2002-06-01 01:00:00 UTC
I have completed a degree in computing. I am now a free man.
I must say that doing a degree is the worst possible way to actually learn anything. If you want to learn about computers, just spend three years teaching yourself. It's far more efficient.
If you want to teach yourself have a look at the materials for a one year compressed MIT degree: http://aduni.org/courses/
There's around 80GB of material which can be shipped to you on a HDD.
Saras Udanpur
2002-10-06 21:11:26 UTC
A significant improvement in students' software engineering skills can be achieved via the following elements:
Challenging students to build four or five applications (rather than the traditional single problem) over a 13-week semester.
Drawing on the alumni to bring professional software engineers onto the campus to coach students.
A terminal room where students can work together on a scheduled basis.
Projects with real clients.
An emphasis on oral and written presentation of results.
-- http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/teaching-software-engineering
Eilidh NicCoinneach - http://eilidh.relique.net
2002-06-05 15:30:00 UTC
Congrats, then! :) I hope this doesn't apply to linguistics as well...
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colin_zr - http://rtnl.org.uk
2002-06-09 23:51:00 UTC
:) I don't know. For the most part, computing is very much a subject which can be self-taught. (But actually I think that of everything I've studied, so maybe it's just that I learn well on my own.) I don't know how true that is of linguistics.
But I think a more important issue is how much you enjoy the work that you do at university. I really didn't enjoy my degree. I felt frustrated at being taught nonsense by people who really weren't competent to use computers, let alone teach their use, and being taught it in the most time-consuming way possible, so that I had no time of my own in which to do worthwhile things with the amazing technologies around us. (The situation wasn't universally bad, but there was enough bad stuff to thoroughly overshadow the good stuff that happened there.) Hopefully you're in a better situation with your linguistics course and hopefully the quality of the teaching is better. If that's the case then you should be fine.
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colin_zr - http://rtnl.org.uk/
2002-06-09 23:54:00 UTC
Oh yeah... and hopefully you don't succumb to despair quite so quickly as I do. :)
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