Whoa whoa whoa! Slow the train up. Anyone with a few hours a week on their hands can get? Do whaT? Have you went to a real college? Not ANYONE can get it. Hell, I know A LOT of people that flunked out of college and guess what, they had at least 10 hours a week on their hands (a few being 3, ten being a lot:) ). It takes dedication and time. Hell, for some programmers college is their first introduction to project deadlines (a.k.a. homework). While I do not fall in that category I think it's a great experience for the newb. programmer.Moocat wrote:Would you really want to work for a job that takes applicants strictly based on if they have a degree or not? I'd rather work for a company known to employ the best in the field rather than a bunch of people with pieces of paper anyone with a few hours a week on their hands can get.
However, I'm not asking if a degree is worth it strictly for job obtainment. I'm asking it more from the perspective, if there were a choice between hiring (lets say a contractor) a person with a 4 year degree (no experience) or 7-10 years active experience which would you rather have working/serving you? I realise I may have been somewhat misleading in the first statement, I'll go back and change that
edit: and while I'm thinking bout it, why not ask a more fair question. Someone that has a 4 year degree or someone that has 4 years real world experience? I'd rather have the degree because chances are he's been taught good coding practices at the very least as opposed to our self taught guy which probably has picked up some bad habits. let's assume he didn't though, then we can say our 4 year degree guy knows more because he was being forced to learn more quicker, due to the apce of college. but let's say our uneducated guy was extremely dedicated and was busting his nuts, then we can say our college guy has the ability to grow better because he was also taught code in general as well. i.e. coding theory. which our home made guy might have picked up but I'd say the odds are against it. Not to forget, our 4 year guy probably got himself an intern which means not only does he have some real world expereince (most of my buds do side jobs while in college) but he also has that paper. the other guy has some experience, but no paper. hmmm..... your original question is akin to asking " your playing baseball, do you want the ant on your team or 'insert famous baseball player' ?"
And I would have to disagree with you, while there are exceptions to the rule, it does take work to get a degree. And during this work tthere's at least a 50% chance ( a statistic completely made up, right now) that at least 50% of that knowledge(another made up stat:) ) will stick with you or at least go hide somewhere in the back of your brain.jshpro2 wrote: ...but not the idea of an education system, but I would have to agree with Roja that you won't get pretty fair without a degree, the question is though, does a degree have anything to do with a persons knowledge base and I would have to disagree with anyone that said it does.
edit:
BTW, if you know some complete idiots that got their CS degree that doesn't show that educations are wasted. Rather it shwos one of two things.
1) that school is a joke and don't hire from there.
2) that person cheated the system and should be beaten.
note:
to avoid getting myself reprimanded, hugs and kisses to all you people I made angry