Quote:Original post by kiwibonga
if you have prior programming knowledge, you won't learn anything new there... You'll learn the equivalent of 2 weeks of googling each semester. It's a daunting experience. At the end of the program, what you'll have is a degree in making console applications and java applets, with a useless side of systems programming or network programming that you didn't really understand because it was explained poorly.

This is wrong on so many levels, I can't even begin to explain, so I'm not going to try.

Quote:Original post by kiwibonga
I think you guys are taking what I said out of context and applying it to your own experience... I'm talking about what happens when you already have something like 4 years of C and other languages under your belt before you start a CS degree (which is most likely what will happen to the OP, since he's 14 right now)...

Four years? Please. I went into college with about nine years' programming experience, in roughly this order:

QBASIC -> Visual Basic -> Pascal -> C -> C++ -> Java -> VB.NET -> C#

I'm still learning. It is because I know I do know know everything that I continue to learn and grow as a thinker and programmer.

Quote:You already know how to think,

No you don't.

Quote:you already have a strong theoretical background,

No you don't.

Quote:you already have the ability to pick up any programming language "in an afternoon" or over the course of two weeks of googling

Way to miss my point. The fact that you can pick up a programming language quickly means nothing! It's what you do with it that matters.

Quote:and you won't learn anything new in class.

This is simply, entirely, totally wrong. Just off the top of my head:

-How many "good self-taught programmers" know what asymptotic notation is?
-In the same vein, how many know how to mathematically calculate the asymptotic bounds of an algorithm?
-How many understand what a lexer and a compiler actually do? How many can read Backus-Naur and know what it means?

Computer science isn't "hurf durf I can write code."

Quote:I'd really like to know how you guys can justify paying thousands of dollars to do in several years what you could do in several weeks or months for free in your own home. But make sure you consider a scenario where the student already has ample experience, which is what I was referring to.

You can't do that, and that's our point. Your statements are uninformed and arrogant. If you've actually been in a CS program, it's pretty obvious why you didn't get anything out of it--you don't want to.

For Beginners. We're not talking about exceptional cases here. For the vast majority of people a bachelor's of computer science is the best/most common route to a Game Dev job.

Quote:Original post by kiwibonga

Quote:-How many "good self-taught programmers" know what asymptotic notation is?
-In the same vein, how many know how to mathematically calculate the asymptotic bounds of an algorithm?
-How many understand what a lexer and a compiler actually do? How many can read Backus-Naur and know what it means?

None of these are out of reach for someone with a reasonable level of high school math and internet access. It's actually all very well explained in Wikipedia and thousands of other pages...

I am one of these self-taught programmers who knows these three (a bit weak at calcuating algorithm complexity though). And it took me a far cry longer than the standard 4 year university stint to learn up to that point and am unfortunately still nowhere near where a graduating student from a good university is after more than double that time.

The main problem is proving to HR drones, hiring managers, recruiters even that you actually know that stuff. Having no degree drastically hinders the job hunting process and your salary once hired.

Quote:
A passionate games programmer with good learning abilities could do away with it completely.

The exceptional case might. And even then they're going to suffer the consequences of not having that formal training when they do need it, and the general resistance from companies hiring not CS graduates for a CS position.

Sure; programmers will need book smarts and street smarts to be good programmers, but it's tons easier to get street smarts in college than it is to get book smarts without guidance and while juggling a 40 hour work week and the inevitable social/family obligations that come in adulthood.

Quote:Sure; programmers will need book smarts and street smarts to be good programmers, but it's tons easier to get street smarts in college than it is to get book smarts without guidance and while juggling a 40 hour work week and the inevitable social/family obligations that come in adulthood.

Well said, sir.

I really have to disagree again, though perhaps its more with your tone than with what you might actually be trying to convey.

I've been programming in one language or another since I was 11. At the time I was reading books on BASIC and modifying code listings from the book. Over the next several years I progresses through QBASIC and C. Before I was through with high school I had written several small games, as well as several larger games and Utilities. I think my largest project at the time was roughly 120K of sparsely-commented source code. I also wrote an image editor that had support for Photoshop-like image filtering and other non-trivial features. Honestly, I was a decent, I dare say pretty good, programmer -- especially considering I was 17 and entirely self-taught. Had time been shifted just 5 years back for me, I bet I might have been able to land a game programming gig right out of high school.

Still, I learned a metric ass-ton of stuff in college that surely would have escaped me for several years otherwise. In terms of what I put out during college, it was no where near the quantity that I had done in high school, but in terms of what I was learning college wins by an order of magnitude. You seem to imply that college will actually slow down your learning process, and I disagree greatly -- if college slows you down, you've either chosen a poor college or you're a fucking genius. If you only got a year in, you didn't even give it chance enough to get to the interesting stuff.

I'm nearly 25 now so I've been programming for 13+ years to varying degrees. I'm still young with only 3 years out of college. I learn new things and push myself every day. I've most recently been delving into becoming an expert in C++ (by external definition, not my own ego-boosting definition), functional programming, template meta-programming, boost, embedded systems and virtual machines. College really solidified my basis for tackling these topics.

As someone who has amassed a nearly six-figure debt attending college, it was worth every single penny. If there's anything I regret about my education its actually that I didn't attend a more "pure" program before attending the program I did, to have even deeper fundamentals and theory.

Ravyne: Might want to quote something to get an idea of who you're replying to. I know I got confused. :-)