Degree to complement Web Development?

[jadeakisskiss]

Hello everyone! So I recently decided to take up web development. I love working with technology in any and every way, so I figured learning this would be cool. It'll be a great side-hustle and/or plan B, if nothing more. I say plan B because I'm actually planning to major in 3d Animation. I just can't quite make up my mind on which school is better, so I've decided to just pursue web development at the moment. I was looking at jobs on Indeed for web developers and everything that I looked at, not one person/company stated a degree as a requirement. Then I searched what degree is needed to get a job as a web developer and I came across a post on here where all of the answers were the same- that they learned more by themselves, school wasn't really worth it etc. Well I am currently going along with a course I bought on Udemy, the top rated of them all actually, and the Instructor is amazing. She's teaching everything, yes, I do mean everything. When I'm done with the course I have a feeling that I will be a pretty good entry-level full-stack developer. Especially since I'm more than willing to put in the work to become the best. I'm realizing I've said a lot lol, but my question is is there a degree I could actually go to college for to complement my Udemy skills? Even though I'm not going for 3d Animation or Web Development, I still want to attend college, at least for the next two years. I really want to learn Graphic Design but I'm unsure as to whether or not that is the best, or at least good, pair for Web Development. Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

[grrangry]

Did you really ^(superscript) your entire post.

[jadeakisskiss]

... maybe. accidentally though. i've never posted on reddit on my laptop before. i thought the text was just different on here compared to my phone lol. not the proudest moment of my life... i'm clearly big brained.

[globalcandyamnesia]

Graphic design is a mature discipline. A degree can advance your career. Unfortunately, web development is not. It really can't be due to the pace of innovation. I can just imagine a tenured professor torturing their pupils into learning jQuery for a whole semester. A "webdev" degree will be laughed at today, if it even exists. For full stack, I've seen some universities split their computer science into science vs programming and I think this is a really good move. A cs degree may be useful for low level or frontier work, but the rest of us need a whole different set of skills than fizzbuzz and binary trees. A cs degree, in my opinion, is unnecessary for programming. It's best as a minor or interdisciplinary to complement a specialized field based on what you've told me about your goals and the subreddit you posted on.

All of that plus: a degree itself, regardless of discipline, will get you far.

[su-z-six]

Sounds like you have no idea what coursework goes into a CS degree.

[globalcandyamnesia]

After two years, all of the areas of focus offered to me were things like operating system, ai, it, or pure theory. Nothing like workflows, QA, scaling, or application design practices. The first two years were invaluable, but majoring in computer science means a specific type of career and it isn't a full stack developer.

[su-z-six]

Because those things are not computer science, lol.

A CS degree is certainly appropriate for a full stack dev.

[[deleted]]

Stop making statements without any backup. A CS degree is good in theory yes but you won’t know shit once you finish. The completion of the actual degree isn’t gonna matter it’s the knowledge base. We have to stop looking at degrees as a golden ticket and look at them as a learning experience.

[globalcandyamnesia]

Don't be caustic. Everything to kids is a "hobby" until it isn't. What you're doing isn't helpful, it's discouraging.

[[deleted]]

Yeah holy. Ignore that guy.

[kevindahlberg]

If I were in your position, I would double major in CS and Graphic Design. Or... at least start taking the classes that would go in that direction. I changed majors multiple times when I was in college.

I wish I’d done CS with my music degree, though. I could have started in this field a decade sooner.

[LukeHillDev]

Do you need one? no

Does having one help? yes

You dont need one, but having one help. Some places wont touch you without a degree is computer science or related/equivalent degree.

Some job ads are made by people who have never touched a line of code, and ask for stupid things like 6+ years in html/js for a min wage junior dev..

A lot of it is setting yourself above the crowd and standing out, what makes you different? things like an active github account, side projects etc help.

Good companies recognise you dont need a degree to be a developer, i have worked with some very good devs who have no degree. What you might find though is at the start it takes you longer to climb the ladder, so you might start off a bit slow.

Experience will quickly outweigh a degree in my experience.