Motivation
- Among OECD countries, Canada is the most educated country with the second-highest rate of completion of tertiary education at 66.97% (among 25-34 year-olds, as of 2022) 1
- You are thousands in debt 2
My notes:
Your courses are designed to allow the worst students to pass
1.1. Your classmates don’t care about software development, because:
- they want to get a degree because their parents told them so
- they play videogames and had nothing else going on in their lives so they thought “I’d be pretty good with a computer! Let’s get a CS degree!”
- they are vulnerable to the glamor of GRWM compilations and cozy office jobs that pay well
- ChatGPT. “If code works, good enough.”
1.2. Your classmates celebrate incompetence:
- “Why change it if it works?”
- “This is school, not the real world. I just want to pass.”
- “I don’t need to know it, so I won’t learn it.”
But rightfully so! How can we blame them? Education does not hold its students to a standard of excellence3! You are rewarded for passing, for a good GPA; not experimentation with failure and that’s the end of it. Coursework is just that; work! If this is you, I hope earnestly that you can find a passion in computer science!
You can graduate and be completely incompetent in any job a computer science degree is necessary for
2.1. In fact, I think you SHOULD be completely incompetent if all you’ve done is coursework!
- Software engineering is distinct from computer science
- Theory is eternally relevant, your highly productive web development framework is not
2.2. The application of coursework, and the application of those applications are not explored
- You can script out your discrete math homework to assist your learning
- You can study others’ design and how the specifications and requirements are realized
- You can read about the everlasting squabbles of open-source, build your own apps and fail, and what makes best practices, best practices
2.3. There is no motivation to do anything past “being a programmer”
- Why do we learn programming? Cognitive psychologists, neuroscientists, physicists, engineers, biologists, sociologists, mathematicians, accountants, and data scientists learn programming without a CS degree.
- Anecdotally, many of those without a CS degree are more competent
- If anyone can program, how does our CS degree supplement that?
- What use is a programmer? How do you graduate from a programmer to a developer?
Therefore:
Extra effort, passion, a love of learning is mandatory.
3.1. Successful resumes have in-depth projects that demonstrate a willingness to explore
3.2. Learn by doing whatever you like, so long as it brings out effort
3.3. Appreciate the work of those before you, respect the immensity of the field, utilize the expertise of your peers and mentors
Which means it’s not for everyone. Computer science is hard. ChatGPT can help you produce a GPA but it won’t force you to learn how. So what makes us better software engineers than any other kid with a computer addiction and a 50$ LLM subscription?
4. There’s a lot of noise about the job market being tough right now, isn’t there?