jamesf comments on Open thread, 11-17 March 2014 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: David_Gerard 11 March 2014 10:45PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (226)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: gothgirl420666 12 March 2014 08:06:12PM 0 points [-]

Piece one says that you don't seem to enjoy coding.

I don't know if this is really true about me. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it, to be honest. I've pretty much hated it in college, but this might just be because of the way the courses are taught.

Something that is called a marketable skill (BFA isn't it) which will allow you to become employed after graduation.

What are other examples of marketable skills to you?

As an aside, while I know and accept the fact that statistically BFA pays pretty poorly and has relatively high unemployment, I don't understand it. Every company in the world needs a designer in some form or another. Who needs an anthropologist, a philosopher, a historian, a sociologist, a psychologist, etc.? And yet we are told that getting a college degree is definitely a good idea. Maybe there are a whole pool of white-collar jobs that have nothing to do with any particular major, but are only available to people who can signal their intelligence in a way that art majors can't?

Comment author: jamesf 14 March 2014 12:01:25AM 0 points [-]

I've pretty much hated it in college, but this might just be because of the way the courses are taught.

This was sort of my experience. Buy the right books and build interesting projects in the time you would be spending on classes, and you'll probably enjoy it a lot more. You don't need a degree in computer science to get a job as a software engineer; some experience/projects and the broad, shallow knowledge required to do well in typical interviews (and all those other interviewing skills I suppose) are enough.

You sound like you might enjoy Hacker School, by the way.