how useful is a computing degree, honestly

DAVEM said:
Lets take an example, I get a group of Computer scientists together and say
"okay I want you to build a system to scan images from the security camera at the front entrace to the building, it needs to detect the faces of the people, and cross reference them against a stored database of employee photos and alert security if they are not in there".
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Sweet, a bit of image processing there! That would be some cool programming to do. I would have to go and fish my uni notes out on that one. :D

It reminds me of my 3rd year project where i had to count cars passing on a stretch of road using a webcam. :D
 
leaskovski said:
Sweet, a bit of image processing there! That would be some cool programming to do. I would have to go and fish my uni notes out on that one. :D

It reminds me of my 3rd year project where i had to count cars passing on a stretch of road using a webcam. :D
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Yeah it's quite a challanging one. I attended a conference at Plymouth and a couple of the talkers where working on this. It was very cool to watch them strip out the flesh first, then detect the face before doing the cross referencing. The error rates for some of the methods (most based on Principle Component Analysis) where lower than 15%, which considering it was a cheapo webcam is very good. One of the teams where looking at real time automated movement of the camera, so if the image isn't good enough to do the recognition zooming into their face more... now that it sweet!
 
rick827 said:
being 3 years behind your job rivals?
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Well I guess it depends on your discipline, but if you get on the right graduate recruitment scheme you'll be further behind in salary terms and career prospects for probably all of about 18 months. In the long term the graduate will 9 times out of 10 leave the non graduate behind in their career by some margin.

BoomAM said:
+ Debts.(for a lot of students).
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This I accept as a stronger argument for a downside of the degree, but this can be offset with a placement year (very good idea IMO for lots of reasons) and I still think if you get the right position you'll offset the monthly payback of debt with increased salary quite quickly.
 
Look, it really depends on what you're doing. My sister for example is doing a PhD on stem cells and bone regrowth with a team of engineers who CAT scan and laser cut the bones.. you cant do that without any academic work past A-levels! When I decided to not do a degree it was because the closest CS degree which involved networks was a cut down CS degree with CCNA bolted on the side. It certainly wasn't because I wasnt capable (A-A-B in computing/maths/physics). If i wanted to do cryptography then sure I'd do PhD but networks=cisco and so that was a good place to start for me.

My point after the babble is do what ever teaches you the most relevant info you can get. If a degree gives you the best knowledge for your end goals then there's no excuse for not doing it
 
21 years software development experience here.

I've seen people with Computer Science degrees come and go, kids with NVQ's, C&G's, PHD's in all manner of subjects ranging from C++ AI and supreme pathfinding routines to guys with a diploma in UI design and development practices and nearly everyone has failed on the first hurdle - common sense.

Gaining a degree from what I've seen in candidates I've employed has shown that they can learn and they retain information. Give them a new language to learn, and new technology to master and they'll go away and come back several days later with an understanding you could dream of.

Ask them to go away and write a procedure that allows multiple VAT codes and calculate the gross profit per VAT code per region and they look at you as if you've asked them to show their backside.

Some people can do it, others can't. It's INCREDIBLE the amount of people I've asked during an interview "So what made you want to be a developer" and the answer is nearly always "Money", "it sounds cool", "it's the future", "I did a few website for a mate".

Introduce this "developer" to deadlines, to specs, to bugs, beta-testing, roll outs, support, enhancements and they literally panic. They have NOT had this training in ANY school.. I get ridiculous 3dimensional drawings (UML's they call them these days!) of little fluffy clouds with arrows pointing to people with a computer, mouse, keyboard, printer and "cell shaded" diamonds with a calligraphic "Yes" and "No" on them. Who the hell teaches this crap these days? Programming isn't an art, it's not about making it look pretty or cram as much power into as few lines as possible while running in a thread within kernal memory. It's about delivering a solution, that works, to customer specification.

As soon as the schools, colleges and universities start teaching this, we might start to get a software industry again.
 
[TW]Fox;10152173 said:
What about someone with 9 years experience and a degree versus someone with 12 years experience?
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For that much experience, and that much time, the degree is negligible.
 
KaHn said:
To Scorza and DaveM, you are wasting your breath, I have had the same arguments with mates who said me going to uni was a waste of 3 years, and that i should have went into an apprenticeship and work my way up.

Now I finished uni and got a job with a good engineering company earning quite a bit more than them and I get "You were lucky to get that job" etc etc

While doing my MSc I had a particular friend tell me that "no one would employ graduate in engineering company with out experience"

I dont speak to this friend much but last time I heard he was still working the crappy mechanics job while trying to get his company to pay for him to do a degree part time.

So after all of his experience in a totally irrelavant field (as ultimatly being a machinist/spanner monkey =! engineer regardless of how many "Gas Engineers" you get nowadays) he will finish his degree 5 maybe 6yr behind me, by this point I would have been chartered with the IMechE or IMarEST etc.

People like to think graduates have it easy then are lucky, but it simply comes down to some jobs are not for everyone.

KaHn
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Well done Kahn, it's nice when you get that first graduate job and you can turn around to those who told you it'd be a waste of time.

You going for chartered status. Not really sure if I'm going to bother (It'd be CMath or CStat for me). I've got around 2 years experiance at the moment, most likely I'll do my PhD instead (or as well as).

For me the problem is the way CS is percieved people generally dont see problems like the face recognition I mentioned as a CS task. This boils down to the terrible Alevel CS courses that don't really give a full overview of what CS is. To many Alevel students here CS and think programming. Really programming is to CS what equations are to physics, you need to know how to work with them, but they are the tool not the subject itself.
 
rick827 said:
Theres a huge difference between what makes you better at a job and what GETS you a job.

I didnt do a degree, I wanted to do networking so I of course did a CCNA, got interested in security and did a CCSP and a lot of personal research around pen testing etc. All of this in my own time while working. Im 22 now and far better at my job than anyone with an IT degree and 1 years experience but if I apply for a job I will get FAR fewer responses than someone with a degree. Thats because your CV is either read by some pen pusher who did a business and IT degree at Durham but tells everyone it was Oxford or by someone in a agency call centre who doesnt know what CCNA means.

The end line:
Degree = jobs
specific industry cert = skills
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Agreed, better to go staright for a CCNA or Microsoft Certification program. And if you'r good blagger just put down that you have a degree on your CV because it very rarely gets checked.
 
How many people that believe they are computer scientists but do not have a degree understand concepts such as MD-Fourier analysis, linear systems, discrete time stochastic modeling, wavelet theory, estimation theory, kalman/partile filtering, Monte-Carlo/Markov models, Gibbs fields, nonlinear signal modeling, Bayesian approaches, dynamic network/ neural networks, evolutionary and genetic approaches.

I had a friend who claimed he was a computer scientist, he was developing some software playing with a database. Yet he didn't even have any notion of what the Big O notation of his sorting algorithm was. He was more concerned with writing "optimised c++"
 
~J~ said:
21 years software development experience here.

I've seen people with Computer Science degrees come and go, kids with NVQ's, C&G's, PHD's in all manner of subjects ranging from C++ AI and supreme pathfinding routines to guys with a diploma in UI design and development practices and nearly everyone has failed on the first hurdle - common sense.

Gaining a degree from what I've seen in candidates I've employed has shown that they can learn and they retain information. Give them a new language to learn, and new technology to master and they'll go away and come back several days later with an understanding you could dream of.

Ask them to go away and write a procedure that allows multiple VAT codes and calculate the gross profit per VAT code per region and they look at you as if you've asked them to show their backside.

Some people can do it, others can't. It's INCREDIBLE the amount of people I've asked during an interview "So what made you want to be a developer" and the answer is nearly always "Money", "it sounds cool", "it's the future", "I did a few website for a mate".

Introduce this "developer" to deadlines, to specs, to bugs, beta-testing, roll outs, support, enhancements and they literally panic. They have NOT had this training in ANY school.. I get ridiculous 3dimensional drawings (UML's they call them these days!) of little fluffy clouds with arrows pointing to people with a computer, mouse, keyboard, printer and "cell shaded" diamonds with a calligraphic "Yes" and "No" on them. Who the hell teaches this crap these days? Programming isn't an art, it's not about making it look pretty or cram as much power into as few lines as possible while running in a thread within kernal memory. It's about delivering a solution, that works, to customer specification.

As soon as the schools, colleges and universities start teaching this, we might start to get a software industry again.
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Thats very true, but you've got to look at it from both sides. Lecturers tend to teach their students from a "you'll need this is you want to do postgraduate study" rather than "you'll need this is you go and work for LogicaCMG".

I must say though some uni's are good a producing "ready to work" graduates. I was very impressed with Salford Uni when I had a look at their course. Not a particularly well known university but it has real strength in CS, and inparticular has good links to industry and does teach CS from a employment prospective.

I completely disagree with your comments on "cramming as much power into as few lines as possible" as actually in lots of domains that is the case. Often I need to do this, make sure that the code is as efficient as is possible. It depends on what you work with, if you on high end HP-UX based servers you want efficient code, in that setup CPU time is money.

Davem
 
magick said:
Agreed, better to go staright for a CCNA or Microsoft Certification program. And if you'r good blagger just put down that you have a degree on your CV because it very rarely gets checked.
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Lol id never do that, anyway it'd be hard to explain how I did a 3 yr degree, ccna, ccsp, ceh, ccsa all in 4 years

Edit: to the above comments, I do networks in industry, you know, for businesses that need networking :rolleyes: Businesses that provide these services want staff with industry certifications and experience on the relative hardware/software. Sure you could tell them how your PhD will let you create routing algoriths thats are 15% more efficient using your proprietry protocols but it'll cost 300% more, and im sure they'll tell you how they gave the job to another company.
 
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~J~ said:
21 years software development experience here.

I've seen people with Computer Science degrees come and go, kids with NVQ's, C&G's, PHD's in all manner of subjects ranging from C++ AI and supreme pathfinding routines to guys with a diploma in UI design and development practices and nearly everyone has failed on the first hurdle - common sense.

Gaining a degree from what I've seen in candidates I've employed has shown that they can learn and they retain information. Give them a new language to learn, and new technology to master and they'll go away and come back several days later with an understanding you could dream of.

Ask them to go away and write a procedure that allows multiple VAT codes and calculate the gross profit per VAT code per region and they look at you as if you've asked them to show their backside.

Some people can do it, others can't. It's INCREDIBLE the amount of people I've asked during an interview "So what made you want to be a developer" and the answer is nearly always "Money", "it sounds cool", "it's the future", "I did a few website for a mate".

Introduce this "developer" to deadlines, to specs, to bugs, beta-testing, roll outs, support, enhancements and they literally panic. They have NOT had this training in ANY school.. I get ridiculous 3dimensional drawings (UML's they call them these days!) of little fluffy clouds with arrows pointing to people with a computer, mouse, keyboard, printer and "cell shaded" diamonds with a calligraphic "Yes" and "No" on them. Who the hell teaches this crap these days? Programming isn't an art, it's not about making it look pretty or cram as much power into as few lines as possible while running in a thread within kernal memory. It's about delivering a solution, that works, to customer specification.

As soon as the schools, colleges and universities start teaching this, we might start to get a software industry again.
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Nail , hit , head. Great post !
 
D.P. said:
How many people that believe they are computer scientists but do not have a degree understand concepts such as MD-Fourier analysis, linear systems, discrete time stochastic modeling, wavelet theory, estimation theory, kalman/partile filtering, Monte-Carlo/Markov models, Gibbs fields, nonlinear signal modeling, Bayesian approaches, dynamic network/ neural networks, evolutionary and genetic approaches.

I had a friend who claimed he was a computer scientist, he was developing some software playing with a database. Yet he didn't even have any notion of what the Big O notation of his sorting algorithm was. He was more concerned with writing "optimised c++"
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I see someone has done some signal processing ;) couldn't agree more:)

EDIT: But how many people with CS degree list knowing wavelet theory for example without really knowing it.
 
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DAVEM said:
I see someone has done some signal processing ;) couldn't agree more:)

EDIT: But how many people with CS degree list knowing wavelet theory for example without really knowing it.
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Damn, im a shamed to admit it, i have heard of that stuff but i cant for the life of me remember any of it now though :(
 
My company only hires people with degrees, I was 21 fresh out of Uni with absolutely no experience of the finance industry. 1 year on exactly to the day, I am on double what some of my friends are on with various non computing degrees and also friends who did not go to uni.

I got a lucky break and I have worked hard, that's half of it. My degree did me no harm whatsoever even though it was from a poor uni. A degree gets you noticed on paper, my personality got me through the interview and into the job.
 
DAVEM said:
Well done Kahn, it's nice when you get that first graduate job and you can turn around to those who told you it'd be a waste of time.

You going for chartered status. Not really sure if I'm going to bother (It'd be CMath or CStat for me). I've got around 2 years experiance at the moment, most likely I'll do my PhD instead (or as well as).
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Yeah Chartered is a deff atm as my company will pay for it all + any courses etc.

I should hopefully have almost enough experience and stuff by the time i come out of my graduate training in 2yr time (will probs have to wait a yr or 2), but by that point I will be on close to 50k a yr. Think I will get it and then move to contracts for a few years and make some money.

My company is pushing for most of its engineers to become chartered.

KaHn
 
Well personally I didn't do a degree and went straight into the industry (to be fair I caught a break and used some people I knew to get my foot in the door). It's been a few years since then but I'm now one of the most senior engineers at an ISP dealing with FTSE100 companies. I have a mate who did a law degree at a decent uni and has just started working at city law firm and he makes a fair bit less than me.

In a few years I might look at doing a degree (work may sponsor me through it) as it might be handy for senior management roles in 10 years time but right now a degree would left me a fair bit worse off.

I should say, each to their own and I have a personality that suits doing industry qualification rather than a 3 year degree. I also do very well in interviews, which is worth learning, to start with you won't get that many interviews so you need to make them good ones. So far, I've been offered every job I've ever been interviewed for, which I'm damn proud of!
 
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