Scott: When looking for a job as a developer it's common to see Computer Science degree required.
Scott: But, is it? Really?
Scott: Many people I know don't have a CS degree, including myself.
Scott: There are people who drop out of school and go on to found some of the biggest companies in the world, like Facebook and Microsoft itself.
Scott: How important is Education as a developer, that is what we talk about this week on This Developer's Life.
[Musical Interlude]
Scott: This episode was recorded live on July 5th in front of a Google+ audience.
Rob: So, I am sitting there the other day and I just downloaded Apple's developer tools.
The xcode, xcode 4.1. Because I'm trying to learn Cocoa, right, I'm trying to learn Objective-C and I'm reading all the primers on Objective-C and I see that Objective-C is based on C.
S: You see that? It took a book to figure that out?
R: Well, I mean I guess you know it but, you know, I think it hits you really hard between the eyes when you are look at this sample code right.
And I'm looking at this and I'm trying to recall the C language which was years ago and I'm thinking to myself why didn't i get a degree in computer science this would become so much easier to me.
But then i started thinking to myself, who am i kidding? I dont know, would that really, in your opinion, whould that really have helped me to grasp Objectivec easier?
I mean from just what i learn in college?
S: Yea, absolutely. The older I get the more i realise that the basic how to think about x type skills that i got in 7th grade and learning cursive in kindergarten and all that stuff heleped.
I'm not saying it is required, I'm not saying that you need it, but I am saying that it helps
For people who think like school thinks, school helps.
R: So, is it the, is it the act of learning that you think school enhances. or is it the subject matter itself.
I went to school for geology of all things and I, you know, I basically I guess you could call it I minored in computer science I learned pascal and cobol and all the things.
But that didn't, I dont think any of that helps me later in life when I sat down to learn computer sc...or maybe it did.
What is your degree? Your degree is in computer science right?
S: I have a degree in software engineering. And software engineering is the applied, it's like the applied computer science.
R: Mm
S: It's the actual act of doing the work as opposed to the theory behind it
R: I see.
S: And, yea, so computer science is theoretical and people think about computers and how computers work and turing machines and stuff like that, and in fact I think the first class I took in software engineering class was compiling linux, so it was like lets get right into doing something that is significant and is substantive and is engineering.
R: Awesome. I have a degree in geology, It's all about bang and rocks.
Well bringing it back to this week. interesting thing for me is hearing the range of opinions and viewpoints on education from our story tellers this week.
The first one is fascinating, her name is Aqueelah Grant, and she worked her way through college, she had amazing support from her parents and she basically stressed herself out trying to get a job.
Listen to what it took, even with a CS degree. Listen to what it took for her to get her job.
Aqueela: It took me about four years, it was four years of my life. I got an oracle certification after that and then I started applying to differnet IT companies and what do you know, CNNMoney.com called me, out of all the places that you can work for when you first start out in your tech career a company like CNNMoney.com it was, it was the most awesome experience.
And I just thought about all the nights I sat on the floor crying and, and saying that I hope for the best, I wish for the best and just hearing my mother and my father tell me that it was going to come, it was going to come and then after a while, when it doesn't come, you get lost, you get a little sad but, it's like, you got to keep trying. I mean I dont know if there is going to be any parents listen to this podcast, but I have the most awesome parents, it's like they, maybe they werent technology professionals but they were professionals. My parents were always hardworking parents.
I used to get at, 7 years old I used to get up at 4:30 in the morning to go to work with my dad. And one thing that my father always told me is, no matter what you do in life, you will always be strong enough to do it. He said that you don't have to worry about if you ever be able to do it, if you really want it you can make it happen but they even today, I can call them up if I need anything they are there.
So it's like for yourself but we need that support, so if there are mums and dads listening, please suppport your children it's, they will never forget it.
S: Well, as a parent of two young children, I can tell you that I spend a lot of time re-enforcing their self esteem, yes you can do this, this is a problem that you can solve.
Because I know, that the passion for learning, well any industry, starts at a really young age.
A: I can remember my 3rd grade teacher, Mr Bronsteen, and I can also refer back to, I went to vocational high school in New Jersey called Bloomfield Tech and I can remember learning about binary code in the 9th grade. we learned pascal, that was what was in at that time, binary pascal.
We had a Lotus Notes teacher, so I learned Lotus, in the 9th grade. My associate is in Computer Science and my Bachelor is in Information Science. and my Computer Science degree was basically Cobol, HTML, SQL or anything, you can name it. So thats kind of when I got the fill for and I had some awesome professors.
It was actually the interest in learning about technology and the intensity of being able to code, it's like, its a whole other world. You can create things, wether you want to go into web development, wether you want to go into testing, technology is it.
The first thing that I built, oh I am so excited about this. my project, my senior project, I built out a program that parse data in a, it was an access database, but I programmed it in C programming languages for the State of Rhode Island, so that was my senior project which I actually got a B+ on but you know I had some tough professors so that's OK.
[8:34]