Sup Forumsuys im going to go for a cs major soon but' im worried...

Sup Forumsuys im going to go for a cs major soon but' im worried. Are my class mates going to mainly consist on fat neckbeards with riced arch installed thinkpads?

No, they're mostly going to be filled with normies, a few 'women in tech', a bunch of people who think they're way smarter than they actually are before they switch major to business after failing calc 2 3 times.

No it will be a bunch of gamers who realize they are not actually as interested in computers as they thought they were.

No, it'll be a bunch of faggots with macs.

Going to school to work as a programmer is for those that lack the willpower to teach themselves.

No, they will consist of insufferable faggots with Mac books and fucktard gamers with massive, loud, alien spaceship looking laptops.

CS lectures are filled with kids with MacBooks. They change their terminals green to look like hackers.

...

Surprisingly, it's mostly normies. However, there's always the exception.
>Most autistic major
>'Women in STEM'
>'I wunna make a Vidya gaim'
>Pajeets
If you do end up choosing CS, don't pussy out and switch to IT or Bis because 'math is hard'

no, they will be hipster (((libertarians))) with sjw tendencies on macbook airs

I was waiting in the hallway for class to start and there was one of these guys, who had a Razer laptop, a full headset on, playing Runescape, and talking loudly about trannies and brother/sister incest anime porn on some discord server.

I also had another guy who was sitting with his feet on the desk in class, and when the professor was listing different computer components (Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Hard drive, etc), he yelled from the back of the classroom "What about SSDs, maaan!"

And then there was some lady who was in the airforce or something, and she kept getting all pissed off and arguing with people over stupid shit.

CS is a meme degree.
But what do you want to do? It is a career that should be studied by people who want to get into research, this jobs are scarce and not always so well paid, but if you are very passionate go for it.
If what you want to do is program, don't be an idiot and so Software or Systems Engineering, that's what will get you a job.

>If what you want to do is program, don't be an idiot and teach yourself and don't go to college.
ftfy

why would you ask Sup Forums, most people here probably dont go to college, let alone leave their parents' basement

Is the piece of paper at the end really that useless?

If he lives in the US, I agree. In my country college is free.

No, it helps. You can get a job without a degree, but you can't get certain positions without a degree, if the company requires specifically an engineer, you must have it.
It raises the salary bar too.
Trust me, in my company there are people who earn twice my salary doing the same, just because they have a college degree, meanwhile I just went to tech school.

Nothing wrong with that.

The piece of paper is irrelevant to my argument, the fact is that in the US you can easily get a job as a programmer without a degree. So even if you get a free ride, you are still wasting years of your life in college that could be spent getting experience and making money working as programmer. You can teach yourself much faster than any college or university will, what you learn in a bachelor's you should be able to teach yourself in under a year.

>if the company requires specifically an engineer, you must have it
Not in the US.

This, but half your class is going to be Indian or Chinese.

So the position says "We require an engineer" and you go and they don't ask you to present the tittle or documentation that proves you have it?
Is your country really that much of a joke? Or does it only happen on the software industry?

>tittle or documentation
No such thing. I think your country is a joke for requiring such a thing. What secret programming or engineering knowledge do colleges and universities have that you can't get anywhere else?
It is obviously a lot easier to get a job as a programmer without a degree than a standard engineering position since it's easier to show off your ability with a portfolio, but I know someone that works as a chemical engineer and he never went to college so it isn't impossible or illegal.

jesus christ this is so spot on i can't express it

If a position doesn't require an engineer it should just say "programmer" or "developer". Here at least government positions require the degree they ask or you can't even apply. Private companies are a different story, they say "Engineer/student or related career", because most of them don't require the skill set of an engineer.

But don't delude yourself, no fucking serious company hires a self taught programmer to write the software of a critical system. Your friend that works as an engineer without the degree, either had some contact accommodate him or he really is doing the work a technician could do and informally call him "engineer".

Legally you can't work as an engineer without a degree, that is fact, in the entire world, if the company is strictly regulated that will never happen.

>Legally you can't work as an engineer without a degree, that is fact, in the entire world,
Maybe in your shit hole, but not in the US. So no, not the entire world, just your country that has it's laws based on getting as many people to go to college as possible so the college can get more money, simple as that.
Stop trying to justify going to college for something you can teach yourself.

>tries to make computer science sound as complicated as possible
>his only example is fucking merge sort

Guy actually taking CS here, everyone ITT is LARPing and has no idea what it's actually like.

Your first year most of your classmates will be engineers and wannabe hackers (I started with an InfoSec degree so the initial CS classes were a requirement.) That first year only about 25% of people will continue with CS (with engineers and infosec guys moving onto their own classes, and the gamers dropping out for the most part when they realize programming is actual work and CS is a lot of science and math.)

By second year though, you'll start to realize that the retards in this thread spouting "teach yourself" will never be as competent as you are by the end of year 2 (I worked as a programmer for 2 years before starting UNI, and was "self taught" for almost 10.) Year two will make or break you, as you start to leave Java/Python and move unto C and Assembly, that second year will mostly be learning how to build bootloaders, learning advanced data structures and understanding operating systems to the core.

Third year is when it gets fun, once they know you are competent enough with data structures, low level programming and have a solid calculus foundation you begin working in advanced operating systems, parallel programming and artificial intelligence.

I will say this, if you don't want to be a code monkey writing java/python/php for some shit-tier company and you want to actually work in interesting things (if you just want an ok job you can get there with just algebra and basic programming skills, but you'll never hit more than 100K a year like that) then you are going to need to get at least to multivariable calculus and pass your parallel programming and artifical intelligence classes.

Note my degree is a double major in CS and Physics, so I am taking a lot more math than you average CS major but you will have to get pretty high up but if you start tomorrow in 2 years you will be better at programming and CS than 99% of this board.

I'm absolutely sure it isn't legal on the US, it is just that (specially on the software industry) everything is handled very informally.
>just your country that has it's laws based on getting as many people to go to college as possible so the college can get more money, simple as that
College in my country is free, if you are too poor they even give you a money aid as long as you have good scores, so I'm afraid you are mistaken.
>Stop trying to justify going to college for something you can teach yourself.
You can only do so to a certain extent, a mostly in systems, in other fields not so much, I understand not wanting to go with those ridiculous prices you have though.

I'm willing to be 100$ that almost all of you who haven't been through CS couldn't tell me what a recurrent neural network is without google (and I promise you've never implemented one.)

Yes you can get a 36-48K a year gig being self taught, but with a CS degree and actual knowledge of systems design and being able to write your own algorithms (not faggy boolean algebra I'm talking 10 variable algorithms) will land you a 70K a year entry level job.

It comes down to preference, I want to work in a cutting edge field and anything short of a bachelors isn't gonna cut it (and even then the competition will be so high I'm not stopping til a masters degree.)

I want to work in GAI, if you're cool making half decent money writing apps school isn't needed.

Every kid in here who is studying CS in school right now listen to me. I was you two years ago. Fuck the rest of your classes and learn whats needed to pass interviews using leetcode and buy the book "Cracking the coding interview". Make sure you get an A in Data Structures and get an internship. Thats it.

Spend two semesters doing leetcode that and you'll guarantee yourself a six figure job almost anywhere in the country. Make 200k now and had a 2.5 gpa.

>cracking the coding interview

literally fucking kill yourself shill

My starting salary as a self taught programmer was 60k in a flyover state in the mid west. You and a lot of other faggots seem to think that colleges or universities have some special knowledge than you can only get from them, which isn't true.
>reddit spacing
No surprise.

Yeah you can also get a job in a lab or a workshop without a college degree, but never one of the high positions.
If you want to settle for start-up tier programming you don't need it, people with a CS degree will not be doing web development, that's for sure.

This guy is right in the context of academia, research and actual pure Computer Science.

But to think you can't get any job or be extremely elite without following this path is not correct. In the world of information security/exploit research/penetration testing/etc. there are many, many EXTREMELY elite people that do not have degrees and degrees/certs are not looked at in that world in nearly the same way as they are in other areas.

Here's your actual CS class.

40% normies (got into it because DUDE TECH MONEY)
30% indians
20% other foreigners (usually ukranian, russian)
5% older dudes
4% people you can actually chill with
1% neckbeard (you'll get 2, one with a gaming laptop with a mario wallpaper, the other running ubuntu who intejects all the fucking time).

This isn't a fucking meme, this is the reality. Save for strange regions.

You don't do anything related to CS though, you either do enterprise applications in Java/C#, or web development, or if you got very, very lucky, some low level shit writing firmware.
You will never do the same a Computer Scientist does, because you don't fucking know math or programming at that level.

There are many, many things that aren't 'pure computer science' that aren't 'code monkey shit' either.

How much kool aid are you chugging at your school dude?

I work as a data scientist.
You didn't answer my question, what secret knowledge do colleges or universities have that you can't get anywhere else?

Probably true for him but you can be a dropout on work on cool shit for all they care. A degree gets you noticed but if you can pass an interview at G or FB no one gives a shit.

They do it's called maths, like I said you can get an ok job just being a shit-tier code monkey but if you want to actually be able to write your own algorithms and understand the underlying hardware you need UNI (it is possible to learn a lot of this stuff on your own, but I seriously doubt that hardly anyone on this board has the work ethic to teach themselves multivariable calculus, assembly language, the science behind hardware, how to create calculus equations and then transfer them to a working implementation, good parallel programming techniques, when to use OOP and when not too, how to design lazy and regressive learning algorithms, how to design perceptrons, how to write a scheduler, best practices for interfaces (not UI, PI's,) how to write cache systems, when to use a database, I mean the fucking list goes on and all of this is just 3 years of CS.

Keep larping, I worked for years in midlle illinois at 48k without a degree and I've already had several offers @ double the pay and I haven't even finished by bachelors yet.

>reddit spacing
No it's called double spacing, if you had an education you'd know that it's standard.

The answer is nothing. The value of most schools is networking and basically being the only route if you want to do research. You can teach yourself an equivalent of a MIT degree in CS using online resources now. Its just that most people dont have the ability to sit down themselves and do that. School is much easier for people to learn on average.

But if you deny that college grads in CS perform way better, on average not for all cases, then nongrad in CS you are just in denial.

No there isn't

You aren't wrong but

so? I mentioned some of them.
Sure you do. It isn't secret knowledge, you'll simply will not self-study everything you actually need, only the parts that interest you more or you need right now.
>G or FB
Now I was talking about serious companies, I'd rather kill myself than working for those clowns.
Let's say he is actually not full of shit for a minute, he is still an exception precisely because of what you said, that I also said earlier.

>school is much easier

It's really this, the teachers at school know what it is you need to know. On your own your stuck listening to people like the retards on Sup Forums who would have you wasting time writing shell applets in C and compiling your own linux kernel when there is so much you need to know before getting a programming job (again, not a code monkey job) that it's easier to just at the very least take a 2 year course at a community college.

Math isn't secret.Math is just as available online as anything else. Just because you don't have the willpower to sit down and learn it yourself doesn't mean others don't.
Keep drinking that Kool-aid.
I never said that college grads don't "perform" better. That isn't even a proper comparison since most nongrads are just web devs who have no intention to learn anything except that..

Honestly dropouts are respected more by their peers in software engineer dominate areas. It means you show a high level of skill and drive to be able to work at Google/FB/Microsoft as a 20 year old dropout or something.

Don't need to work for them. Pass their interview and other companies will give you a job on the spot. Midwest company offered me 150k in iowa after one phone call.

Like it or not they set the bar very high.

Yes but the field of actual security research/pen-testing/information security/etc. is FILLED with the type of people you say are not on here (the type that are self-motivated enough to teach themselves extremely advanced and in depth topics). In fact it is pretty much a requirement.

That is what barres most from actually starting a career in that field; they lack the absolute passion and relentlessness that is required (the term 'hacker mindset' is used to describe this often but I'm sure many will ridicule that term even though it is very old).

Okay I named a shit load of other things and my point (I literally said in that post) is that most people don't have the willpower to teach themselves all of this shit.

And I'm not sure what you are talking about because I did teach myself all the way up to multivariable calculus and was working as a programmer before I even started UNI. And I can tell you I've learned more in 3 years of school than I did in the 10 years of being self taught prior to it.

No they really aren't idk who told you that but I have a friend who just started at google and they found him on campus.

Most people on this board arent genius level at CS without a degree, thus Google wouldn't give them a fucking shot.

Sort of, I actually have a degree in InfoSec as that's what I started with and most people beyond the retarded pentesters who use premade scripts have certifications at least.

In regards to research your point is false because security research is moving into AI (my introduction to AI came from a security focused class) so if you are just a script kid pentester you will be out of a job soon.

It might depend a bit on what school you go to, but for the most part it's a shit ton of normies.
Like you wouldn't believe how bad some of these people are with computers.

I dropped out a year ago and worked at Google. You have no idea what you're talking about there are dropouts working at every tech company. They don't give a shit if you can pass their interview. If you have projects and learned some languages they'll give you an interview even if you never went to college. Just network and you'll find someone to recommend you. No need to be a genius to get a job at Google either. Thats a little played up.

most places tend to have an "intro to computing" class that is for normies. Basically it's a how to use windows class so that by the time they start CS101 they are actually semi-competent.

But I do agree my CS101 class was full of retards (a couple of them actually retarded, guess they had rich parents,) a couple of chad-looking dudes who dropped out quick and a few qt girls who thought it'd be an easy degree.

Only about 9 people were still there at the end.

You aren't wrong about skiddies and such but you make it sound like you are implying that having a CS degree precludes you from being bad at things as if there are not a whole lot of CS degree holders that are just as bad as the people you are describing.

>dropped out a year ago and worked at google
I serioussly doubt you aren't lying but if you aren't you are an exception not the norm. Sure there are dropouts working at every tech company but again I'm not speaking to those people because those types are good enough without CS while I'm giving general advice to OP that if he has to ask these questions he probably isn't going to be able to get a job at google without a few years of buildup.

Oh no I agree a lot of CS majors are pretty bad too, I'm just trying to make it clear that only a minority of people will be able to succeed without a degree if they wish to work in anything better than web/app design.

Everything you've said here is true. I am not lying. I was just refuting the idea that you need a CS degree to do anything meaningful or CS heavy. A CS degree won't get you far without projects, internships, and being able to pass interviews. There are also a ton grads who cant program for shit in the real world. Which is why I'm saying don't give a shit about your gpa. Spending more time on learning everything you can in CS while studying leetcode.

Rough estimates of the population of a generic CS class:
8 normies that are going to make a FB group for the class and post shitty memes and jokes in it.
10 gamers that will quit the class after a few months because they realize it's not what they expected.
2 women who will take up the teachers time 90% of the time because they don't really understand the basics.
8 people who're actually good at it.
2 people that are good at it but always overdoes simple exercises (make MS Paint clone, makes Photoshop clone).
1-2 ultra-tryhard who doesn't get the basics, doesn't really know why they took the class in the first place, has macbooks, asks the teacher basic questions from the 1st selecter but in the 5th semester and takes up the last 10% of the teachers time.

Theres always one chick that ends up being better then 90% the class. Always at least one.

In my class we're only half of the people we were in the beginning, and we're only halfway done with the education. This is accurate.

That one goes in the 2 people who're good at it but overdoes the simple exercises category. Usually one of her parents are in the IT industry so she got inspired.

I agree pretty much. But in the world I live/work (the 'hacker community') the self-learning is more of the norm then the exception. I am FAR more confident that if I talk to someone else in my community (degree or no degree) they are going to understand (for example) shellcode, assembly, the way a CPU actually works, etc. with a deep, real and passionate knowledge far more often then a randomly selected CS graduate.

Now if that CS graduate has just taken the related course recently then that data will be skewed as they of course learn what they need to pass and learn it well. The problem is that without the requisite passion this information (or some other subject) get's pushed to the wayside to make room for the next thing.
Those around me that have a deep passion for this sort of thing do not have this problem as these are subjects they have done, do, and will do for fun and gratification. That being said many people that have approached me about self learning really are not cut out for it and throw in the towel at the first sign of JMP ESP; so again, I am not disagreeing. I am just presenting a view that comes from a different place then yours.

And in a more concrete way since it seems we are talking about careers (this view of the subject is again very different then those from my side of the fence who often view careers as a simple byproduct of passion; as if they simply happen organically because they were supposed to [I'm not saying whether this is right or wrong, again just presenting another view]) I know MANY people with very high paying jobs that do not have degrees.

All of this being said I will be getting my degree soon myself as I obviously see the benefit plus it is enjoyable.

Yeah people seem to think I'm speaking about everyone, when I'm just giving advice for the lowest common denominator. If you are good enough to not need CS (or InfoSec) classes you probably know it already.

I fucking wished. It's 90% pajeets are they awful to work with and they don't speak fucking english.

>I'm absolutely sure it isn't legal on the US, it is just that (specially on the software industry) everything is handled very informally.
Funny, I'm a software engineer in the US for a major tech company, and I have no engineering degree or license. Fewer than half of my co-workers have engineering or CS degrees, and none are licensed engineers. You're confusing the occupation "engineer" with the credential "Professional Engineer", which is only relevant in certain specialized fields (civil, structural). Even in fields that require licensed Professional Engineers, most of the engineers on a project are not licensed. Only the one signing off on the project needs to have a license. There are no legal requirements attached to the job title "engineer" in the US.

I got by fine before I started my degree(s). I too came from the "hacker" community so when I started the first 2 years (my InfoSec Assoc) was a breeze, it wasn't until the InfoSec and CS merged in my post-Assoc classes that I started to fear for those in my class who only took InfoSec (and the basic programming requirments) because in my AI for InfoSec class we were building tools that employed decision trees and then regressive learning to hunt for exploits. These programs are going to be the future of pentesting and security (written by men greater than myself I admit) and this is why I stress education. You can definitely get by with a degree and you InfoSec wise you can learn a lot without one.

Again it all comes down to what you want, a degree will hand-hold you until you know what you're doing so is best for 99% of people. I want to do research so I of course have to keep going otherwise I would have taken the first 90k a year job I was offered.

Another piece of advice, some of the most wealthy people I know in CS don't even do programming they do devops which is basically just network design with shell scripting (automating deployments, stagins and development environments.) If you think CS is too hard/boring but want better money (and more excitement) than IT/Sysadministration I recommend devops.

fuck I'm drunk and can't type

More or less. First year will be as normie as it gets, but as it goes on they'll get filtered out, leaving pure, distilled autism.

What does Sup Forums know about EECS degrees from Berkeley and the like? Is it more worth it than just an ee or just cs or is it just a meme to stroke my ego to?

Just do CS unless you want to work with hardware.

I might want to because as soon as I get out of navy and get degree I already have a foot in the door for amd, Texas instruments and a dod contracting company

Engineer is just a meme word that mean nearly nothing. Just tell the name of the job instead of muh engineer. The only purpose of this word is to sound intelligent.
t. engineer

Output neurons are connected to input neurons, with however many middle layers of shit you want, plus your additional inputs. Next

If you already know you wanna work there sure do it. But if you haven't started yet how do you know you'll like it?

You will get
>pajeets
>autists
>normies
>a bunch of cunts who thought they were interested in computers but aren't really
>a bunch of n33ts who decided that since they spend all their time at the computer they should get a cs degree but never do the work
>a bunch of cunts who think they are smarter than they are
>a bunch of cunts who will finish the degree but still have no idea how to program
>a bunch of women who hate the course or are incapable of doing the work but the uni pushed them into the degree for the sake of diversity points
>a bunch of women who get special priority and constantly demand special concessions
>a bunch of asians who dont talk in class

CS is a bit of a meme degree at this point, so many people come out of CS degrees not having any skills that the industry doesn't really give them much merit, its the exact reason that software dev companies ask for program portfolios, & do programming tests like fizzbuzz. The main thing you'll be doing is networking but even then that doesn't pay off immediately, once you all graduate your classmates can be valuable contacts if they entrench themselves in the industry, but that takes some time to really be worth it, you can do a lot more networking by just trying to get a job in the industry and field you're interested in. CS is only really useful if you're interested in going into a theory heavy job such as cryptography, but even then some would argue an applied mathematics degree would be better.

t.CS graduate who now works in the software dev industry

>No it will be a bunch of gamers who realize they are not actually as interested in computers as they thought they were.

This was pretty much my experience until I graduated 2 years ago.

Out of all 200~ students at the start I can say that only about 20 of them were actually learning CS outside of their classes and not playing games or doing the bare minimum for tests/assignments.

CS is one of the most popular majors in universities these days. At my university 90% of students at least *take* an intro CS course.

you're going to meet fat thinkpad-toting neckbeards. if that's the group you end up palling around with, it'll be because that's the group you're attracted to.

holy fuckin shit this is the correct answer here

>if the company requires specifically an engineer you must have it

Completely wrong, I've worked as an electrical engineer for an electronics manufacturer and I didn't hold a degree. I just included a portfolio of the work I'd done, and when they interviewed the applicants they asked everyone practical questions like "what does this component do".

Another example would be a friend of my family who previously worked for a company called redflex (they produce speed cameras) just got a job as the electronic engineer at a large company designing inductive-loop traffic detectors that are used in fastfood chains like mcdonalds, kfc, ect. He's never held a degree.

I have a million other stories just like this, companies value workers who can demonstrate their skill, degrees have become worthless just because so many graduates don't have any practical skills. I've worked in recruitment management for two different software development companies and holy shit more than half the graduates we brought in for interviews couldn't even answer the most simple questions about programming, or complete simple programming tests that would take people who have even a moderate amount of programming experience 5 minutes to finish.

>hipster/sjw
>libertarian

pick one

Oh yeah, and the reason the guy got the job designing these traffic detectors is because the company had previously hired an electrical and computer engineering professor to design it and the thing barely worked, so he was brought in to redesign it.

>sjw
>libertarian

Sjws are authoritarians and socialists though faggot

>get Bachelors Degree in Computer Science & Mathematics
>get Cisco CCNA5 Certification
>end up doing an Udemy course for react & react native after I graduated
>land first $90k job doing PHP/angularjs/react native development
>been in the job for nearly a year now
>still paying off my $30k student loan

lmao

>tfw dropped out of IT in university and now an owner of a small factory not related to computer at all