The Computing and IT Curriculum, Why it's failed me and many others - Developers

[QUOTE=Icedshot;41133203]To try and stem the negative tide a little, I'm currently at bristol taking compsci and its pretty good. If you know a lot about programming/computers then its pretty dull, but the course content is at least relevant and mediumly thought out[/QUOTE] Would you say it's worth the £9,000 a year price tag?

I never understood commenting every single line, the point of the documentation is to explain what it does and so on, yes, but you aren't supposed to be teaching the language as well.

So, because [I]you're[/I] depressed, the field you've chosen as your life career failed you?

Frankly, IT in general in this fucking country (The UK) is terrible. You either have the qualifications or fuck off and die.

[QUOTE=Loli;41133679]Would you say it's worth the £9,000 a year price tag?[/QUOTE] Bristol is a pretty good uni, and compsci job prospects are like 90+% employment. On that alone, it probably is. The second and third year of the course are pretty good, though in general its a bit boring if you already know quite a bit about programming/computers If you want to go in to the industry, I suspect at some point along the line it'll probably help a bunch if you have a degree so you don't really have a tremendous amount of choice [editline]22nd June 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Mr_Razzums;41133165]Well because you already know how to code you're going to be ahead that's for sure. Just be ready to deal with the outdated practices and coding standards your university states. Nothings more fun than having to debug a perfectly working program because it won't compile on the schools compiler from 1900. Also be sure to take a good look at the style standards. I've had professors take off 90% of my credit because I didn't bother doing this: [code] /*********************************** *Function Name: get_item *Function purpose: Gets the item *Function Input : nothing. *Function output: 4. *function description: It gets the item *Function author: myself. *Function refrences: none */********************************* public int get_item() //function name { //this is the start of the function return 2+2; //this is the line of code that gets the item } // this is the end of the function [/code] [editline]21st June 2013[/editline] But honestly, its fine once you get past the bullshit and you understand why you're there.[/QUOTE] At my uni, all you need is a few (sensible) comments here and there and you get by pretty fine. I submitted an essentially completely uncommented verilog emulator for arm, and it didn't receive any criticism because the code was self documenting (obvious module names, code was well structured) Some uni's might be particularly bad for this, but I suspect they aren't all the same

I gave up on college because there was too much bullshit. The only way I would go back is if I can take just the classes I want(CS/Math/English). I might take a few classes(no credits) for the sake of learning something new. But aside from that I find college in America pointless for a CS career. The only thing a degree is going to do is help you get your foot in the door more easily. Once you have 1-2 years of actual work experience your degree is kind of meaningless(depending on the company/degree). Although I guess it also depends on where you live. Luckily I live near Boston which has some good startups. If you live in the middle of fucking nowhere you will have a bit of trouble finding something without a degree. I'm 21 making 65k/year with no degree(Software developer at stable 'startup'). I'm probably a bit underpaid but oh well. Working for a nice company is much more important than money to me. Although I hope to be making 6 figures within 5 years. I guess I'll see how that goes(more than half way there in under 1 year).

English IT education is in a depressing state. In high school IT was a optional choice which I made the mistake of taking, all it consisted of was being handed a set of guides and being told to get on with it, all the curriculum covered was really basic usage of Word and Excel, which people still struggled with. I've just finished college and an ICT A-level which is so unfocused and badly done to the point where the exam board would define something 3 times, each time differently, in their mark scheme so it didn't come down to whether or not you knew your stuff it depended on what that years mark scheme was. Regardless of that, the syllabus doesn't actually teach you anything useful in the slightest. I wish I could've done something like computing instead, even if it's not up to standard, I would absolutely love to learn how to program, its why I spend a large amount of time in this section marvelling at what everyone here does, I just can't motivate myself to do it. It would've helped if the IT courses offered in education contained some form of programming, it may have given me the kick start I need, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that. I know there is Computing, but for those of us who get let down by grades and aren't let into such courses, even if we could compete with those who do get said grades, it would be nice if there was some alternative in place in the education system. On another note, I have heard talk that the IT based subjects at GCSE are getting reformed to be more useful, not sure if that's right, or if it is how much they'll improve it, I can't say I have much faith in those responsible for running the education system.

The Computer Science program at the college I've gone to seems alright. I had to take a 100 level class at first with some basic Java and C++ programming, which I did well in, and then some other courses with discrete mathematics, run-time analysis, and a sort of computer engineering course where we designed an 8-bit CPU. I can't really complain about the courses themselves. I have, however, just felt really disconnected from the whole system. I should, in theory, be graduating in a year, maybe a year and a half, but I'm nowhere near that. I've technically failed the same course 5 times in a row at this point, building up momentum at the beginning of a semester then just falling flat on my face. My first year went well, but beyond that I've been hitting a brick wall again and again, coursework wise. In the mean time I've been working with my own code and messing with hardware and software, but it seems like it's impossible to find any sort of tech-related job without a degree of some sort. I don't even really know where to look. Maybe I'm just awful and wasting really good resources compared to what a lot of other people in this thread have access to, but I just can't make it work.

[QUOTE=Zazibar;41125956]I also remember one of the questions on my IT GCSE paper was "Name a web browser". :pwn:[/QUOTE] I wonder what the mark scheme was like for that. Wonder if you got the marks for writing a more obscure answer, like 'lynx' or 'midori'.

[url]http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html[/url] [url]http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html[/url] [url]http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_how_to_escape_education_s_death_valley.html[/url] [url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJAIERgWhZQ[/url] In my opinion university is about learning how to learn and not learning things. This is especially true for more math oriented courses (the best one in this sense being a math major itself), but gets a bit lost in computer science, since some teachers will focus on teaching things instead of teaching learning. It's a subtle difference but it's of huge importance. It's the difference between teachers demanding every function to be commented or to never use global variables and grading you based on how well you did that, and teachers who give you that advice and explain why it exists and when it makes sense comment something or to use global variables. Luckily my university isn't too bad when it comes to that: some teachers really understand it and work hard towards a better experience for everyone, but others don't. I also think university is about learning more about yourself. Be it via dropping out and realizing that you don't really like the way classes work (which is a very valid complaint, I don't feel particularly good or have the necessary attention span to listen to someone talk for one hour), or finishing it and finding out that that's not really what you want and then starting another major in a completely unrelated field, or getting mostly As and figuring out that you really like academia and research, whatever. What's really important is figuring out something that you really like doing and figuring out if that thing can support you throughout your life or not. If not for that one university class where I had to make a game as a project I'm not sure if I'd have ever made one (I'm not a really curious person, so just doing things randomly without a proper goal isn't really my thing) and I wouldn't have found out that making games was the best thing ever. So yea, it can be useful but it can have a lot of BS too. It really depends on who you are as a person, the environment at your particular university, the people you meet, and so on...

In my final year of high school, primarily for the 'programming' class [for this class we study SQL one year and programming VB the other] This year was the VB so I was stoked, I already taught myself basic VB/ and a bit more C++ so I'm not new to programming. Doing basic stuff, me and my mate (also self taugh novice programmer) are like "yeah nah, let's make our own stuff" so he subtracts from the curriculum to make his own crypter or something and I just go off and do random stuff in C++ (teach myself that instead of be taught how to move a box from left to right for 4 months). a month ago I get a letter in the mail saying I am getting expelled from high school (I just stopped caring about the classes, I was submitting assignments but apparently sitting there teaching yourself your own thing isn't right) which is of course fair enough, so they suggested I take a course in software development (tertiary education) so I accept and I am now waiting for that class, I assume it will have like minded people in it but the college I'm going to seems pretty sketchy! <b>tl;dr got kicked out of school because the pace was too slow for me and am now doing a certificate 4 in software development</b> I assume this class will be 'how to use unity' or something like that. What language should I expect to be taught in a low level course such as this one? Doctorate>Masters>Bachelors>Diploma>Certificate 4>high school

[QUOTE=Two-Bit;41167393]In my final year of high school, primarily for the 'programming' class [for this class we study SQL one year and programming VB the other] This year was the VB so I was stoked, I already taught myself basic VB/ and a bit more C++ so I'm not new to programming. Doing basic stuff, me and my mate (also self taugh novice programmer) are like "yeah nah, let's make our own stuff" so he subtracts from the curriculum to make his own crypter or something and I just go off and do random stuff in C++ (teach myself that instead of be taught how to move a box from left to right for 4 months). a month ago I get a letter in the mail saying I am getting expelled from high school (I just stopped caring about the classes, I was submitting assignments but apparently sitting there teaching yourself your own thing isn't right) which is of course fair enough, so they suggested I take a course in software development (tertiary education) so I accept and I am now waiting for that class, I assume it will have like minded people in it but the college I'm going to seems pretty sketchy! <b>tl;dr got kicked out of school because the pace was too slow for me and am now doing a certificate 4 in software development</b> I assume this class will be 'how to use unity' or something like that. What language should I expect to be taught in a low level course such as this one? Doctorate>Masters>Bachelors>Diploma>Certificate 4>high school[/QUOTE] Unity? C#, Javascript or Boo if they hate you.

[url]http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/201/spring13/standards.shtml[/url] lol

I remember having to write about "Web Server Scripting Ethics".

[QUOTE]Finally I was going to take a course about programming and I couldn't wait to meet like minded people and geek out about code...[/QUOTE] Honestly with this and the general feeling I get from your post (asking irrelevant questions) it seems to me like you're acknowledging that you're more well read on some subjects but not doing anything about it. If you think the apprenticeship you're doing is useless why don't you stop doing it and apply for a real job with portfolio of personal projects which I assume you have? Education isn't about teaching you it's about you teaching yourself and then proving that you've done so afterwards. Why don't you go to university and work your way up to a PhD since you're so enthusiastic about it? That's what you really seem to be into.

[QUOTE=adnzzzzZ;41188010][url]http://www.csee.umbc.edu/courses/201/spring13/standards.shtml[/url] lol[/QUOTE] [quote]Using break and continue is not allowed in any of your code for this class. Using these statements damages the readability of your code. Readability is a quality necessary for easy code maintenance.[/quote] Other than that it seems fairly reasonable.

[QUOTE=Tamschi;41193917]Other than that it seems fairly reasonable.[/QUOTE] Like I said in my previous post, I don't think grading people on style choices and half justified rules is reasonable. All functions and all files with all those comments? That's highly retarded. No global variables? Retarded. 80-width wrapping? My point is not even about some of the arbitrary standards, it's just having people follow them with no clear explanation and no way to break out of one of them when it makes sense (since you're being graded on those very specific requirements). Only later on you'll actually realize why people decided that you shouldn't use goto or break or continue, if you even do. I think it's just better to let people do whatever they want and then point out their mistakes to them. Of course, this would take much more time from TAs, so it's just easier to ban break.

[QUOTE=AngryChairR;41193709]Honestly with this and the general feeling I get from your post (asking irrelevant questions) it seems to me like you're acknowledging that you're more well read on some subjects but not doing anything about it. If you think the apprenticeship you're doing is useless why don't you stop doing it and apply for a real job with portfolio of personal projects which I assume you have? Education isn't about teaching you it's about you teaching yourself and then proving that you've done so afterwards. Why don't you go to university and work your way up to a PhD since you're so enthusiastic about it? That's what you really seem to be into.[/QUOTE] I have applied for a new job, and I've got an interview on Friday purely from my portfolio and general attitude towards programming as a whole. The question about University is a tough one for me, IT/Computing education has put me way off doing any more of it. I've had a few friends at Uni studying CS and they too have found it pretty dull... Well, the ones who have previous programming experience have at the very least and a few who haven't have found it too slow. If I don't get this job then I will be approaching the head of training at my "Company" and trying to come to some sort of agreement to get it sorted so we only teach the important shit. This week alone they have been teaching the use of inline styles in html/css... If I got a website of a company that used inline styles I would flip my shit. I would like to get a degree at some point in the future but I certainly don't want to do it now because of what's happened to me in the past.

I think college education in this industry is overrated. I have been employed as a developer by a number of different companies as an employee and on a freelance basis since I was 16 and I never went to college for it. I'm 22 now and still going strong. I've never even written a resume in my life and have had a job since I was 16, because I am passionate about what I do and it shows. If I was hiring I would choose someone who programs as a hobby and is self-motivated/self-educated over someone who just got a comp-sci degree any day, and I've heard the same thing from a lot of people who do hiring for companies around me. A degree doesn't hurt, and can help you get past the HR door if you're trying to work for bigger companies (which I don't particularly want to do), but it's definitely not crucial.

A perspective from a (Canadian) Ivy League student ([url=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/youre-spoiled-for-choice-with-canadian-universities/article601014/]Toronto[/url])... Got into programming during first year, first semester of (now) [url=http://www.arwu.org/SubjectCS2010.jsp]Comp. Engineering[/url], had [url=http://iqua.ece.toronto.edu/bli/]this guy[/url] as my prof. Didn't bore me for a second, learned a ton of programming very fast from almost nothing. The difference between a top university and a college in education is significant. It's hard to generalize most "programming degrees" as they can vary hugely.

I'm fairy decent at programming with C++, C, and ASM; however, I decided not to pursue a career in CS because I don't want to spend my time writing mind numbing code for a company, I like the puzzle aspect of it like someone else said.

Wow, and I was going to write about how terrible the French educational system is. Didn't realize it was that bad for you guys. College is actually kinda decent here, the only thing that really pisses me off is the fact that most of our teachers are actually researchers, so they know a lot of shit but are terrible at explaining it. That and the fact that they keep trying to drag us into their circle. Seriously, two of them keep trying to get me to do a thesis once I get my master's degree simply because I'm a good student. All of our projects also have to be research-oriented, so most of the work comes from searching for research publications, understanding them, and implementing them. They just don't understand that some of us just don't want to become researchers. They are also terrible at organizing their courses. Like seriously, this is our last year and we were supposed to learn signal processing, 3D geometry processing, real time rendering and virtual reality but ended up learning only half of it because they wasted the entire first semester with courses that were literally copied from last year, just in case we forgot everything. We have about 2 hours of applied exercises for 6 hours of pure theory courses, and the exercises usually involve the teacher giving us an incomplete project, telling us to implement its features and then just sitting there doing nothing, without even giving us any documentation or whatsoever. We literally had to use Google to learn how to implement shaders in OpenGL. What? As a result 80% of my class ended up being completely lost and they frequently asked me for help because I'd be the only one who would bother googling for things I wouldn't understand. We recently received the results of our final exams and I'm fairly sure they had to bump all the marks up just so everyone doesn't drop out. I remember having a 13/20 (you need to have more than 6/20 in all subjects and a total average of 10/20 in order to pass) that I clearly didn't deserve because the exam was entirely about the theory bullshit (such as the integral formula that dictates how light bounces off surfaces in a scene) that our teacher would casually spew out during class and that no one would remember. Now I'm stuck in a 5 months internship in an enterprise that my teacher "recommended" to me (because the CEO is one of his friends), where I have to make a compression algorithm for height maps (it's supposed to be related to 3D rendering?) for some kind of plane simulator and I don't know what kind of job I'm going to get afterwards. It's all about airplanes and military applications in this city and I just don't want to work on that. I'd love to make games but we all know how amazing France is when it comes to video games, plus from what I gathered, working conditions are absolutely horrendous in most French game studios. But hey, at least college was free and I learned tons interesting things, although I can't even remember if it was thanks to the teachers or thanks to Google. Also sorry for my limited educational vocabulary, it's pretty funny that I've been here for almost 6 years and yet there are still words that I have trouble translating in English. :v: [editline]dicks[/editline] We also had a Game Design course a few months before the final exams, and our teacher was an Austrian lady who didn't speak French and used Farmville and Angry Birds as examples. We ended up designing a prototype for a mobile game. For 40 year-olds. With play dough. Never again.

Honestly, I absolutely [b]love[/b] my CS classes at Western Washington University, in Washington State. I just finished up my first year, and it was great. Because I've done three years of community college (two years for an Associate of the Arts 2-year degree, and a third year for doing just Calculus), I have absolutely no bullshit classes I had/have to take. Literally, the only classes I need are a year of Physics (I could have done it at my community college, but there was only one professor for all of the sciences and I took one quarter with him and decided I'd take Physics at uni), and then I needed 2 more math/science courses, which I finished up my Fall and Winter quarters (did Mathematical Probability & Statistical Inference, and Computational Analysis; both [b]really[/b] fun classes, by the way!). All I have left is the core CS curriculum. I was given the choice of skipping the 100-level series of CS courses completely, because of my extensive experience with programming, but I elected to take them anyways. Partly because the language my uni uses is one I've never used before (Ada 95, :v:), and partly because I don't know anyone and didn't want to jump into higher-level classes as a complete stranger. I have to say, that was probably the best choice I could have made. The lectures were boring as all hell, just being PowerPoint presentations talking about simple theory (When to use a For loop over a While loop; What is recursion? How to rewrite recursive functions iteratively; things like that), but the programming assignments were great fun. Every week we'd have a programming assignment, and they'd take me, with my seven or so years of programming experience, about 2 hours to complete - and not because of repetitive bullshit, but because of how comprehensive they had to be. One of the things we had to build in my intro-level programming 1 course was a brute-forcing Sudoku solver, which for some reason pissed me off to no end. I could get the programming side down, but the algorithm refused to work right for me. We also did a lot of cyphers - ROT13, Playfair Square, a few others. We even had to build a full mathematical expression interpretor, using expression trees, in my Data Structures class. A lot of people didn't like the 100-level classes for that, claiming they were way too much work, but I honestly think it's a good thing - they weeded out a [b]lot[/b] of the people who decided it wasn't worth the effort, which I think is good for the department. Especially since the department is really understaffed at the moment, due to the fact its student count almost doubled in size in the past two years. I also managed, through some real convincing, to skip directly into a 300-level CS course. It was funny because the chain of progression was 141 -> 145 -> 301; I managed to take 301 and 141 concurrently. My advisor was really concerned for me, but I convinced her I could do it. My friends were similarly concerned, and a good few people who got into that class through the natural progression had a hard time with it. I ended up getting the highest score on both the midterm and the final, and I would have had a 100% in the class if I had actually bothered to finish the final homework assignment. The professor later told me that I was one of the most successful students he had ever had in that class. Which I find hilarious, because from beginning to end of that course, my thought process was literally "I have no idea what I'm doing, I have no idea what I'm reading, I have no idea what the professor is talking about, oh god I'm going to fail this class, oh god I hope this is right, wait how the fuck did I get 100% [after curving; was highest score] on this exam?" The [b]entire[/b] time. Needless to say, I actually learned a lot from the class, and despite all the confusion, I found it really interesting. The class was on automata theory, and I find the theory and construction of finite automata to be really cool. I think it was my interest in that class that was the only thing that pulled me through that class. I just finished up my Computer Systems class, which is widely considered one of the three hardest classes in the entire course, taught by one of the harshest professors throughout the entire university. I had heard horror stories of how it wasn't unusual having to take the class twice just to get the C required to have the class count toward your degree. I found the class [b]extremely[/b] interesting, and paid rapt attention to the lectures. I thought I had a really strong handle on most of the things we discussed in class, and I read the book to clarify any points I wasn't confident on, but the exams were complete side-winders. When a raw 38% on the mid-term (what I got) is above the class average (of 35%), out of 31 students, then... well... I don't think I need to say any more about that. Needless to say, I finished the class with a raw 68% (one of the highest scores, actually), and ended up getting a solid B in the class. I was excited that I passed the class, let alone got a B. I talked with my advisor a lot over this past year about planning out my schedule (mostly because of my jumping into CS 301 so early fucking up the progression; most all of the high-level classes are major-locked, and they require that Computer Systems class to declare the major), and we have decided on a course that should not overload me with the "hard" CS classes. Any doubts my advisor had about my ability to do the work evaporated once she saw how well I did in 301, and any lingering doubts have faded since, seeing how well I have done in my subsequent classes. I don't consider myself a great university student. I go to lecture every day, I write down most everything the professor says (in my own words), and I always pay attention no matter how boring the lecture may be. Sometimes I read the book (usually the three days before an exam), and I only really try to do my homework if it's for a grade (most classes, it is not collected, but is merely "practice at your own convenience"). if I don't finish it, I at least attempt it. Usually. I don't study very hard (my study habit for finals is generally 1 hour of studying, 1 hour of games, alternating), and I don't have that great of a memory. However, I just focus on key things and memorize patterns (Deterministic and Nondeterministic Finite Automata? Nondeterministics have the Lambda transition, so Deterministics don't; things like that), and then hope to high Hell I at least pass the exams. To all the people who are nervous about their future CS courses, I would say "don't be afraid." Every school is different. Every professor is different. Every student is different. You can't really look at others' experiences and expect yours to be like them. All I can say is "go in with a positive attitude and a strong resolve; school-related stress is as much a self-inflicted mental state as it is actual stress."

[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;41236132] Which I find hilarious, because from beginning to end of that course, my thought process was literally "I have no idea what I'm doing, I have no idea what I'm reading, I have no idea what the professor is talking about, oh god I'm going to fail this class, oh god I hope this is right, wait how the fuck did I get 100% [after curving; was highest score] on this exam?" The [b]entire[/b] time. [/QUOTE] In my uni some of the teachers treated students in a way where you could almost know from day 1 if they were going to fail you or not, based on their bigoted views and attitude towards you which would become increasingly clear as you endured the year and approached the exams. Some of the teachers even went as far as insulting the students in well thought out ways as well as bringing in three teachers from several similar departments to drown your opinions on what you did on the exam to combat any ambiguous correction or grey area in the exam that could have easily been unfairly marked.

I'm currently in Secondary School right now, (English High School) and I've been longing to do some real IT work in ICT since a much younger age. But all we do is learn fucking Scratch, which I taught myself in primary school, some minor database work (All very simple stuff) and I'm currently making animations with webcams through: "[URL="http://www.kudlian.net/products/icananimatev2/Home.html"]ICanAnimate 2[/URL]" which was designed for primary school children. It's no wonder people of my generation can barely open Microsoft Word these days. I'm just hoping they start teaching us something useful in my last few years here as I really do not want to go to College, take some courses in I.T and know absolutely nothing about anything.

[QUOTE=Vasey105;41237532]I'm currently in Secondary School right now, (English High School) and I've been longing to do some real IT work in ICT since a much younger age. But all we do is learn fucking Scratch, which I taught myself in primary school, some minor database work (All very simple stuff) and I'm currently making animations with webcams through: "[URL="http://www.kudlian.net/products/icananimatev2/Home.html"]ICanAnimate 2[/URL]" which was designed for primary school children. It's no wonder people of my generation can barely open Microsoft Word these days. I'm just hoping they start teaching us something useful in my last few years here as I really do not want to go to College, take some courses in I.T and know absolutely nothing about anything.[/QUOTE] Scratch? My so called "IT Specialised Secondary School" didn't even talk about anything like programming.

[QUOTE=hogofwar;41238780]Scratch? My so called "IT Specialised Secondary School" didn't even talk about anything like programming.[/QUOTE] Mine is "[Redacted] College of Technology" too, but I've never done anything that's made me think: "This is why we're a College of Technology."

[QUOTE=Vasey105;41239187]Mine is "[Redacted] College of Technology" too, but I've never done anything that's made me think: "This is why we're a College of Technology."[/QUOTE] Haha! I went to one of those technology schools, too. The general education classes were sub-par and the only thing we did IT-wise was learn how to write plain HTML and CSS. No javascript, no higher level languages, just HTML with a tiny bit of CSS. We also learnt to 'troubleshoot' the mysterious defrag system created by the almighty Microsoft. Yeah, I transferred back to normal school after the first semester.

uhhh if you don't have a degree and work with someone who does you're probably going to be looked down upon because you won't understand and be familiar with graph theory/common algorithms drilled into you by CS. I really doubt self-taught programmers are familiar with implementing dijkstra/kruskal, various optimization problems, max flow, etc. Real Programming positions require this knowledge because you're trying to solve new problems, not just pump out some web app. I mean for people like kmart: there is a difference between being a grunt programmer for a startup and actually doing scientific problem solving that you really need a formal education to understand.

[QUOTE=Soda;41277211]I mean for people like kmart: there is a difference between being a grunt programmer for a startup and actually doing scientific problem solving that you really need a formal education to understand.[/QUOTE] I'm not really doing grunt work, I get to make calls every week that shape the future of the company. Hell, this week I told the CEO what I think we should be doing and that's exactly what we're doing this week. This feels way less like grunt work than working for a huge corporation to me because I'm not just having things to code handed down to me. I'm involved in the entire process, which is why I like working for smaller companies. In a given week I can be doing everything from sketching UX wireframes in a notebook, to doing photoshop mockups of a new checkout process, to developing complex conversion testing frameworks. I like to wear a lot of hats and startups like the one I'm at now let me do that. You don't miss that stuff if you're properly self-educating yourself. I make a point of buying and reading CS textbooks. I easily spend $600 a year on books. The fact that I prefer working on web apps (I enjoy design a lot as well and I get to do a lot of design working on web apps) doesn't mean that I don't have the ability to do big boy stuff too. The whole mindset that you "need a formal education" to understand certain things is silly. There is a big difference between self-educated developers who taught themselves how to write a blog in PHP and consider themselves programmers now, and people who are constantly striving to improve their knowledge and expand their skill set. I've worked with quite a few devs with CS degrees that can't program their way out of a box because they just got degrees to get jobs, and aren't actually all that passionate about what they do. I think the hallmark of being a good developer is being a tenacious problem solver, not having a piece of paper that says you studied graph theory 3 years ago. If I don't know something, I know I can figure it out, and that's part of the reason I am good at what I do. I'm not going to look down on another developer because they don't know anything about UX or design or marketing or business development. If someone is going to look down on me because I didn't get that piece of paper I probably don't want to work with them in the first place.