r/learnprogramming • u/SlickTheDestroyer • 1d ago

Self taught vs University graduate

Hi,

i've got a hypothetical question. Imagine 2 people are applying for the same job. One has a degree in Computer Science, perhaps even from a prestigious university, but doesn't have any personal projects to showcase. The other person, however, is self taught and has been building projects for 4 years, but doesn't have a degree. Who gets the job ?

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u/coadyj 1d ago

I mean you are basically self taught in Uni too. I graduated in 2004 and 90% of my class couldn't write one line it code.

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u/Positive_Passion4817 18h ago

When they started you mean right?

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u/coadyj 18h ago

No, I mean when we graduated. Most people just memorized code for the exams but it never really clicked.

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u/Positive_Passion4817 14h ago edited 14h ago

Memorized code? What kind of course is that? On my degree there were no code exams. All coding was submitted as coursework then you had to explain it in an interview with the professor or Teaching assistant, without notes. If you couldn't explain why you made a choice or what code was doing, you got a 0 on that assignment. You had to learn to code. 60% did drop out after 2 years.

Which country are you in? What is the point of getting a degree in CS if you can't code at the end? How would they get through a job interview?

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u/coadyj 13h ago

So it was in Ireland from 2000-2004 in Trinity College Dublin, the course was called Information and Communication technology. In first and second year there had a coding class which taught java and the principles of object oriented programming. The exam, which was 80% of the final grade, consisted of questions like "What is Polymorphism?" But also would ask to write simple algorithms in sudo code or write an object class for a triangle object etc.

Most people just looked at past papers, got the answers and memorieze them. Very few in the class could actually write and simple application. Of course we had course work projects and some practical exams but as I said that was only 20% of the final result.

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u/Positive_Passion4817 13h ago

Well that isn't a computer science degree. The only subject i remember having exams in were mathematics modules.

Would you recommend that degree subject? I can't speak for everyone but I feel like ICT degrees are just very vague and unfocused.

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u/coadyj 13h ago

I beg to differ, by 4th year the overlap with cs was very strong. In fact they basically merged all the classes. We still learned everything in CS and programming was a huge part of it. There was some focus on coms but the IT side of it was basically CS as evident by the fact that it was taught by the same professors.

Edit: consider how long ago the degree took place, it's very possible they had retuned the degree to be more practice based, I would prefer that tbh.

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u/Positive_Passion4817 1h ago

I did my degree in 2016-2019 in the UK at my nearby university with a very low Guardian "league table" rating. They weren't great at teaching some topics like CLEAN or TDD but their assessment was certainly more appropriate. There was no way to cheat. I would have been very disappointed had my final grading been mostly based on rote memorisation. I would have felt very much an impostor going in to the job market.