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Discussion on: Is a Computer Science Degree Worth It?

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gazsiadam profile image
Adam Gazsi

You received your CS diploma after 1 and a half years. That is interesting compared to what kind of system we have in Romania. The university program that we have here takes either 3 or 4 years - this is only for the bachelor degree. In addition, you can continue and get your master degree in 2 years and after that PhD takes an additional 3 years. From this point of view, what you have in the USA seems very short. I am not sure how detailed you can learn CS in such a short time.

I started working 5 years ago when I was a fresh graduate. I admit, I started by participating in an internship after which I got employed by the same company that organized the internship.
My impressions where the same as yours. Not much I learned at the faculty were I able to use at the internship or in the first few months after getting employed.

Here's my opinion after working for 5 years and having the "Senior developer" in my job title: at university you learn the basics, which helps you understand concepts in CS. How threads are scheduled, networking (TCP, UDP), OOP, how microservices work, what it takes to program in Assembly 8086, what are the common patterns, etc. At first I said that these things don't seem to be very useful, but man I was wrong. If you are ambitious (but rubbish - Top Gear fan here) you will be able to connect what you do daily at your job with what you have learned at university. This is one of the things junior developers lack (beside experience of course).

My recommendation is to do at least the bachelor program, but don't do it for the diploma. Do it for the knowledge you get.

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sunnyb profile image
Sun-Li Beatteay

The reason I was able to complete the program in 1.5 years was because I already had a previous college degree, so I was able to transfer many of my credits over for the general education courses (calculus, english, etc).

Also, the University I was enrolled in allowed me test out of classes that I already knew. For example, the I was able to test out of Intro to Scripting and other intro courses. So that's why I was able to complete faster than 4 years.