Comment by mynewwork | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mynewwork | Hacker News Reader

Go to school. You'll have an uphill battle for the rest of your life if you don't. Your resume will always be viewed with a bit of suspicion if you don't have a degree, you'll be expected to do more to prove there aren't gaps in your self-education. That's if anyone looks are your resume at all, many places HR won't bother without the degree. A github profile and a network of people who know your skills are both huge assets to finding work, but the lack of degree will always cause difficulties.

Plus, right now you're doing web and android dev, but maybe you'll take a class that will open your eyes to other areas. Maybe you'll find out you love compilers or computer vision or parallel computation.

There are a lot of people on HN who love to be contrarian or want to beat the system by proving they could accomplish X without a formal education which they believe is more about credentials than actual education. But the truth is, not having the degree is just going to make your life a lot harder, plus you might miss out on learning things you wouldn't self-study.

I skipped college (dropped out of a community college to be precise, took exactly on CS course). I'm a well paid dev, and I have no trouble getting work. I worked my ass off, studied a CS curriculum on my own (before coursera and general assembly, I just bought books and read articles), and I've never had more debt than cash in my life. Of course, missing out on the college experience sucked, but we don't all take the same path in life.

Of course, I'm good at self-promotion and I'm good at networking. Now, I'm the one interviewing college grads, and I gotta tell ya, it's amazing how many can barely write a for loop.

> "you might miss out on learning things you wouldn't self-study."

This is true: it would be wise to be honest with yourself on this point. I've personally read more textbooks since graduating than I did in college; it's not impossible, but it is very very hard to stay focused in self-study.

I completely agree. I know that I won't be able to self-teach everything that I would learn in college.

This is maybe not true given the right parameters. Typically, people "self-study" on a whim. Probably in the evenings or on weekends. They go for about 30 minutes and then quit, saying, "I feel good about this, I'm going to study like this 3x a week."

And then they utterly faily, because self-study is not one of their pre-established habits.

If you make a schedule mimicking a college curriculum (during the weekday, with a lunch hour, 15 minute breaks, etc) like you would with an actual class, and use the "tuition money" to pay instead for a good desk with ample room for notes and a solid reading light, then I bet almost anyone could do a college education on their own.

It's all mental, and in my experience, mindsets can be changed with the right training. It's like learning to brush your teeth, except you're an adult now.

The bigger point though is that college isn't all mental. If you went through college hunched over a desk studying, and doing nothing else, then sure, you can replicate that at home.

Great advice, especially:

>plus you might miss out on learning things you wouldn't self-study.

I'm certain there are subjects I would love to build products around but I won't be able to teach myself as adequately alone.

Plus: girls and things that aren't CS.

Creativity needs outside experiences and knowledge not in your domain to flourish. Go to college - it's one of the easiest places to get a large breadth of that stuff.

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