Meanwhile over in the mechanical engineering department, someone is complaining that they have to learn physics when they just wanted to build cool cars.
I took engineering for a year before I realized it had nothing to do with trains.
Yeah that’s why you go into physical training. That physically has trains… Right?
…then don’t study computer science. I study CS and it’s annoying when someone in a more math/logic oriented course is like “If I get a job at a tech company I won’t need this”. All that IS computer science, if you just wanna code, learn to code.
The problem is a lot of people who want to learn to code, and are conditioned to desire the college route of education, don’t actually know that there is a difference and that you can be completely self-taught in the field without ever stepping foot in a university.
I always wanted to believe this, but, at least in my country, not even a specialized high school degree is enough to get me anywhere for months, it’s crazy.
Maybe you could even make it without formal education, but everyone’s always looking for those sweet 3+ years of experience in the field (ಥ﹏ಥ)
I certainly experienced this at the start of my career. Everyone wanted me to have at least bachelors degree despite the fact that I was able to run circles around fresh college graduates. It wasn’t until someone gave me a chance and I had real world experience that people stopped asking me about my college education. In fact later into my career when they learn about the level of experience I have and that I’m entirely self-taught, it’s often seen as something positive. It’s a shitty catch-22
We’re not closing schools despite having libraries and the internet, having (good) teachers is useful to learn faster and get pushed further. There are some good programming schools that can make it more efficient for you. I think the main problem is rather the insane cost of higher education in the USA which create anxiety about being certain that you can repay it in the future it may open for you. It is sad.
Can you get well paying coding jobs with upward mobility without at least a BA in CS?
It’s harder to break into but I make 150k and barely graduated high school. Software engineering is largely a field that doesn’t care about degrees but about ability. It’s harder these days to break into the field than it was 10 years ago when I did but it’s absolutely still possible
When I was looking for coding jobs with a decent portfolio, but no computer science degree I got 1 interview out of 300 applications. They absolutely will not look at you if you don’t have the CS degree, or already know someone at the company who can force you in.
I’ve never been to college and my job title today is Software Architect, I’ve been doing this for nearly 20 years.
It was extremely hard at first to get a job because everyone wanted a BA, but that was also 20 years ago. Once I had some experience and could clearly demonstrate my capabilities they were more open to hiring me. The thing a degree shows is that you have some level of experience and commitment, but the reality is a BA in CompSci doesn’t actually prepare you for the reality of 99% of software development.
I think most companies these days have come to realize this. Unless you’re trying to apply to one of the FANG corps (or whatever the acronym is now) you’ll be just fine if you have a decent portfolio and can demonstrate an understanding of the fundamentals.
I used to work at a small tech company (5-10 employees) and when we hired for entry level coders we’d receive hundreds of applications. Most of them would be grads from bootcamps, some with undergraduate degrees and some without. My boss would just throw out any that didn’t have a bs in something, but preferred a stem degree. He knew they didn’t need a degree, he knew you didn’t need actual coding experience, it was just a quick (maybe illegal) way to make that list of applications more manageable. Edit: as other people have said - after your first job you are basically “in” and are a very desirable candidate. Your education matters much less after your first job.
4 years later: “this button is the wrong color. fix it ASAP”
A few failed exams later you end up programming cyberpunk and since you’re so oblivious to algorithms’ complexity it becomes a meme not a game.
I wonder how many in that class will ever need to think about multitape Turing machines ever again.
The point of these lectures is mostly not to teach how to work with Turing machines, it is to understand the theoretical limits of computers. The Turing machine is just a simple to describe and well-studied tool used to explore that.
For example, are there things there that cannot be computed on a computer, no matter for how long it computes? What about if the computer is able to make guesses along the way, can it compute more? Because of this comic, no — it would only be a lot faster.
Arguably, many programmers can do their job even without knowing any of that. But it certainly helps with seeing the big picture.
Arguably, a much more important thing for the students to learn is the limits of humans. The limits of the computer will never be a problem for 99% of these students or they’ll just learn on the job the types of problems they’re good at solving and the ones that aren’t.
The limits of computers would be the same as the limits for humans. We have no reason to think the human brain has a stronger computation power than a Turing machine.
So, in a way, learning about the limits of computers is the exact same as learning the limits of humans.
But also, learning what the limits of computers are is absolutely relevant. You get asked to create an algorithm for a problem and its useful to be able to figure out whether it actually is solvable, or how fast it theoretically can be. Avoids wasting everyone’s time trying to build an infinite loop detector.
I didn’t go to university, because I wanted to learn useful stuff, but because I’m curiousity driven. There is so much cool stuff and it’s very cool to learn it. That’s the point of university that it prepares you for a scientific career where the ultimate goal is knowledge not profit maximisation (super idealistically).
Talking about Turing Machines it’s such a fun concept. People use this to build computers out of everything - like really - it became a Sport by this point. When the last Zelda was Released the first question for many was, if they can build a computer inside it.
Does it serve a practical purpose? At the end of the day 99% of the time the answer will be no, we have computing machines built from transistors that are the fastest we know of, lets just use these.
But 1% of the time people recognize something useful… hey we now found out in principle one can build computers from quantum particles… we found an algorithm that could beat classical computers in a certain task… we found a way to actually do this in reality, but it’s more proof of concept (15 = 5×3)… and so on
Never used a Turing machine, but I have a project that generates NFAs and converts them to DFAs so they run faster.
Ram is literally just the tape. Modern computers are just multitape turing machines, albeit the tape ends at some point.
