Subj : Re: New to this
To   : boraxman
From : Adept
Date : Tue Apr 22 2025 09:45 pm

 bo> Same with programming, I learned it myself, and see people with degrees
 bo> who struggle to do what I taught myself.  Degrees are overrated.

I've viewed degrees as minimums.

E.g., a high school degree isn't a guarantee that someone is competent; it's just proof that you were able to sit through classes through a certain age, and that reduces some of the risk people would take in hiring someone.

And same with a college education, except that there's a _little_ more on what people would have had to have learned in order to make it through.

And, so, a degree isn't a requirement for being good at programming; it's just that it's a way of easily dismissing a group of people that will be 90%+ people with little to no programming skills.

So the degree becomes important. Not because of the skills, but because it's a sieve for people doing hiring decisions.

That said, I _did_ get a lot out of my master's program, and I certainly left it knowing more than I did going into it. Even though, going into it, I was already plenty techy, if worse at programming.

Obviously, if people are making something on their own, degrees are only useful for the information gained, or if the degree lends some level of prestige that can be used for marketing purposes.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A48 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Storm BBS (21:2/108)

.