I am writing this to you while sitting in a College lecture
The professor is rambling on about some type of sorting algorithm. The whole class is stressed because we have finals in two days that's worth a quarter of our overall grade. For a lot of us, a two hour test is going to make or break our grade. None of the work we did for the last almost half a year matter if we mess up on this 2hr test.
I went to a small highschool where they didn't offer any computer science classes. Knowing that I was going to be behind if I waited until college to start coding, I started teaching myself with the help of Youtube. I eventually found out about the startup world and got hooked. By my junior year of highschool I knew I wanted to have my own startup eventually. I also wanted to go to the best school for CS that I could afford. And that school is competitive and the CS department is even more competitive. My senior year, I got rejected from that school. I was broken. It got to me and I became prideful. Instead of accepting the other good colleges that accepted me, I decided to go to community college and transfer to the college that rejected me. And that's exactly what I did. I went to community college, got near all A's and got accepted to the college that rejected me a year prior.
Now I am taking the traditional organized CS classes for the first time in my life. And I HATE IT WITH A PASSION. This is not why I got into CS. It is clear that we are being educated to become workers. Everything is about getting a job. I haven't touched React for 6 month and have only been using Java to do school assignments.
I have an exam in 2 days. It's hard to do but I have decided already that I am not gonna allow it to kill my mood. I am gonna go back to my true love of creating. I am gonna take my winter break to review Js and Css and go back to the drawing board. I miss getting stuck and spending hours on Stack Overflow. I miss Googling "how to center a div" for the 47th time in a week. And most importantly, I miss coding for myself and not for a grade. Coding to make my dream become reality.
I haven't been active on this website for sometimes now. However, after this realization, I am coming back. It already feels so good to be part of a community with similar goals and interests. I hope to talk to y'all soon.
There was this guy on reddit that was advertising that studying CS is actually bad for your career if you're going to be a developer. The jist of the argument was that if you're a CS major, your skills will be evaluated with heavy bias from your GPA while if you learn it on your own, you'll be judged by your previous projects.
The comments were divided nearly 50/50. Just my 2 cents :)
I appreciate your take.
I would say that his arguments would be valid if the companies who are promising to no longer look for college degrees keep their promises.
🤣
I went to college over 20 years ago. I was a coder at heart, taught myself qbasic when I was in 4th grade, wrote code for fun all the way through high school. When I got to college, I thought I would be a CS major for sure. But after my first years of CS classes, I hated the courses so much that I switched to economics to pursue "business". After graduation, I went into finance and investing which was my career for 14 years. Then about 6 years ago, I got tired of investing and became an indie hacker and got back into coding and I love it again. So I guess the moral is that don't let a bad CS curriculum dissuade you from doing what you actually love.
Good luck!
Thank you steven,
I am glad you found your way back. I have many friends who have already turned away from coding because of a curriculum that didn't fit them. Hopefully, my path leads them to see that it is possible to enjoy coding without having to do it for school.
College engineering courses are definitely not ideal as creative outlets. 😢. I hope you can find time to continue your own pursuits on the side.
Courtland has also told me numerous times before that he hated college coursework and was incredibly happy to be done with it... And obviously he's been quite successful on the other side! Hang in there!
Appreciate the love brandon.
I actually joined Indie Hacker after watching Courtland's interview on a channel of a guy called Will Kwan a year or so ago. He is a big inspiration for real.
Yep, Courtland's awesome. In addition to being brilliant, he's just a great human.
I'm glad you're here! 👍 Hopefully this community gives you something to think about besides the dreadful CS curriculum. 😅
I feel you, I ended up picking business information systems as a degree instead of CS (Germany has a lot of mixed degrees like that) because I felt I'd rather want to work on applying IT-concepts to provide business value rather than going deep into the theoretical foundations of computer science. Maybe there's some electives that you could do to keep up that passion of yours, in my case there were modules like working on the student-run university app etc.
Nevertheless questioned my studies from time to time, still glad I pursued it in the end because it opens a lot of doors and broadens your perspective of the overall field. Just don't burn out and keep the flame going that drove you to the field in the first place, good luck!
Thank you Fabio
I will make sure to keep the fire going.
have you passed your exams ? :) At the moment I am a student and a small business owner, and I really know how difficult it is to study and work at the same time. Honestly, I am using https://edubirdie.com/cheap-dissertation-writing-services , it saves me a lot of time, that I can spend on my business instead of looking for my dissertation.. what about you ? how are you doing at college?