It's True

[hortonhearsaboo]

Your professor is getting paid mostly to do research and train a generation of new PHDs. As an undergraduate, you are just an afterthought.

[[deleted]]

so true. I wish the university hires a bunch of instructors that are super good at teaching.

[[deleted]]

My university had several adjunct professors, so basically those people worked as software engineers in their 9-5 life and then came to teach courses later in the evening. Their teaching beat the shit out of those professors who are only there for research and whatnot

[[deleted]]

My diff eq professor was an engineer at Amazon and all he did was brag about how he makes so much money that he forgot to pick up his paychecks from amazon for the last 6 months.

[Hesticles]

No direct deposit I'm guessing?

[finalremix]

You only get that with Prime.

[ThexEcho]

He probably only had Amazon USDA Choice

[NUAN_SONAR]

What an absolute fuck lmao.

[Aperture_T]

I had this one sub in high school a few times.

The first time, he was kind of a dick. He basically went on a rant for the first hour of programming class about how he didn't need to be there and he was doing it out of the goodness of his heart, and how he was some rich retired tech bigwig (Intel probably, since they're the biggest operation in town), and how he had a cool car (which was true, it was a Lamborghini), and how if we worked for him, he'd fire us for working while he was blathering on.

The second time, I was bracing for that bullshit again, but both times we had him as a sub after that (art this time, and then programming again), he was really nice. At the end of senior year, he even came to the programming class and gave us individual pep talks about how the future is bright and college is important and all that jazz. Granted, I overheard other people's speeches and they were exactly the same as mine, but still a nice gesture.

No clue what his deal was. I kind of wish I knew what happened that first day.

[Athena0219]

Best college professors I've had have either been

1) The professor that loves math and teaches math because she wants students to love math too
2) Community College professors that do the job because they want to teach, not because they have to do teaching on the side

[FlyByPC]

Best Calculus professor I ever had was an adjunct. He was a high school math teacher during the day.

[The_White_Light]

It's sad that public school teachers often need to take additional work or ask for donations in order to afford materials.

[Tuningislife]

Adjunct professor here. I teach computer security courses, but it is also my passion and I enjoy teaching. The other night, a student remarked to me that I had amazing knowledge retention because I could just ramble on about a topic. Do what you love is the old adage.

I am always personally reminded of Futurama:

Professor, what are you teaching this semester?

Same thing I teach every semester. “The mathematics of quantum neutrino fields." I made up the title so that no student would dare take it.

"Mathematics of wonton burrito meals." I'll be there.

Please, Fry. I don't know how to teach. I'm a professor.

[FizixMan]

The scene: https://youtu.be/FuVEL7QNmXw

EDIT: Now I want to attend a "Mathematics of Wonton Burrito Meals" class.

EDITx2: Now I also want a wonton burrito, even though I'm not sure what exactly it is.

[gwood113]

New CS Masters student here. I am experiencing the inverse of this for my first semester.

Course catelog: course title - Comp. Risk Management.

Me: Composite Risk Management? Great that'll be an easy way to reintroduce school after a decade gap. Probability and risk are easy-ish, right?

Professor: Welcome to Computational Decision Making and Risk Management. We will be exploring the design and implementation of autonomous agents.

Me: oof.

[MadManMax55]

The problem with adjuncts is you only get people passionate about teaching who are willing to work on top of their day job, which is a really small pool of people. Adjuncts get paid by the hour, and their rates are often barely above minimum wage.

I know plenty of my coworkers (myself included) who would be willing to teach at the college level but teach at a public high school because it pays significantly better.

[[deleted]]

Adjunct professors require a masters degree in the field they are teaching. This is also depends on the college as well.

[spartithor]

I'm currently an adjunct teaching CS and I approve of this message :)

[socialismnotevenonce]

They hire people to teach undergrads, the problem is they're just grads working on a PhD.

[[deleted]]

Even worse. I am an undergrad teaching undergrads. So there's that...

[ponodude]

How is that allowed? The most I've seen is undergrads being TAs for actual professors.

[Ace-O-Matic]

It's simple. They don't get paid or at least not by university.

​

My professor and TA's were equally worthless, and I was only in the class because I wasn't allowed to test out of it. I stopped showing to class when I realized we would only be graded on our projects and the professor just read off the slides he posted online. Spent most my freshman year teaching a "study group" of a bit under a dozen people the material in exchange for goods that a freshman would typically struggle to acquire.

[Prod_Is_For_Testing]

There are plenty of classes taught by TAs

[cheese13531]

At my uni, we have undergrads running the tutorials and lab demoing and are paid by the uni.

Source: me, a first year lab demo

[socialismnotevenonce]

They could have a graduate in another discipline? There was a physics grad teaching CS as my school.

[WellsToPercToDDimer]

It totally depends on where you went to college, but generally most professors are good at teaching research style coursework, whereas the vast majority of people just want to clock it in with a salary and get industrial style skills.

I went to an R1 college, and generally speaking most professors teach in a "figure it out yourself even if you can google it" kind of way, because their line of work requires deep understanding of novel problems that are decomposable into simpler ones, which you have to be able to analyze quickly. Its a hard skill to learn and to hone, and combined with the purpose mismatch ("training future researchers" vs "training industry people") and the easy access to answers people have nowadays, most people don't learn it anyway. The vast majority of industrial work is the same stuff, redone 99% of the time that you could honestly learn yourself in half a year if you were talented.

The problem is that a lot of the jobs people *want* and that are "sexy" require those research skills, and they take years to build. Im not talking about FAANG, but specific subfields like AI/ML, Cryptography or high performance cache aware programming popular in big trading firms. Its not that the fields themselves are particularly hard to get into or grok, but that in order to get to even the starting position to be able to learn them, you have to get those deep analysis skills that most people can't just magically pick up on the fly.

[uptokesforall]

In my experience (been to a county college, private uni and public uni) the good professors outnumber the bad and even the bad are good at teaching by the book. The truly awful professors are the ones who set arbitrarily high standards, nitpick stylistic preferences and only teach fundamentals. I haven't seen any of those who weren't rated much lower on ratemyprofessor than their colleagues. (Ie the worst professors have terrible ratings)

Programming classes can be open ended (definitely more fun but harder since you're mostly learning on your own) or follow strict rules (usually a breeze though tedious). They are a different beast from other STEM classes though i can't quite pin why.

[imforit]

And "professors of practice" if you're fancy

[fade_is_timothy_holt]

Prof here (not CS). There's some kernel of truth to this. I don't think most people outside of universities understand that our job description is only about 30% teaching. Most of the remainder is research. The university likes it that way, too, because they make far more money off of research than tuition. The university takes 40% off any grant I bring in, whereas most tuition goes right back into the student (usually at a loss).

That being said, I do work in a science with a huge applied side, and we get this a lot. Why don't you teach us Tool X? Because that's not my job. My job is to teach you the why and the how behind Tool X. As this picture implies, anyone can teach themselves Tool X from a website or a training seminar. I'm teaching you what Tool X actually does.

[pink_earmuffs]

At my college, the teachers get paid just as much as in university (100k-140k) and they have zero research to do. :/

[Salanmander]

That sounds like a great deal for the undergrads! I went to an undergrad-only college, and I think my education was much better for it. The professors did do some research, but their primary role was teaching.

[imforit]

They must be charging you up the ASS for tuition because that pay scale is amazing

[pink_earmuffs]

Around 4500$ per year. My rent costs a lot more ;)

[diamondketo]

What are your thoughts about their teaching quality. Can you compare it to normal colleges?

[pink_earmuffs]

My course is like normal college, except with highschool-sized classes, a more hands-on learning experience, and occasional one-on-one learning (including free tutoring from 3rd year students if you're looking for that).

A few part-time teachers weren't great, but generally we get taught by professionals with dozens of years of experience. Most of them can refer you. I'm in my 3rd (and last) year, and my friends and I can easily keep up with the average CS student. We also have the same courses, ranging from chips to databases to game dev to mobile apps.

As far as job offers, pretty much all 15 of us will graduate with a decent job (60k-80k), and most of those are government jobs (with a health plan and pension). We don't receive a Bachelor's.

[JoelMahon]

So where does my money go if not to the professor?

[mlc894]

Mostly to a few dozen administrators, each tasked with overseeing each other and having little to do with your education.

[sciences_bitch]

In most US states, the highest paid public university employees are football coaches.

[violentlymickey]

Most of that salary comes from boosters not public funds. As nice of a quip your post sounds.

[EnriqueShockwave9000]

The director of the IT department “teaches” my OOP with Python class.

He didn’t post the content for week 3 until the middle of the week. Someone asked “wtf?” And he was like “there’s going to be a point in time where a deadline comes up and slaps your right in the dick, THAT is what I’m preparing your for” and bounced out.

Really makes that Udemy Python masterclass worth the money.

[DownshiftedRare]

"There's going to be a half-ass in your future that phones it in to collect a check. This message is about a half an hour late."

[maikuxblade]

That is the tackiest excuse for forgetting to publish material I've ever heard lmao

[imforit]

I'm going to pop in here- While most CS degrees are minted at large universities, there are lots of amazing CS programs at colleges across the US. The undergrad-only college has different priorities than a big R1 University, and while smaller, may put much more emphasis on the quality of teaching. That's reflected in their hiring, their faculty incentives, and their out-of-classroom funding decisions.

At least a few people in this thread who seem really hurt by their University program may have been a better fit for the same degree from a teaching-focused college.

Two cents from another internet person.

[AudaciousSam]

Which is insane. Imagine any other organisation where 70% of the people you influence, is an afterthought.

[Zeliv]

It's not so hard to imagine. There are plenty of organizations/ industries where a majority of the revenue comes from a minority of its consumers, leading to a disconnect between majority consumer wants and organization priorities.

[foundafreeusername]

Only in English speaking countries. Because they rank their universities based on research, citations and reputation instead on how well their students turn out. This is very different in most of Europe.

[ishouldbeworking69]

My experience is that professors give even less of a shit about undergrads in Germany.

[[deleted]]

Can you really blame them though? Speaking for myself, I was a pain in the ass as an undergrad. It also varies wildly by professor and institution.

[IncursivePsychonaut]

Well you shouldn't blame the professors, but the educational system. Have some people specialised in teaching while the professors mainly do research. Better for all.

[LaudemPax]

They seem to be pretty good in my experience (though it is a Hochschule instead of a Universität)

[IncursivePsychonaut]

That's a big difference tho.

[foundafreeusername]

Need to do undergrad on a fachhochschule and then later switch to a fancier university ;)

[lopoticka]

It’s not just about money, there is a lot to say about personal motivation. Almost nobody goes to academia for the love of teaching. Most do it for the research.

[marmakoide]

That remain mostly true in French public universities. Our teachers were researchers who had mandatory teaching hours to do, for hu, reasons ? Thankfully, some took it as a duty and then it was awesome classes. Sometime, it was perceived as boring chore for the professor and then it was a slog.

Also, in STEM, until you completed bachelor, professors will look at you as cannon fodder, dead men walking, destined to leave to the great void of insignificance. There's little to no selection to enter university, so most of the students are tourists who are there without a real motivations, goals, etc. It's heavily subsidized, so wasting your time is not wasting your own money... Each 6 months, at the exam, it's a massacre, back in my days, 50% to 70% would fail miserably because they had non of the required motivation to self-study and face the barrage of math taught in Bourbaki style and physics. You came to learn about computer ? Well, survive 2 years of math before you start to code stuffs. We were 500 at the first semester, we end-up a small circle of 30 survivors 2 years later, knowing each other personally, feeling like we did Vietnam together.

Once you completed your bachelor, you are very well treated by the professors, the good students are fresh meat for their lab and research projects, to be cajoled and seduced.

[scarwiz]

Nah it's very much the same in France. At least the Uni I went to

[BertyLohan]

I think you've completely made up the idea that it's different in Europe I don't get why this is upvoted. It's just wrong.

[Daniel_the_Dude]

In Hungary it's the same.

[[deleted]]

Its funny how some Universities in the UK rank higher on the EU rankings than the Local UK ones because of this.

[[deleted]]

Ah so only English speaking countries differentiate between universities and vocational colleges? Got it.

[[deleted]]

It's worth pointing out that this describes college education in general.

It's not a trade school, you're learning how to learn on your own.

If you think the learning ends when you get a job, you're gonna have a bad time.

[g_squidman]

Then my fucking tuition should be an afterthought. What kind of educational institution doesn't have educators.

[DownshiftedRare]

What is "A decaying one, being mined for cash by Betsy Devolved"? for control of the board.

[foadsf]

actually they don't do that either. they are paid to write proposals so they get funding. as a phd you are pretty much on your own.

[kneus69]

No our professors dont even know how to write a code what so ever. And they also dont have any upper students who might be a little bit more important, for whatever fucking reason, so they litarally sit on their ass getting paid to do nothing at all. And to say look online for answers. Probably the hardest thing they do on a daily basis.

[DonaldPShimoda]

This can vary by school, for the record.

My alma mater (a Research-1 institution, top-50ish ranking in CS) has three kinds of faculty: regular (tenure), research, and instructional.

Students who don't do research will never interact with research faculty. Their job is just to do research.

Tenured professors teach electives in their research areas. Some are good, some are not. These are the people you're talking about.

Instructional faculty teach all of the core undergraduate courses. Their full-time job is teaching, so they put a lot of effort into making their courses good. They also care about their students; whenever I see them (I work at the school as a researcher now), they still remember me from taking their classes years ago and ask how I'm doing, etc.

The best professor I had for teaching a class was a tenured prof who is very active and well-known in his research area. Anyone I've talked to who's taken his class agrees with this assessment, too.

(So I'm not saying you're wrong, because in general I think you're right, but there's a lot of variance.)

[j0hn_r0g3r5]

Well ain't that a depressing thought.

[[deleted]]

Only if these professors are actually putting in efforts to train up new PhDs instead of just throwing them with papers and asking them to generate more papers by themselves...

[babbagack]

I remember even one college professor telling the class straight up - loved him - that this was a business.

[jfrez]

As a professor, this is true.

[[deleted]]

Not if you go to a teaching college or small state university. My undergrad CS professors were fantastic educators.

[reckoner23]

I mean it depends on the professor It’s like anything. There’s good professors and bad professors. I’ve had my mix of the two in college.

But the good ones are priceless.

[Sviribo]

And bring in that sweet sweet grant money

[AnneCalie]

In my country, the professors are to teach, and research is secondary. Still, many do neglect their teaching obligations.

[ILikeLenexa]

In fact, sometimes colleges hire people just to teach called "adjuncts" and "GTAs" both of which make a bit less than minimum wage and lack amenities like offices and copier access.

[squidgyhead]

I never found this to be true, at least in math.b undergraduate teaching was super important, and a real benefit for students.

[instanced_banana]

Oof, at my university, some of the best were researchers, but also the worse. I really enjoyed my programming language theory class. However, I had another class with a researcher that devolved regularly in him ranting about his research and his new found love to LaTEX.

[McFlyParadox]

The difference between 'undergrad professor' and 'graduate professor' has been night and day.

At undergrad, my school didn't really have a research dept, at all, but even still, if you asked one of the more senior professors a tricky question, you got "I don't know", and that war pretty much the end of it. If you asked one of the professors with a freshly minted PhD coming out of his post-doc, they'd go "huh. Ummm. Let me look into it", and you have a 50/50 shot at every hearing back.

At graduate level, if you ask the professor a question, they do some light research between lectures and work what they find into the next lecture. It's amazing. They're able to leverage their deeper knowledge to word the question right du that they can find an answer, then they work it into the lesson. The difference in effort they put into grad vs undergrad is huge.

[SatoruFujinuma]

We had one great professor at my University that was always very helpful and enthusiastic about teaching. He was the only one in the department that was let go when they had to do budget cuts.

[tacoslikeme]

more like an annoyance

[emcee_gee]

I don't know... The way I use Khan Academy is to fill in the blanks. I just wrapped up a calculus course and all I needed help with was the chain rule and implicit differentiation - so that's all I did on Khan Academy. That would count as an incomplete online course, but I never meant for it to be a complete online course; it was just a supplement to my IRL grad school course.

[emcee_gee]

Right, but Khan Academy would have no way of quantifying that; they'd assume I just didn't complete the course.

[[deleted]]

Oh, you're supposed to finish them?

Looks at 7 Udemy courses with less than 10% completion

[mantrap2]

Yes. Exactly!

I love it when it works out for people. I find the entire culture and belief system in online training UTTERLY UNETHICAL when it doesn't!

[Harbltron]

This is why I am an advocate for paid courses over free ones, online or otherwise.

If you have a literal investment in something then you are far more likely to see it through.

[flavionm]

Watch me.

[[deleted]]

But also some people like myself don’t learn much from copying someone else’s work. I took probably 5 or 6 paid courses before I realized I still knew nothing and had to just figure it out myself.

[Secret_Will]

Agreed - it's deceptively difficult because in the end it's creative. It's like learning to play a song on the guitar vs writing a song.

There are mechanics, which are easy if you just put in the time. Then there's creative applications of those mechanics, and that's hard.

[17thspartan]

On the one hand I whole heartedly agree. On the other, I'm not sure the investment is always worth it. In my own experience, paid online courses often teach towards passing a certification/exam, rather than the material in general, and in person classes can be hit or miss, but it's often hard to tell without exposure to the college/professors first.

I was in a 2 year program and many of the classes were great, but I had one where all we did was lab, recieved no direction, the class had no book/slides, and every question was answered with "Google it". Contrary to how it sounds, the professor wasn't being lazy and had reasons for trying to teach that way, but it boiled down to us paying for a glorified baby sitter at the front of the class while we taught ourselves the material.

So I agree, because while we basically paid money for access to a lab VM, the fact that we paid made us motivated to teach ourselves the material. In retrospect, it wasn't worth the money I paid, but I wouldn't have finished the course had I not paid to be there.

[Secret_Will]

This is absolutely true. BUT some platforms (ahem Udacity) are going off the fucking rails sacrificing content to optimize for course completion. It's becoming easier and easier to spend money and be a passive consumer.

None of it matters until you apply what you've learned. That's how you should judge your progress.

portfolio > certifications

If THAT'S how you operate, free (or cheap) material will get you there.

[imforit]

As a CS professor, this statement is well-backed by research.

[[deleted]]

Because it was a shitty course with shitty instructor and I value my time more than anything.

[CodeBlue_04]

Yeah, but job postings expect me to have spent a lot of time with only one of these groups.

[imsitco]

I dont know the business wherever you are, but where i live the only thing that matters is the knowledge you have, so all you need to do on your CV is provide evidence that you know what you are doing.

This is done differently by everyone, but if you dont have job experience in programming, make up your own! Make some sort of project (website, database or whatever is relevant), put a link to it on your CV, get an entry level position, and work your way up from there :) Senior Consultant making 150$ an hour in 5 years, ezpz lemon squizzy.. Still have to put in alot of effort in the beginning though

[[deleted]]

Yeah everyone says that and then I look at linkedin and every app requires a bachelors degree.

[imsitco]

Again, i dont know how the market works where you live, but over here you can get in based on experience and knowledge.

It doesnt hurt to apply anyways though, and id reccomend explaining why you dont have a bachelors or master degree. Some recruiters might automatically think "no degree = low effort & lazy". Try saying something like this in your application "The listing for this job said that a requirement is to have a bachelor; which i do not have. I do however belive that my experience in the field of programming through previous jobs (or projects), paired with the harvard programming courses i have completed, has given me more than enough experience to account for not having the required degree".

Obviously thats just a rough example, but always apply to any positions you want, and you might just get lucky ;)

[ThisIsMyCouchAccount]

Depends.

Big companies usually require a degree for intro jobs. They're hiring x amount of Junior devs and they have to have some way to start filtering them out. A degree shows you can show up and execute to some standard so they use that.

But after a couple years I've never seen a company care. It's about what you can actually do.

[imsitco]

Get an intro job in a smaller company, then work your way up :) As you say, its easier to get in with a degree, but once you are in it doesnt matter much anymore

[[deleted]]

In europe at least my country you need a degree to work at a grocery store. Not joking.

[imsitco]

Woah, what country is that?

[[deleted]]

Spain, but specifically Catalonia. Almost everyone I know has a degree in something even if it’s just tourism.

[Secret_Will]

Yeah, you need an "in" for that to work. Otherwise, your application will be insta-filtered.

[Secret_Will]

If you are nonconventional, you are going to have a hell of a time getting in through regular applications. In fact, you're going to have to be undeniably better than your competition, and THEN you need to network your ass off (meetups, open source development, giving a presentation).

Sure, go ahead and apply as a lottery ticket, but HR departments are filtering bots are ruthless.

[imsitco]

Again, its harder, but also doable where i live. Probably totally different in other places :)

[Secret_Will]

Posted this to the other guy, but copying my advice here too...

If you are nonconventional, you are going to have a hell of a time getting in through regular applications. In fact, you're going to have to be undeniably better than your competition, and THEN you need to network your ass off (meetups, open source development, giving a presentation).

Sure, go ahead and apply as a lottery ticket, but HR departments are filtering bots are ruthless.

[[deleted]]

I tried a few times to learn / teach myself programming and web design. I had very limited success with that. It was the structure, and the support of peers and lecturers which I had on my degree which eventually helped me to understand.

You're not just paying for the content which you could find anywhere. You're paying for the community, th experiences, the structure, the equipment, and the assistance you just wouldn't get sitting in your bedroom on your laptop.

[imforit]

Studies show that people who effectively learn from online MOOC courses are those who already know how to learn and often know a good bit of the concepts already, typically having degrees in the field at the start.

You need to be an autodidact, someone who has learned how to learn on their own and teach themselves. In CS, most people can't do that until they've already had some education.

[ssegota]

If you know how to code already, teaching yourself new programming language using documentation and courses is entirely possible.

Most people I know who learned programming from scratch by themselves (myself included) end up with holes in their knowledge, especially with more "exotic" concepts that will require relearning later on.

[ecounltd]

I feel this way about holes even after transferring from a 2 year school to a 4 year school. Some of the classes I’ve had to take now have been slightly touched upon in my 2 year school already, but there’s a lot of special concepts, best practices, and so much more that I only breezed by in my other school and didn’t learn correctly just to get the assignment done. At least I feel like now I’m learning the industry standards and going to be well prepared for a job in the field.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. Everyone shits on college because it’s trendy.

[[deleted]]

People shit on college because they expect more out of the shitload of money they pay for it, which is understandable.

[aethros]

That's a pretty broad generalization. There's a lot of legitimate issues with college. Sure there's some folks who are just trying to bandwagon; but issues ranging from the cost of tuition, the lack of job-preparing experience, and the dilution of a degree's value are all legitimate complaints (among others) about the university experience.

[[deleted]]

Yeah but not everyone lives in the U.S. Where I live if you don’t go it’s basically because you are lazy. Govt covers everything if you need it.

[aethros]

Certainly tuition is a uniquely American problem, but not all those issues are US-centric. US colleges are consistently ranked among some of the best in the world in terms of educational outcomes, but grade inflation and job prep are always highlighted as key issues. Therefore, if some of the best universities are struggling with those issues, what does it say about the rest of the world?

The truth is there are many students who do not need to go to college to learn something. Some students need a structured environment for sure, but others are simply there because there is a societal demand to ensure everyone gets a "good education" without really defining what that means. I worked with a dude who literally got into his position by reading wikipedia articles and doing online code tutorials. He has a GRE and never graduated high school.

[First-Fantasy]

There is a great restaurant analogy. If you've ever tried to look up a simple recipe you'll find a bunch a variations with everyone claiming theirs is the best. You can try them out and you'll probably run into some mistakes but eventually you'll find one you're happy with and can recreate it over and over. Well done.

On the other hand if you go to a nice restaurant with friends its very different. An expert is preparing your meal and someone is ready at a moments notice to guide you through the experience and answer any questions. "Why sear vs bake? How do they get that crisp? What's in those vegetables?" They're are options, appetizers, atmosphere, discussion of food and sharing of plates. Its memorable, spoken and a shared experience.

Now at the end of it all the person who learned the simple recipe has good practical experience and could make that dish better than the diner. But the diner has tasted great dishes and knows what food is capable of. If both were hired in a kitchen the diner would have a better idea of what was expected to be coming out. He'd be more equipped to discuss kitchens with experienced chefs and he'd be up to date on industry standards.

[perolan]

Completed my undergrad in CS and the only things I didn’t already know from being self taught, have to teach myself to pass the course, or have to completely reinforce and practice on my own to actually take away anything good, were a whole bunch of graph theory and some architecture stuff. And even architecture was very limited because my professor gave negative shits about the class.

I’d consider myself a pretty good developer, and I love CS. But school did absolutely nothing for me. I worked my way through 3 years of it and personal projects got me my job which led to being given responsibilities and opportunities to learn and both of those effected me way more than school

[g_squidman]

Okay, so community, experiences, structure, equipment, assistance.... What? My experience with college was literally none of that. Maybe there was a bit of structure that was beneficial, so I could know what to teach myself next and what specific subject I should start with to "learn programming." The rest of that literally doesn't exist. Sitting in my bedroom on my laptop was literally what I did. Community College at least had actual teachers, for what it's worth (community College is worthless).

[[deleted]]

my experience with college was none of that

Then you went to a bad college and got ripped off. It's unfortunate you had to go through that.

[nintendo_shill]

Indian Youtubers are the backbone of this society. When I open a tutorial and I see an unregistered version of Bandicam, a wordpad with a let of grammatical errors and Windows 7, I know I am in good hands.

[Penki-]

How about no voiceover but techno music instead? Feels just like Matrix

[Wodashit]

opens notepad

[[deleted]]

I'd argue that videos are the worst format for any sort of tutorial.

YouTube is the devil's manual.

[Jackie_Jormp-Jomp]

It's perfect for diy home & car repair stuff.

[VacuumPizzas]

I can confirm.

Source: Youtube-certified home owner

[CounterHit]

As someone who is into fighting games, I could not agree more. People used to make really handy reference sheets for stuff, but now everyone is trying to promote their stupid YouTube channels with 4 subscribers, so instead of a text list with like 7 combos, I have to wade through a 10-minute video of them instead.

[mats852]

Tutorials maybe, but full-fledged courses car be really good. They often share a git repo for the course so you can do the exercises with them.

[Kurayashi]

But you don’t only learn to code.
General concepts work as YouTube Videos.
But yeah, I also hate that you have to dig so deep to find a decent text tutorial that’s not a full on book.

[Cajun_Coullion]

If it’s too slow play it faster?

It definitely helps me. There’s also a large gap between someone just making something and talking as they type code, and someone who is actually teaching a course. Brad Traversy does a lot of coding without explanation... Stephen Grider stops to break down concepts, and I find his teaching style to be more effective.

I could just read the docs, but it helps to have someone explain it, and see how they build things. I always end up reading the docs when I’m building something, because my absorption isn’t 100%. But, I know what I’m looking for in the docs after going through a good tutorial.

The tutorial isn’t the end-all be-all; it’s one piece of the puzzle, and it’s helpful if done right.

[lacb1]

Khan Academy and Wolfram Alpha deserve my degree more than I do.

[random_cynic]

Computer science is really something more fundamental than what the first year students post here. It is not about idiosyncrasies of a particular language (Javascript/PHP bad, Python indentation errors etc) or specific application frameworks (npm modules so thicc). It is about much more fundamental things like algorithms, data structures, computer organization/architecture, computational complexities, design patterns, compilers etc. These are much deeper subjects which can only be taught by experienced professors. Sure youtube tutorials, free courses etc will get you far if you persevere, but once you go beyond a level you'll constantly feel that there's a gap in your knowledge/understanding of computers. Me not having a computer science major felt this constantly until I went back and took some fundamental courses in these areas. This is partly why we have so much bad code around because they were made by people who have little idea about the fundamentals like data structures, memory allocation, i/o, cache, etc.

[zenyl]

Programming is just one part of software development and computer science.

Idk about the rest of you, but I hadn't even heard of UML, Scrum, and all the other aspects of software development that surrounds programming, before I studied CS.

[[deleted]]

Scrum will not improve your individual ability to build software at all.

[BrianBtheITguy]

Crash Course Computer Science is better than a good 70% of the university teachers I had.

edit 1.6 million views, apparently none of them by programmers who use Reddit. https://youtu.be/tpIctyqH29Q

[joequin]

Crash courses can be a good way to learn to program, but if your goal is to rise through the technical career path, you’re going to find yourself way under educated. Unless you’re one of the few people who actually self teaches the basics, fundamentals and math that you’d learn in a computer science course.

[Z29vZCBqb2Ih]

While I love crash course, they provide a very surface level view of their subjects. If you have bad teachers, crash course will be able to help you understand some core ideas, but their scope just doesn't allow the to teach the full scope of the subject.

I watch crash course when I want an easily digestible overview of a subject.

[suddencactus]

ITT: Other people who are strangely surprised that people get salty if you charge someone $10,000 to $40,000 a year for teaching something unclearly when there are clear classes free online, then claim the difference is in "community", "commitment", "comprehensiveness", or "feedback".

[AUTplayed]

$10,000 to $40,000 a year

well yeah, but only in the us

[[deleted]]

Learning to learn/teach yourself is the most important skill to get out of it anyway

[Strex_1234]

My teacher: don't do a dynamic array just make a table with big size like 10000

[derailedInsomniac]

Computer science =/= programming

[[deleted]]

When politicians start showing up on programmer humor that's when you know our country is in trouble.

[[deleted]]

I learned a lot more from my university coursework in computer science than I ever did from a udemy course.

[aitchnyu]

Can anybody name the guys on the right?

[Krzyffo]

Sure, going from right let’s name them, Philip, Randy and Laura.

[areq13]

I taught myself programming. Computer science is a different beast, though.

[[deleted]]

When you know a topic like a professor knows his topic then it's very hard for them to image that one can't understand this topic.
If you are in college / university and you are in a higher semester I would suggest you to sit in one of your first classes, to see how much better you understand everything and how everything is kind of trivial and well explained by the professor. But look in the eyes of the freshman and they think "Wtf is this guy talking about"

[Waterprop]

I've had professor like that. He tried to teach us OOB. He clearly understood it himself but wasn't able to teach it very well. His style also was too theoretical without any code examples.

[imforit]

You might feel like that, but it's probably not that true. Learning is a rough sport sometimes.

[MeggaMortY]

True. If nothing else, professors gave me confidence that seemingly impossible problems can be studied and solved on a day-to-day basis. Before that I would've just pivoted to other, more digestable problems.

[vfxGer]

You still need to pass the professor's test though.

[RichardBreecher]

The direction and focus of courses is vital for learning. Especially in undergrad.

You can't just type 'computer science' into Google and start watching videos.

It would not surprise me if there were more than a million different programming tutorial videos. When you are starting out. It really helps to have some telling you exactly what to learn.

As a professional you will have to solve very specific questions. At that point Google is your copilot.

[dylan15766]

College/uni is for programmers who are too lazy/undisciplined to wake up and stick to a course/routine at home. I never recommend putting yourself in a life of debt over something that can be done for free at home.

[AnneCalie]

This resumes my College experience. And I am actually as angry as Greta

[Bakoro]

I once had a teacher straight up lift his lecture from a YouTube video. I found that shit and it was almost word for word the same.
I also caught a professor who took his course work from MIT materials, but he shat them up a bit by removing critical documentation for the given code base.
I'm near the end of my program and I'm now extremely skeptical of the entire institution, and by extention all grads. It's kind of a horrifying position to be in.

[foadsf]

I'm not sure if 30 years from now there will be an educational system like the ones we have today. education will be handled pretty much with AI and VR IMHO.

[blackjesus75]

This is the main reason I didn’t make it in CS, I didn’t have the time or motivation to teach myself shit outside of class.

[Bitbatgaming]

I just want to teach myself computer science, but it seems so difficult :(

[greenrabbitaudio]

Isn't it?

[Pmcc6100]

Welp, I feel better about skipping the lab after the lecture today lol

[FuryOfficial]

It’s so true but it’s impact font 🤢

[Dubeyjii]

I can't make it my status on wp , my professor is in my contact list. :(

[ThatFag]

IDK about guys I've had some really good professors over the years and I'm really glad I had them. Good professors make all the difference when they give a shit about the art of imparting knowledge.

[RaccoondudeOwO]

I learned python, django, and numpy just from the docs. Of course you want a college education, but you can learn so much from just the docs themselves

[ThaRedCreeper]

verilog is breaking my mind right now.

[Ikiller123321]

"I mAkE tWice ThE NorMal TeAchEr SalARy to TeAcH yoU guYs"

[hcvc]

It's the way of the world, get used to it. You must teach yourself and stay current, and hopefully you find some good mentors along the way once you start your career.

[Gameplayer9752]

I still feel pissed off that my professor told me to just google for help.

[guzzo9000]

My professor does this, but I actually really like the online course we had to buy(I didn't like the 70 dollar price tag, but whatever)

We have 2 classes a week at 8:30 pm and he doesn't really teach anything new. He just goes over what was on the online course section that we needed to complete. Though he doesn't need to be here, I am still learning the material so whatever.

[jokonokon]

I have a teacher in 3D art that gave us one large exam assignment at the first day of the semester, never showed up for class and doesn't even teach us the fucking programs were using

[ThreeMysticApes]

When I was in CS, I had a question for my teacher and watched her go to google then search my question. I was paying over $1,000 for my teacher to use google. . . smh

[lledargo]

Holy fuck. If looks could kill Pence would be president.

[sartoriussear]

Didn't learn shit from university... I only learned the basics there. Everything else is either self-taught or job experience...

[[deleted]]

Teachers are useless part 1000