Software Engineering? I am about to apply for this program actually, but if there was an SE focused alternative I would lean that way.

There is a specialization for Computing Systems:

https://www.omscs.gatech.edu/specialization-computing-system...

I think most Computer Science education is focused on fundamentals. So there isn't anything that's CS that will focus on the latest thing. That said, I think any of the specializations will make you a better software engineer. Also, the price... you just can't beat 7K. I don't think there's anything out there that competes on price and quality.

I am starting the machine learning masters this month...what order would you recommend taking the machine learning classes?

I'm taking ML in the fall and I've already taken ML4T and RL. So the order I went in was ML4T -> RL -> ML. My understanding is that's roughly in order of increasing difficulty (although I do suspect RL has gotten a little harder over the last year).

Both ML4T and ML have some RL component. So there's overlap. If you're new to python, then I'd definitely recommend ML4T first because it spends a bunch of time on Pandas/Numpy. ML4T is also easier to get into than ML if it's your first semester.

Take a look at the course review site also. It's really helpful in estimating difficulty:

https://omscentral.com/reviews

ML flows nicely into RL, although I've heard ML4T is a gentler intro if you have no experience in machine learning at all (I haven't taken it yet)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com