/prog/ I have a very important question about my career path. I'm currenty thinking of doing CompSci at universtity (UK) but I heard that it would be a wasted degree as all the programming jobs are being sent to places like india and china where they do it cheaper???
Yeah new to /prog/ but I didn't expect this to be like a few other boards on 4chan. I'm just trying to get a geniune answer, seems I'm asking the wrong people.
PRO TIP:
CS graduates don't get jobs because they're social inbreds who can't last 5 minutes in an interview.
Your best bet is to:
A) Get any degree that /requires/ programming classes and decent mathematics courses
B) Understand that computer science is a bullshit degree
C) Take some public speaking classes / writing courses. Anything that seems like it'll help you build a resume (CV), create an impressive cover letter, and prepare you for interviews.
D) Land a killer internship, because you'll be set apart from the other social inbreds (which look like social inbreds; not to be confused with you, a social inbred that looks like a decent employee.)
E) Know that you'll start small anywhere, because yes, the industry is being outsourced. But you can work your way up.
IF ALL ELSE FAILS: CREATE A STARTUP USING RUBY OR PYTHON OR PHP. THEN WHEN YOUR PRODUCT DOESN'T SCALE, CREATE SOME INANE SOLUTION TO SCALE. REMEMBER, HARDWARE CAN COMPENSATE FOR 85-90% OF POOR DESIGN DECISIONS.
>>12 CS graduates don't get jobs because they're social inbreds who can't last 5 minutes in an interview.
Go fuck yourself.
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Anonymous2010-10-27 0:10
Short answer: No. The world has enough applications written in broken-ass english, and there are companies are willing to pay the money if you are a programmer/developer/whatever who knows what they are doing. If you can't graduate from college, don't even bother.
That said, I agree with >>12 on a lot of his points.
>>12 B) Understand that computer science is a bullshit degree
I never went to college or had job, so maybe this sounds stupid, but arent most degrees BS degress?
Thanks guys, also is the level of maths in a programming course really high? Do you need to be really good at maths. I have a friend who was average at maths and got into imperial college (3rd best uni for CompSci)
>>18
I think my course (AI) is one of only a few in my uni's entire CS department that requires a background in maths, and that's just a B at AS. Just FYI. Not much is needed, and the stuff that is (set theory, logic, etc) is given to you anyway.
>>19 That good to hear, as I got an A at AS and decided to drop it. I was a bit worried because I thought that was a bad decision. I had a few people telling me I needed to do Further maths!
I think there's more maths in Economics that CompSci.
>>21
Yeah, don't worry about that. All my further maths buddies have gone on to do homosexual degrees like physics and, uh, more maths. More fool them.
I'm at Liverpool, but I'd have preferred Sheffield - they wanted a B in maths at A2, though, and it's probably gone up since then.
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Anonymous2010-10-27 17:05
>>22 Yeah, I'd really love to get in a russell group uni though, that'd be fantastic.
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Anonymous2010-10-27 17:28
>>23
I was surprised to find out how many universities are in the Russell group.
>>1
There'll always be a place for quality. Shitty software factories and consulting companies from India can't possibly take out all programming jobs in Europe because somebody, somewhere, realizes that what they do in India is bullshit and wants a quality job.
India development has a few problems: first of all, the software factory model is fundamentally flawed and is only suitable for sluggish, grossly overpaid projects for banks. Then you have large consulting companies, flawed as well; they'll rip you off and have some random noob straight off uni build your most critical stuff, and some noob who hasn't even touched a computer one hour before getting hired will be writting the bulk of your stuff. And finally the communication and distance problems; Indians can't talk shit with you, end users or end customers.
And the best of all is that some of the retarded managers ruling this "industry" (just calling it "industry" is cancerous) are starting to realize that India projects tend to fail, and if they don't fail, they tend to go obscenely over the budget, be horribly late, and result in horrendous quality software that even retards such as managers can see.
>>29
Like Japanese manufacturing, right? All they'll ever do is create poor knockoffs of American cars and electronics, all that industry couldn't possibly result in a competent workforce.
>>35-36
There's hell of a lot of Indians, and they're educating their people in software engineering at home and abroad.
Their software houses may be crap right now, but if/when the shit hits the fan, the competent workers can group together to form stronger units.
There's nothing magical about Western people that gives them knowledge that the Indians can't pick up in a decade or two, and you'll learn that the hard way if you just sit on your fat ass and complain about short-sighted managers.
They don't have to be as good as a good on-site team, they just have to be cheap and not too much worse than a bad one.
That's not to say there won't be jobs left, but the dream that what has been outsourced will start returning is nothing but the spiteful fantasies of a jealous ex.
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Anonymous2010-10-30 6:59
>>38 they just have to be cheap and not too much worse than a bad one.
And this is why I'll never run out of work. There's always a place for quality. I'm an expensive programmer, but my employer admits I'm worth more than any amount of cheapos, not because I work faster/do more stuff, but because of the amounts of difficult shit I can solve: not one, nor two, nor a team of 20 newbies will ever manage to solve a very difficult problem, sometimes you just need a good hacker (one with "abstract bullshite" capabilities), or a guru.
>>37
Looks more like a buttplug to me, testicles usually aren't that flat.
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Anonymous2010-10-30 7:24
>>39
The points are "for the time being", "gurus are currently limited in supply and time" and "of these armies of less-competent programmers, many WILL improve over time".
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Anonymous2010-10-30 12:52
>>38
Nice strawman. Did anyone ever say the outsourced jobs would "start returning"?
Education doesn't magically make people smarter, and the average Indian IQ is in the low to mid 80s. There are a few groups/castes with much higher average intelligence, and they are able to compete globally. India's large population means that there are still millions of intelligent Indians and millions who can learn enough to poorly program to get paid for it.
With massive social problems that show no sign of being solved soon, don't expect average Indian IQ to grow significantly.
And if things get worse, even more intelligent Indians will move elsewhere.
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Anonymous2010-10-30 13:30
>>38 There's nothing magical about Western people that gives them knowledge that the Indians can't pick up in a decade or two
Yes it is. It's called being white. What's next? The blacks from the ghettos will no doubt take our programming jobs because there's nothing magical about Western people that gives them knowledge that the niggers can't pick up in a decade or two.
It depends on the department. I know here in Cambridge they insisted on Further Maths which I have used quite a bit. Also yes there's no point in getting a Computer Science degree if you're going to end up just programming CRUD web applications or something like that but there are lots of valuable skills taught in a Computer Science degree even if you don't want to go into academia. It turns out that many of the abstractions in modern computer systems are leaky. Therefore it's important to know about how modern computer systems actually work to program efficiently for one. Most departments will have a fairly wide course as well which is good since you don't know what you don't know otherwise which will make things much harder when you come to try and solve an already solved problem. It's entirely possible to see certain part of modern computer systems as magic black boxes eg compilers or operating systems but if you don't know how they work then if they break you might not understand why and you'll be a lot more vulnerable to people spewing bullshit. Also it's an excellent opportunity for networking and potentially starting up. Posters to this board are trying to impress you by pretending to be jaded/cynical. Don't buy it. Knowledge is good. If you have more knowledge about computer systems then you will be able to pursue higher end programming jobs. (It is of course possible to pursue /fairly/ high end programming jobs without having a degree by having a career.)
As far as "bullshit degree" goes, it's not as prestigious as maths or physics, sure. (But doing things purely for prestige is kind of silly. Too many have ended up with a 3rd in maths for chasing prestige.) It's not as coherent either. There's no real base upon which computer science is built. It is neither solely a natural science a branch of mathematicians or a branch of engineering. Rather it is all of them. As such, it may seem at times to have a bit of a personality crisis. Personally I kind of like this.