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Discussion on: How To Learn JavaScript

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conw_y profile image
Jonathan • Edited

Thanks very much, Emma, for this brilliant guide! These look like excellent resources. I've started reading a few of them already, and intend to read more.

I do have a question about degrees, in case you have time to answer.

While I've gotten pretty far from self-education, mentorship and on-the-job experience, I've spotted definite gaps in my knowledge. These gaps always seem to be on either the theoretical or the lower-level side of things – areas such as memory allocation, concurrency and algorithms.

The gaps don't prevent me from doing a great job at what I'm hired for, but I wonder if my career path should, at some point, include thoroughly filling in the gaps.

What's your take on experienced front end developers without a degree going back to study a traditional 3 or 4 year bachelor in computer science or similar?

On the one hand, it seems that degrees are considered expensive, overvalued, deprecated knowledge and overly time-consuming.

On the other hand, I read quotes like this (from the Front End Developer Handbook 2008:

Front-End Engineer
The job title given to a developer who comes from a computer science, engineering, background and is using these skills to work with front-end technologies. This role typically requires a computer science degree and years of software development experience.

(bolding mine)

This seems to imply (at least to me) that career progression, at least in some areas, requires a computer science degree.

What are you thoughts on this?

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emmabostian profile image
Emma Bostian ✨

It definitely DOES NOT require a CS degree :)