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Discussion on: Pursue a CS Degree or not? As a Front-End Developer

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matthew_collison profile image
Matthew Collison • Edited

Although our answer may vary country to country, for the most part, we'd almost always recommend to not go for the CS degree.

Chances are, you can land work without it - and you can spend time focusing on two, three or four really consistently hired-for languages or frameworks rather than spreading your knowledge too thinly.

You can always go back and get the CS degree, but why not get real-world experience and build some proper portfolio websites using modern tech, get an actual job (or internship - get paid to learn!) before potentially racking up unnecessary debt.

We might seem biased because we're a boot camp company, but we'd challenge you that anyone who messaged us to ask what was best in this situation - 99% of the time we're outlining free or low-cost paths outside of our own business, because you just need to know a few fundamentals about what makes you "hireable" to know what to learn and what to aim for in the next couple of years.

If you're talking non-traditional programming (science, security) - the answer may vary - our best suggestion would be to hit up people in the profession you really want to go for via LinkedIn and ask them what the best route would be. Ask 10 of them and look for a theme. You might be surprised - maybe there's an odd middle ground we hadn't thought of!

Hope this helps!

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Wenchen (Neo) Li

thanks! I get what you are saying, but I think I'm in the second part where "you could always go back and get the CS degree" since I already have work (a pretty good one I'd say).

But I would say I'm just touching a very shallow part of the computer world, and I'd love to know more and deeper to see what else is possible in this world that might be even more interesting for me.