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0 pointslazarljubenovic7y ago0 comments

> You can learn that from a book.

And I did read it from a book, when someone from University introduced me to the book and explained it to me in short firstly so I can grasp it more easily on my own.

I'd never pick a book about B trees on my own (booooring, let's learn LatestFramework.js).

My University professors were mostly a complete disaster but at least the materials we had were good enough. Who wanted to learn had access to knowledge, and for motivation -- at least the grades.

I can't see myself on my own even finding a book about theory and then going through it for 4 months, getting into nitty gritty details just for the kick of it.

There's no obvious benefit at the time of learning it. By the time you can see the benefit on your own, it could be too late.

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scarface747y ago

And I did read it from a book, when someone from University introduced me to the book and explained it to me in short firstly so I can grasp it more easily on my own.

If you had to depend on a teacher to expose you to the books you should read, what about the rest of your career?

I'd never pick a book about B trees on my own (booooring, let's learn LatestFramework.js).

No, but if I needed to know about how to optimize MySQL, I would do research on - how to optimize MySQL.

My University professors were mostly a complete disaster but at least the materials we had were good enough. Who wanted to learn had access to knowledge, and for motivation -- at least the grades.

I doubt that there is a dirth of knowledge between the free information you can get and paid courses online.

I can't see myself on my own even finding a book about theory and then going through it for 4 months, getting into nitty gritty details just for the kick of it. There's no obvious benefit at the time of learning it. By the time you can see the benefit on your own, it could be too late.

There was no obvious benefit from me learning 65C02 assembly language and BASIC in the 6th grade. But I did it anyway. There was no benefit from me spending hours on the comp.lang Usenet groups in college. For any software developer though, there is an obvious benefit from having a deep understanding in marketable technologies - competitiveness in the job market.

lazarljubenovicOP7y ago

> If you had to depend on a teacher to expose you to the books you should read, what about the rest of your career?

It's a kick start. You depend on the school to teach you other basic skills too: letters, numbers. You learn a lot of words from classes, but it doesn't mean you'll stop learning words once you're done with elementary school. You can go on your own after that.

My personal experience with school and university is exposure to a lot of different things. I wasn't forced to learn everything -- I spent more time on things I liked and less time on things I just wanted to get a good grade on.

The system is far from perfect and is flawed in many ways, especially where I live. But I don't think that the idea of formal education itself should suffer because of some flaws; I's rather improve it over ditching it.

scarface747y ago

Since the discussion was about the difference between learning in your bedroom vs a CS degree, I learned in my bedroom when I was in 6th grade, I already had the kickstart.

The rest of my career I got my kickstart from Usenet, podcasts, blogs, Hacker News, coworkers, and necessity.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointslazarljubenovic7y ago0 comments

> You can learn that from a book.

And I did read it from a book, when someone from University introduced me to the book and explained it to me in short firstly so I can grasp it more easily on my own.

I'd never pick a book about B trees on my own (booooring, let's learn LatestFramework.js).

My University professors were mostly a complete disaster but at least the materials we had were good enough. Who wanted to learn had access to knowledge, and for motivation -- at least the grades.

I can't see myself on my own even finding a book about theory and then going through it for 4 months, getting into nitty gritty details just for the kick of it.

There's no obvious benefit at the time of learning it. By the time you can see the benefit on your own, it could be too late.

0 comments

scarface747y ago

And I did read it from a book, when someone from University introduced me to the book and explained it to me in short firstly so I can grasp it more easily on my own.

If you had to depend on a teacher to expose you to the books you should read, what about the rest of your career?

I'd never pick a book about B trees on my own (booooring, let's learn LatestFramework.js).

No, but if I needed to know about how to optimize MySQL, I would do research on - how to optimize MySQL.

My University professors were mostly a complete disaster but at least the materials we had were good enough. Who wanted to learn had access to knowledge, and for motivation -- at least the grades.

I doubt that there is a dirth of knowledge between the free information you can get and paid courses online.

lazarljubenovicOP7y ago

> If you had to depend on a teacher to expose you to the books you should read, what about the rest of your career?

scarface747y ago

Since the discussion was about the difference between learning in your bedroom vs a CS degree, I learned in my bedroom when I was in 6th grade, I already had the kickstart.

The rest of my career I got my kickstart from Usenet, podcasts, blogs, Hacker News, coworkers, and necessity.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse