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

[Loli]

So, this is something I've been interested in for quite a while and I really think I need your opinion before I go any further with this.

I've experienced the education system from three sides and I'd like to discuss them with you: The formal education route (High School, College), The not so formal education route (NVQ/Apprenticeships) and the DIY approach (Use in the internet, books, contacts and learn what you can at your own pace) and I have to say that two thirds of these have failed me and many other people. But before I beign I'd like to give you some background information on myself, which I'm sure you'll all be able to relate to. I would like to point out that I will not name the current company I work for or any of the colleges/schools I have attended, it may not be their fault that they have failed so many (in actual fact I believe it isn't) and I don't want to give anybody a bad reputation.

I started to learn to program at the age of 8. I first started with a Microsoft Front Page (Don't hate me) and learned to develop websites through a drag and drop interface, I quickly found that this was flawed and through this tool I finally got my head round HTML. This was pretty cool and I fell in love with the idea of being able to do things myself. I quickly moved from HTML to CSS to Javascript to a real programming language (or so I thought at the time): Visual Basic. I would also like to point out here that although I thought I was the Bees Knees at the time looking back I was utter shite, I knew how the box model worked and a few other things about web development but I had literally no idea what was ahead of me. So here I am, Learning Visual Basic 2008 in my spare time and learning how to use tables to develop a website in formal education (At High School), already I was finding the formal education system (dull and boring) and most of all out of date. By the time I'd hit my final year at High School (Y11 for the younger of us and 5th year for the older of you) I was fluent in a number of different languages. Python, C#, Visual Basic, HTML, PHP, C#, CSS, HTML, PHP, Ruby as well as a handful of other languages. What did my friends have knowledge of? Basic HTML (They knew what a tag was), Microsoft Office and maybe a bit of PHP for the few of my friends who were interested in code. As I'm sure many of you have experienced, High School ICT was pretty useless and hadn't really encouraged anyone to do anything outside of Windows/Microsoft Office.

I came out of my GCSE's with a couple of A*'s, A's, B's and one C... I was chuffed.

Brilliant, I'd got into the college I wanted to go to (it was pretty prestigious) and been accepted onto the courses I wanted to do (Mathematics, Physics, Computer Science and Music) and I was more excited than ever. 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... How wrong I was. I arrive at college and within my first week realize I absolutely hated it. The problem with a prestigious college is it attracts very arrogant people (I really hope that doesn't sound arrogant itself) who either got there through hard work or because their parents have more money than sense. Bollocks. The year that followed was probably one of the lowest points in my life and I'm about to share a story with you that I have never shared with anyone in my life. I'd hit a low point, I hated a majority of the people round me, Life at home wasn't brilliant and the college work was so dull that I just didn't have any motivation to continue. I saw a doctor and was diagnosed with depression, I even tried to kill myself once or twice. This isn't something I am proud of and I really do consider it the lowest point in my life, I am not at all proud of this and yet nor am I ashamed of this. Anyway, I carried on for the rest of the year (from December onwards) through to August. I did reasonably well in my exams and got reasonable grades. I thought I could stick this out for another year. This August I attended my first ever Hack Week (YRS 2012) and re-found my passion for programming and general geekery.

Eventually I stopped caring of what the people round me thought about me, I came off anti-depressants and really just didn't care about my academic studies at all. My grades and attendance seriously suffered. They suffered so much that I actually completely failed my Physics course and left college (and formal education as a whole) seeking for a drastic change in my life. Thankfully something awesome came up, an apprenticeship in Software Development... Awesome, I could do what I've wanted to do for a while and earn some money whilst learning how the commercial world of programming works. I finally chose that this was what I wanted to do and got the job, needless to say I was ecstatic about getting the job. I was finally going to start my career programming... Sort of.

The first few weeks I did Health and Safety... Alright, that's bearable... Then I did hardware... Alright, I'd built computers before but this was pretty fun... Then I did Network Security, this is where it started to fall apart. I've been interested in computer security for a long time and I'm reasonably skilled in Metasploit/Penetration Testing. The stuff we were being taught wouldn't help us protect a network and wasn't even relevant. In fact, when I asked the trainer "So... Say, for example, somebody had cloned your MAC address, how would we protect against that?" As well as a number of other Security/Pen Testing questions, he couldn't answer pretty much 80% of them and when I asked him the question about MAC addresses he said "Well chances are that will never happen so I don't see why you're asking that..." Shit. How could someone be that Naive? Why were we being taught out of date and irrelevant information in an apprenticeship, something that prides itself on giving you real world experience rather than out of date information. From here I moved to some basic HTML/CSS/Javascript stuff... We were traversing the DOM using pure Javascript, no jQuery. For those of you who aren't really up to date with your web stuff: jQuery is used in pretty much every development company and is insanely powerful. Thankfully at this point the company had realized I was considerably more competent than a lot of the other people they had employed (One of the people they employed recieved a grade B in GCSE IT but had never written a line of code in their life nor did they know how to run a virus scan) and created a plan to get me through the course faster than most.

Recently I have found myself working with MS Excel (It's part of the course) and although I don't find it dull, the assignments are very ambiguous and unclear. I have some serious concerns that by the end of the course very few people will actually have knowledge of programming languages and even less of a chance of actually being able to develop something to a client specification. Again, I'm not sure if it's the companies fault for not spending enough time on the more complicated subjects (eg. Java/Web Development) and spending a little to much time on the bullshit (eg. Health and Safety, we spent nearly 3 weeks on this and we're only due to spend 2 weeks learning Java) or the curriculum's fault for being way behind the times. My main concern is the companies reputation... What if everybody comes out of this, looks for another job and word gets round that people from [COMPANY NAME] can't develop for shit... What then? What are the chances of getting a job from this?

So now we're in present day, I'm looking for another job and trying to find a way out of this company as I don't trust it. I don't enjoy going to "work" anymore and don't feel like doing much development when I get home of an evening. It's a real shame as I know that the course is putting other people way off development. Programming has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me and I'm more than a little upset that the education system as a whole is putting people off it.

I'd like to know if anybody else has opinions or experience on this. How was your education? do you feel let down by the IT/Computing curriculum? How far did you take your education and where about did it actually become interesting for you personally.

[B][U]tl;dr[/U] The education of IT and Computing has failed me and many others, I want your opinion on this statement.[/B]

[nixnax123]

A lot of people don't necessarily need teachers / a classroom environment to learn, especially when it comes to programming. I'm going to college to major in EE/CS, just because I feel like I'm not getting anywhere by myself.

[Loli]

[QUOTE=NixNax123;41117639]A lot of people don't necessarily need teachers / a classroom environment to learn, especially when it comes to programming. I'm going to college to major in EE/CS, just because I feel like I'm not getting anywhere by myself.[/QUOTE]

I fully agree with this, it's kind of annoying that this isn't the way that both companies (majority) and governments don't think. Computing/IT is very different to a lot of subjects in the fact that you can learn more than any one person could ever teach you just by taking online tutorials or reading a book.

[B][U]edit
[/U][/B]To build upon this point, I spent around 2 months reading a book on Java and learnt more than 18 months of college taught me.

[nixnax123]

[QUOTE=Loli;41117730]I fully agree with this, it's kind of annoying that this isn't the way that both companies (majority) and governments don't think. Computing/IT is very different to a lot of subjects in the fact that you can learn more than any one person could ever teach you just by taking online tutorials or reading a book.[/QUOTE]

I mainly want a classroom environment with other people because I have a hard time applying my knowledge, and want to work with other people and learn from them. I just don't want to feel isolated.

[Loli]

[QUOTE=NixNax123;41117762]I mainly want a classroom environment with other people because I have a hard time applying my knowledge, and want to work with other people and learn from them. I just don't want to feel isolated.[/QUOTE]

It's funny you should say that because I feel that's what's happening to a lot of (for want of a better word) kids. It's the main reason Young Rewired State was introduced in the UK, there are hack days and social days for 18+ all over the world, but what about the younger hackers? Mostly they are left to become bedroom programmers.

[Hogofwar]

I just finished college, and did awful at it. I couldn't motivate myself to do the actual work on time or decently (my fault, I think), even though I pretty much already knew everything.

The programming/stuff they taught wasn't particularly good, they just gave use code to try and stick together, they didn't even talk about how to troubleshoot from errors or crap like that.

[Loli]

[QUOTE=hogofwar;41117997]I just finished college, and did awful at it. I couldn't motivate myself to do the actual work on time or decently (my fault, I think), even though I pretty much already knew everything.

The programming/stuff they taught wasn't particularly good, they just gave use code to try and stick together, they didn't even talk about how to troubleshoot from errors or crap like that.[/QUOTE]

I know exactly where you're coming from. This happened to me too. The first year was just being given code and being asked to utilize it to the best of our ability... Not write our own code or find ways of doing things better. Second year was a little more interesting but at the beginning of the year we spent around 6 weeks on If statements. I'm still not sure how that was possible but apparently it was.

[Valrox]

It's not the educational system. It's important to start looking for relevant jobs during studies and pick the right extra classes and hobbies. I'm studying IT but wanted to specialize in IT Security. I eventually found myself a part-time job at a relevant company. Keep updating my LinkedIN and CV etc. Now, I keep getting job offers due to my experience at IT-security related companies + hobby projects I can demonstrate. I think it was a good choice during the days, but mostly based on luck. You need to choose the subjects that not many people want/can do. Knowing how to develop in C# doesn't mean anything when a million others can do the same (example). You need some sort of added value and this can only be found outside of the 'basic' package Universities/school offer you.

[jamie]

So I went to a "specialist" secondary school, Got a merit in some GCSE equivalent IT qualification and mostly Cs and Bs. I diden't really revise or push my self and I was thinking: "At college I'm going to learn SO much more and really enjoy it". I was SO wrong. The amount of people in my class who do nothing or disrupt the class is unbelievable. I'm doing an Extended Diploma in IT. I want to get a D*D*D* and have just finished my first year with 9 Distinctions. I've gone into my course heads office twice now asking for a withdrawal form and ended up taking 2-3 week breaks because the people in the class and the content. I was very close to not getting the 9 Distinctions and barly scraping my way through because my motivation and worth ethic died. During one of my breaks I even tried to apply for an apprenticeship but was denied because I technically live in Wales not England (also hardly any Welsh apprentiships :( )

I can sit down for a week and learn more then College has ever taught me and I find that so frustrating. Our programming teacher teaches VB and I diden't want to learn it because it was not challenging me and so I started learning C#. I'm semi-decent at C# and PHP, ect ect. I've been working on Open Source Projects and stuff but I feel if I was being taught in college by someone who knew what they were doing I would benefit alot more. Some lessons I sit there doing nothing because my work ethic is so bad yet I'm able to complete the course in a few weeks.

[B][U]tl;dr: education in england sucks :([/U][/B]

[Hogofwar]

[QUOTE=jamie1130;41120532]So I went to a "specialist" secondary school, Got a merit in some GCSE equivalent IT qualification and mostly Cs and Bs. I diden't really revise or push my self and I was thinking: "At college I'm going to learn SO much more and really enjoy it". I was SO wrong. The amount of people in my class who do nothing or disrupt the class is unbelievable. I'm doing an Extended Diploma in IT. I want to get a D*D*D* and have just finished my first year with 9 Distinctions. I've gone into my course heads office twice now asking for a withdrawal form and ended up taking 2-3 week breaks because the people in the class and the content. I was very close to not getting the 9 Distinctions and barly scraping my way through because my motivation and worth ethic died. During one of my breaks I even tried to apply for an apprenticeship but was denied because I technically live in Wales not England (also hardly any Welsh apprentiships :( )

I can sit down for a week and learn more then College has ever taught me and I find that so frustrating. Our programming teacher teaches VB and I diden't want to learn it because it was not challenging me and so I started learning C#. I'm semi-decent at C# and PHP, ect ect. I've been working on Open Source Projects and stuff but I feel if I was being taught in college by someone who knew what they were doing I would benefit alot more. Some lessons I sit there doing nothing because my work ethic is so bad yet I'm able to complete the course in a few weeks.

[B][U]tl;dr: education in england sucks :([/U][/B][/QUOTE]

BTEC? Keep up with actually doing the work, unlike me who procrastinated and did hardly any distinctions, which I regret so much. Try and do the work as early as possible so you don't have to worry about them later.

For practical assignments: Do the bare minimum for each part to get the distinction for it (or merits, or just a pass and so on). You get awarded nothing more for going above or beyond, and can actually bring you down/cause more problems than it is worth. Doing the bare minimum is probably not a good ethic for actual work or university (maybe), but it's the sad truth of BTEC.

At least you probably don't have a teacher whose method for teaching are w3schools quizzes.

[razzums]

[QUOTE=Loli;41117598]...[/QUOTE]

I think I know how you feel.

I started University like 3-4 years ago, I don't even remember anymore. 4 years ago I was going to a local University with zero background in programming. I don't even why I was pursing a major in computer science in the first place. My whole life is a blur so I don't even know why I stuck with it.

After 2 years I've gained enough academic knowledge to make a linked list and use a switch statement to make a fucking loan interest calculator in a UNIX console. This was the level of knowledge that 90% of the student base is capable of.

Because my home town is technically retarded, I managed to get a job at a local web development firm with ZERO experience in the web development. I basically got the job by letting the employer know that I am a proficient (lie) programmer in the c++ language because I went to [i]university[/i].

After a year in the web development industry I became very bitter towards my company. My firm would charge 150-200$ /h for a website for a mom and pop bakery. I eventually got tired of only being assigned to do wordpress and CMS shit so I left.

After finding out that my University is an non accredited computer science University, I ended up applying for transfer to a more "prestigious" university within my state. This spring was my first semester there, and let me tell you what, now I truly hate University.

I didn't find the students that arrogant, but the professors are so full of themselves its unreal. I ended up having to retake Data structures because it didn't transfer. The course concepts were entirely the same, the only difference is the professor was trash. She was very foreign and nearly impossible to understand. It didn't help that my discrete math teacher was the same way, but worse. Anytime I would go to her office hours she would explain to me that I should already know how mathematical induction works; and that I should have learned it in [b]high school[/b].

Because I already understood data structures pretty well, I was able to understand that the class was purposely being made more complicated than its suppose to be. After 50% of the class dropped, it was made even more clear.

I could have stood up, walked to the white board and explained every topic in plain English so everyone would understand, yet for some reason they allow poorly qualified professors teach instead. And when I say poorly qualified, I mean poorly qualified. This data structures teacher had 2 years of work experience programming in COBOL or something in a firm in Poland 20 years ago. Why the fuck am I paying thousands of dollars a semester for this bullshit? The other professors who are "qualified" just pad their CV's with grad student research they sign off on.

I feel like I can't relate to other computer science majors. I've probably only made 3 friends so far. Mainly because there are two types of people that my classes consists of, bronies/fadora wearers/meme guys/idea guys, and foreigners(who are very cliquish). And its a pretty even split between the 2. There's people I would consider well rounded normal human beings that make up a small minority, but generally they tend to be engineering majors being stuck taking CS classes.

Anyways, I have to dredge through University for 2-3 more years in order to graduate. Just so I can have a piece of paper that says "I PAID A LOT OF MONEY TO MAKE LINKED LISTS". And for some reason we've stooped that low to determine that's the starting bar for working in industry.

If you go into university with zero knowledge of programming, you'll probably drop out or quit, as computer science has probably the highest drop rate next to engineering at my university.

If you go into university with knowledge of programming, you won't learn anything and you might end up hating it by the time you get out.

I guess I've had experience in both those areas, as a noob, and as someone kinda experienced.

And now at the end of the day I truly don't even think I have the willpower to work in the industry at this point.

[Tamschi]

I realised I couldn't work in IT when I did very well at a work placement after reading a book on Java in two weeks with otherwise mediocre C# experience.
The actual job was probably one of the most dull experiences in my life. (I later worked there for a short while to buy a few expensive things but it wasn't pleasant.)

The problem is maybe that I really like puzzles and learning but not actual programming.

Anyway, I'm studying Physics (a bit difficult at times, but hugely interesting) now and took an IT course, got a scarily high grade considering the effort I put in and the amount of classes I missed.
I doubt anyone there learned to make a program from scratch if they didn't have prior experience.
The grading must have been pretty lax because in my view I didn't do [i]that[/i] well (left a few questions empty because I missed that topic and didn't really catch up in light of my other courses).

The actual IT studies are probably different because there are courses that don't directly involve programming and are more information/hardware theory but I don't think the core courses teach you a lot if you can already program.

[iPope]

Computing and IT is a disgrace in the england. The pre-gcse syllabus is shit, kids know how to use their computers, maybe teach them something useful - like basic security and getted them interested in computer sciences. My GCSE course consisted of me following a booklet printed by my teachers and taking screenshots, I actually think IT teachers might just be the laziest teachers in existence.

Computing A Level? A fucking joke. Completely outdated and obsessed with technologies that aren't even in usage anymore. I don't want to spend 4 hours writing a table of every variable in my coursework project, they're fucking variables, who gives a shit?! Comment on EVERY line of code? Fuck you.

If you want to go be a programmer as a job, getting the paperwork is always useful. You just have to jump the hoops and suffer the shit.

[MuffinZerg]

In russia IT education works like that:

school: memorize every single PASCAL reserved keyword, maybe copy some code from your textbook into Turbo Pascal and run it (seriously)

univercity: if computer science is not your main subject then draw some block schemes, maybe write 100 lines of code in pascal in 6 years. If you are studying to be a programmer - actually write code and study alhorythms, but use outdated languages and techniques, barely learn anything practical, draw block schemes again.

[jaooe]

I can relate to your post Loli.

The education system left me with depression, acute anxiety and a psychosis during college and as a result I spent 4 years in two colleges and now I'm finally at a top ranking university although I actually think the course is actually pretty darn good. We've learnt, signal theory, assembly, computer architecture, java, c, algorithms, efficiency, abstract data types, etc. The problem is, can it actually get me anywhere?

[Hogofwar]

[QUOTE=iPope;41123680]Computing and IT is a disgrace in the england. The pre-gcse syllabus is shit, kids know how to use their computers, maybe teach them something useful - like basic security and getted them interested in computer sciences. My GCSE course consisted of me following a booklet printed by my teachers and taking screenshots, I actually think IT teachers might just be the laziest teachers in existence.

Computing A Level? A fucking joke. Completely outdated and obsessed with technologies that aren't even in usage anymore. I don't want to spend 4 hours writing a table of every variable in my coursework project, they're fucking variables, who gives a shit?! Comment on EVERY line of code? Fuck you.

If you want to go be a programmer as a job, getting the paperwork is always useful. You just have to jump the hoops and suffer the shit.[/QUOTE]

My secondary school IT was 90% abvout using excel and word for...5 years? the other 10% was a bit of web development which was in dreamweaver, I don't think they actually taught us HTML itself, just how to use dreamweaver.

[codenamecueball]

hey i ain't a programming guy
but i'm gonna give you my 2 pence.

i was taught in scotland, so i did the sqa standard grade then higher computing course.
programming wise at standard grade, you're taught basic. well, not really taught but something like that and you expand upon it at higher.
i pointed out that nobody in the real world uses basic, then it dawned on me that nobody cares.
when we got taught html, there was no css - again, nobody in the room cares.
the class didn't pick that subject because they wanted to become programmers or web devs, they wanted to get a qualification and go to uni to study something else irrelevant.

the course needs a complete overhaul to stay current and up to date. i mean, fucks sake, how many people are going to encounter mainframes and terminals, or computers with 256mb of RAM.

what it needs is a course led by skills that [B]will be used[/B]. this doesn't mean teaching advanced languages to a room of 16 year olds, because most of them will not pick it up fast enough and never use it in the real world.
whilst we all hate being dragged through how to use the office suite, it is pretty damn essential nowdays to know your way around word, powerpoint and excel. security would also be good to learn about, and i see this happening more in depth in the new curriculum (there was a brief explanation of what different kinds of viruses there are at standard grade).

this is a bit rambely but [B]tldr: not everyone is going to be good, lets just get more useful skills taught.[/B]

[Hruhf]

Wow, my experience with IT hasn't been anything like this. Although I haven't exactly been going through a pure computing route.

I had a computer science scholarship for high school where the unit, years 8-11, was all programming. (Less so 8 and 11). I think it was grade 10 where myself and a couple of friends were assigned to write a program to allow for the teachers to book buses easier than their current system which was a slab of paper. I didn't do any computing in year 12 as I had done the year 12 unit in year 11 already. (Year 8 and 11 were a bit crap though, year 8 was visual basic + excel with a bit of Lego on top. Year 11 was excel and hardware/networking again, although year 11 was no longer part of the scholarship program so that could be why)

I'm currently at university studying Mechatronic Engineering and after the generic "all engineering students do this" first year, we immediately got started making robots and programming. I can't vouch much for the computing degrees but I did have a few units that were categorized under the department of computing.

The first unit was in first year and was called Engineering Programming, which is what it says on the tin. We were assigned problems and were to program solutions to them eg. "produce a program that takes two matrices as inputs and multiplies them" or "write a program that reads this image file and outputs an inverted copy of it" and other small things like that. We were then tested on our understanding of how the programs worked. I can't say how good the lectures or anything like that were as I only went to the assessed classes.

Another unit I did was Foundations of Digital Design where we worked with logic gates and similar hardware. Not so much traditional programming in this one but we did do a fair amount of programming in VHDL and assembly. This unit was done really well in my opinion. As soon as we learnt something new, the next lab we had (normally the next day or so) involved using it to solve a problem. The lecturer we had I can say was definitely qualified for his position as, among many other things, he personally designed and built the architecture we worked on (although he clearly stated it was based off another system).

That said, other units have been a bit "blech". For example one of my electrical units has a pass rate of below 50% despite requiring a 25% to pass.
And I'm hearing some bad things about the programming unit I'm starting next semester.

But after reading all these posts, I'm still kind of glad I changed my mind and went with Mechatronics at the last minute.

[TravisG]

I'm actually having a pretty good time with my current situation. I'm about to graduate from a top engineering school with a CS degree, and I've definitely learned a lot from very respected doctors and professionals. The one thing I haven't gotten out of this experience that I was hoping for was being able to make a few friends who are interested in programming. I honestly don't have a single friend who is in my Major. CS/CE/EE/Any other computer or engineering majors, at my university are self-centered, social recluses. So all my friends so far have no idea what programming is...

[BlackPhoenix]

University's main task isn't exactly to teach you practical skills (you know which you need better than the general education program does), but to teach you how to think properly - at least this is true if you pick a physics course (electric engineering for example is one of the best).

You'll learn to work hard yourself and to think in a proper constructive way - this is the most helpful thing. And hopefully will learn at least some basic calculus and other "advanced" mathematics which come in handy the very moment your program goes beyond simple abstract thing and has to do something with real world (physical world).

[Zazibar]

I'm currently on the 2nd year of a Computer Games Development degree at Uni and I'm just over a week away from starting an internship as a Software Development Engineer with the Windows Azure team at Microsoft Ireland. I was able to skip the 1st year of my current degree because I'd previously studied a 2 year Foundation Degree in Software Development and honestly, I've learned absolutely nothing new at University thus far other than that my entire class is filled with unmotivated useless cunts.

The Foundation Degree course I studied pretty much solidified my understanding of OOP and programming in general which is why I've learned pretty much nothing at Uni so far because they're basically covering the same ground. In all honesty, I'm really only attending University so I'll have that magic piece of paper that will make employers actually look at my CV and consider me for a job - I'm not really there to learn anything.

You can't really rely on an educational institute to teach you everything you need to know and that's why I consider the DIY approach you mentioned to be absolutely vital. I'd bet that if you gave a computing student a book on their favourite programming language after they graduated, they'd learn something new from that book that they'd never even seen before during their 3/4 years of studying. This also helps when it comes to keeping up to date with the programming world, I'm sure we've all heard horror stories of the more [I]mature[/I] developers in the industry who like to stick to their old ways instead of adopting new approaches. Another thing is that having a degree doesn't necessarily ensure you're a competent programmer. I'd like to think I'm a decent programmer but I know there's people out there, even people on this very forum, who could run rings around me when it comes to programming and they most likely don't even have a degree - instead having learned everything they know from the DIY approach.

Computing and IT in lower level education is an absolute joke though. I still remember asking my IT teacher in Year 10 if we were going to cover using HTML as we were using a program called BlackCatSpider to create shitty webpages at the time and he said "Oh I don't think so, you seem too advanced for us". I also remember one of the questions on my IT GCSE paper was "Name a web browser". :pwn:

I bailed on my secondary school after getting my GCSEs and learning that the A level Computing course involved using Visual Basic. Attending a local college was the best decision I ever made and is what led me to where I am now.

[Egonny]

I'm a first year CS student and I'm actually happy with my University, over the course of a year I've learned a lot on both a practical (programming in general (I had no previous experience), OOP, learned Java, VB, Ruby, a bit of assembly,...) and a theorethical (logic, formal language theory, graph theory, analysis of algorithms,...) level.
I've also made a couple of friends who shared a lot of common interests, which is cool because we can help eachother when we have a problem with a course and we all hang out, play games, go out,...
Of course self-study helps if you're interested in a particular field, but for general computer science I'm quite happy with the courses I get. It seems a lot of you guys don't have the same experience though, which sucks.

[TravisG]

It seems like the majority of people posting on this thread know the majority of university-level knowledge already. I didn't even know I wanted to study CS until I finished high-school, so I didn't have any previous experience with programming, so I can honestly say everything that I'm currently learning is a new topic to me.

[Rayboy1995]

I'm starting college this fall for CS. This thread has scared the shit out of me. :v:

[Loli]

[QUOTE=Rayboy1995;41128018]I'm starting college this fall for CS. This thread has scared the shit out of me. :v:[/QUOTE]

I don't want to give you that impression at all, quite a few people here have found it awesome. Have you got any programming experience as of yet?

[Tamschi]

[QUOTE=BlackPhoenix;41125378]University's main task isn't exactly to teach you practical skills (you know which you need better than the general education program does), but to teach you how to think properly - at least this is true if you pick a physics course (electric engineering for example is one of the best).

You'll learn to work hard yourself and to think in a proper constructive way - this is the most helpful thing. And hopefully will learn at least some basic calculus and other "advanced" mathematics which come in handy the very moment your program goes beyond simple abstract thing and has to do something with real world (physical world).[/QUOTE]

It's good if they do though, if there's the possibility. Maybe part of the problem is that the field is changing so quickly that they can't keep up with current development?

This may be a different case, but I have maths courses that are 90% practical skills and they are immensely useful because I can use and vary these tools to understand the physics more quickly and in-depth.

I imagine it's similar with programming, once you're proficient with the tools (or at least one of them) and can do some things completely by yourself it becomes much easier to pick up new concepts. (At least it worked that way for me.)

[Rayboy1995]

[QUOTE=Loli;41129467]I don't want to give you that impression at all, quite a few people here have found it awesome. Have you got any programming experience as of yet?[/QUOTE]
Oh yes plenty, I've been programming since I was ten.

[razzums]

[QUOTE=Rayboy1995;41128018]I'm starting college this fall for CS. This thread has scared the shit out of me. :v:[/QUOTE]

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:

/***********************************
*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

[editline]21st June 2013[/editline]

But honestly, its fine once you get past the bullshit and you understand why you're there.

[20k]

[QUOTE=Loli;41129467]I don't want to give you that impression at all, quite a few people here have found it awesome. Have you got any programming experience as of yet?[/QUOTE]

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

[Hogofwar]

[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:

/***********************************
*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

[editline]21st June 2013[/editline]

But honestly, its fine once you get past the bullshit and you understand why you're there.[/QUOTE]

Uncapitalised words and misspelt "references", 80% off!