Is it even worth it to learn computer science?

Monkeys,

I'm currently at a large f100 tech company doing corp finance and plan to stay in the tech industry for the near future. However, with that said, I don't plan on doing a bunch of programming but still think it might be good to have a basic foundation.

Do you think its valuable/worth my time to even take a bunch of online courses to learn computer science? Why or why not?

 

At the rate different programming languages go out of style, it wouldn't serve you to learn a specific language. You'd spend too much time and possibly money learning HTML only to learn HTML5 is becoming standard. If you're not a dev, don't learn a language.

You'd be better off spending some time buying IT Project Management for Dummies and reading that. As a corp fin guy, you don't need to program, you just need to be able to speak at a broad level intelligently about the things most important in your industry. No one is going to ask you to program something. But some of the other important things in CS that you prob should care about are things like database structures, general security requirements, etc.

Or you can just specialize in finance and no one will care if you can't program.

 

I'm going to disagree with the above that if you invest time in learning a language that it will be squandered by the rapidly changing tech in development. I learned HTML, CSS, PHP, and MySQL almost a decade ago as a child and built a web app that was used by a few hundred gamers. I eventually burnt out on coding and lost interest, but have recently returned to it in the past month.

A lot has changed. PHP is still very popular, but doesn't have the same stronghold that it once had and has been criticized for being a sloppy language. There have been changes in not only PHP but also HTML. That said, the fundamentals have stuck with me and neither language has changed so drastically that I couldn't start building web apps immediately. Now I am learning Python and the Django framework and have taken a refresher course in HTML and CSS (tons of free resources out there for anything you want to learn). Still as simple as it was when I first learned it. In programming, you're going to see the same things in every language: variables, booleans, for loops, while loops, if/else statements, etc. Learning to do it in one language is going to carry over to most others. The major learning curve is syntax.

If you only intend to keep doing corp fin for the rest of your career, then it may not be that big of a deal if you never learn to code. Although in my opinion, tech is going to replace most of the jobs currently in existence today and I believe that coding will be vital. So vital that kids will be learning to code in elementary just as they will be learning to read, write, and do basic math. I could be wrong, but I think of refusing to learn even the basics of coding is akin to old people not learning how to type and use programs like Excel and Word.

Being in tech, if you have any intentions of leaving corp fin and maybe creating your own start-up one day, coding will most likely be critical unless you can find a technical co-founder (way easier said than done when tech co-founders decide they don't really need you since they're the ones building the product).

 

Thanks for both opinions.

I can't find it right now but there was a TED talk that hit exactly what you pointed out, moneymogul. There are third world countries right now that are teaching kids different languages and the fundamentals of programming in grade school. However, will the basics really be enough to carry me through? There are so many programmers out there that are extremely good at what they do. I don't plan on staying in corp fin for the rest of my career and hope to lateral out in the next year or two, which is why I'm considering taking upon about programming.

Moneymogul, as an experienced coder who just got back into it, any suggestions on a good language to start on and build a base around for the environment today?

 
Best Response

I agree that you (and I) will never compete with engineers who are coding day in and day out at companies like Facebook, Google, etc. However, just learning to code will put you miles ahead of most people. And the way I see it, in terms of building a product, you just need to be able to get a minimally viable product up online which doesn't require great skill, just some know how and creativity. I read an old article about Zuckerberg over at FB. I believe it was written by an old intern joking about how Zuckerberg came down and decided he hadn't coded in a really long time and wanted to fix one of the bugs the engineers were working on. It took him hours to fix something that would have taken the engineers only minutes - as you can imagine, the tools used at FB are behemoths and being out of the loop for even a few months can make it tough to jump back in. I've even read that he wasn't that amazing a coder to begin with, but all it took was the ability to get the thing up and running in order to gain users, raise capital, and hire engineers to handle the day-to-day for him. I'm sure the code behind FB today doesn't look even remotely like what it did when Zuck was doing the heavy lifting.

Python is really popular in the CS community for beginners because there is only one way to write the code (forced indentation), it reads like English, and is object oriented (OOP). You can learn Python as a programming language, and you can learn the Django framework so that you can write Python for the web. Check out http://codecademy.com for a beginner tutorial. Knowing even a little bit is enough to automate data intensive tasks, and the sky is the limit when you know a lot.

 

I think it would be useful to learn a bit of algorithms and data structures at the very least. These fundamental concepts are at the core of computer science and will give you a good understanding of what computer science is and how it works. The language that you choose doesn't matter all that much, although I find python to be very intuitive and beginner-friendly (as suggested above).

Remember you shouldn't be learning computer science for the sake of coding at this point, you're just learning the key fundamentals and how to approach problems.

Check out Coursera for related courses: https://www.coursera.org/course/algo

 

Being a great coder is more about form than the outright function of the language. You can look at a great piece of software that is absolute shit when you look at it from a functional language point of view. If the software/app works then you are okay but if you have to debug it (and you will) you will be fucked because it looks like you puked on a pile of shit and then turned on the blender.

To be a great programmer/coder you need to be highly organized.

Follow the shit your fellow monkeys say @shitWSOsays Life is hard, it's even harder when you're stupid - John Wayne
 

All it buys you is optionality and some signal value of smartness (so long as GPA, etc. don't contradict). Otherwise, banks, etc. mostly won't care that you double majored (and tech firms REALLY won't care).

 

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