Hacker News Reader

Comment by guhidalg | Hacker News Reader

I downvoted you because you are exceptional but the rest of the world is not. Most people benefit from traditional education, software engineering is not different.

View on HN

its not THAT exceptional. I myself know several people who bootstrapped themselves into being descent software engineers. Traditional education is certainly fine for some people but its not the only way for the masses to learn. whats missing is the discipline of pushing yourself when you have no immediate extrinsic motivation.

You might have had a point a few decades ago when the information itself was difficult to fine but with the internet and online courses, its easier than ever to teach yourself in a "nontraditional" setting.

I was a self-taught software developer who already made money with programming for ~10 years before I took my first computer science classes.

Those classes unlocked a whole new level of programming for me. I just didn't know what I didn't know before.

People keep reinventing the same shit if they haven't learned about it before.

Sure, you can learn many things online. But for most things you just don't even know that they exist, you wouldn't know to search for them.

it only becomes exceptional after you start and continue doing it. I was not capable of self-learn before I applied to it.

I downvoted you because I kindly disagree. Seems like that's how you do it.

BS. Everything I learned from college was me anki and youtube. Lectures were wasting me time from actually studying. Most people I talked to they said. They didn't follow the lecturer at all just sat there like me for the attendence. There is no reason why we should continue to have mandatory lectures when you can just record them like Gilbert Strang did.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com