(December 18, 2015 at 1:21 am)SteelCurtain Wrote:

(December 18, 2015 at 1:15 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: Having a degree probably matters less in computer science than any other field. Also if you have an interest, it's probably one of the things that you can teach yourself far easier then say, biology or chemistry. You just start programming.

Yes, for the bottom level jobs hacking code.

Not satisfied with that. I easily could teach myself any language. It's not the languages that require the higher education. It's the career specific stuff. I wouldn't have been able to teach myself discrete/advanced data structures. Much of the IS stuff is fucking heavy.

Dude, there are lots of high level programmers without degrees and I know lots of shitty programmers with CS degrees who have to do bullshit jobs to get by. I'm very familiar with the programming world. No need to be a dick or so dismissive to try to make your point. I think you maybe have a need to defend you going to college, but here is a good discussion about the pros and cons of getting a CS degree from people who work in computer science departments.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-better-to-go...n-your-own

interesting quote from a Dartmouth CS professor:

Quote: Many of the best programmers I know did not get CS degrees.  Some of them did not get degrees at all.  They are all smart, they learn quickly, and while they certainly know a lot about programming, they also know a lot about other things.  They can see the connections between what they know and what they want to do, and they can see the holes, too.  They are creative, they are disciplined, and they can focus on both the details and the big picture.  And one more thing that should not be underestimated: they are good communicators.

(December 18, 2015 at 1:32 am)CapnAwesome Wrote:

(December 18, 2015 at 1:21 am)SteelCurtain Wrote: Yes, for the bottom level jobs hacking code.

Not satisfied with that. I easily could teach myself any language. It's not the languages that require the higher education. It's the career specific stuff. I wouldn't have been able to teach myself discrete/advanced data structures. Much of the IS stuff is fucking heavy.

Dude, there are lots of high level programmers without degrees and I know lots of shitty programmers with CS degrees who have to do bullshit jobs to get by. I'm very familiar with the programming world. No need to be a dick or so dismissive to try to make your point. I think you maybe have a need to defend you going to college, but here is a good discussion about the pros and cons of getting a CS degree from people who work in computer science departments.

https://www.quora.com/Is-it-better-to-go...n-your-own

interesting quote from a Dartmouth CS professor:

Quote: Many of the best programmers I know did not get CS degrees.  Some of them did not get degrees at all.  They are all smart, they learn quickly, and while they certainly know a lot about programming, they also know a lot about other things.  They can see the connections between what they know and what they want to do, and they can see the holes, too.  They are creative, they are disciplined, and they can focus on both the details and the big picture.  And one more thing that should not be underestimated: they are good communicators.

I don't feel like I've been a dick at all. I'm merely explaining my opinion.

I never said one has to go to college to be a programmer.

I think it's still the best route for a person who wants to do more than write code eventually. I apologize if you disagree with me and would rather not see my opinion. Now I'm being a dick. ;D

(December 18, 2015 at 1:07 am)SteelCurtain Wrote:

(December 18, 2015 at 1:01 am)CapnAwesome Wrote: That's terrible advice to be a programmer. Nobody in the programming world cares what school you went to. They only care how well you can program.

Sure, if your goal is to hack code at $20/hr for a living. If you want to be a project lead at a young age, if you want to work for a major company and make fantastic money, the best way to do that is still college. If you want to innovate, you need to understand advanced data structures and algorithms and be fluent in multiple languages, and you're not gonna get that at ITT tech. Also, the field is moving towards IS, and I bet Tibs would tell you he is grateful for his schooling.

There are always exceptions to the rule. There are hyper talented kids that taught themselves everything and make great programmers. I wouldn't count on that. And I'm not.

My brother has worked for the last 30 years as a programmer - successfully, I might add.  (I brag about him a lot.)  He took some college classes, and was better at programming than the teachers were.  He did not graduate.  He worked on his own projects until he got hired.   
    HOWEVER, this was 1980.  He tells people now to get a degree.  He believes that the level of teaching has improved.  Most of the IT guys that I talk to tell folks to get a degree, and for IT, it seems that the degree is usually required - - unless you have a lot of experience.

(December 18, 2015 at 12:59 am)SteelCurtain Wrote: Heat, the only thing I can think of that might work to make tedious tasks more interesting is to:

1) Find a reward system that works for you. If it's candy, games, AF.org time, whatever. You don't get to do what you want to do until homework is done.
2) Figure out what you want to do in life. You're super young to make hard plans, but set goals. Want to be a computer programmer? Better be shit hot at math and logic. Better get into a halfway decent school and work your ass off to make that happen. Getting excited about your future makes working hard to get there that much easier.

If you're looking for a trick to make homework exciting, there just isn't one. If you're not enamored with the subject matter, it's just going to be busywork and practice. But man, if that practice isn't worth it when you get to college and have 17 credit hours of coursework plus a job and a penchant for partying on the weekend. You're going to need those skills. If you don't have them, college will be just like high school. And that, my friend, would be sad.

I want to be an astronomer, even though I don't tend to excel in either science nor math[not that i'm bad at those].

(December 21, 2015 at 3:00 am)Heat Wrote: I want to be an astronomer, even though I don't tend to excel in either science nor math[not that i'm bad at those].

Very good choice
I am not exactly an astronomer, but close enough.

So in retrospect I would do the following if I were you, assuming you are USian: check out which universities have the best research programs which are involved in the great telescopes either on mauna kea etc. or in space, you get my gist. They don't necessarily are identical to the top 5 ivy league unis, though there is of course always some overlap. Don't overlook the radio astronomy research, they do great things (beginning of next year, we might get the first radio array images of our central black hole event horizon, how cool is that?). It can't hurt to try and talk to some of your potential advisors there beforehand in order to get a better idea how the process of getting into a research thesis would ideally work (though be aware that in a bachelor level thesis, one can only get to a limited understanding of the field and will only work on a very specific problem - ideally, it has nevertheless some connection to cutting edge research, and it would be useful to have an advisor who makes sure that this is the case).

Look at the best handful or more of them, look at the requirements of the universities to get into the undergrad program. That is the crucial part for what you are doing now. Realize that their tuition fees are insane and work even harder in school in order to get scholarships to ease the pain a bit. If going out of state is out of the question for you, it would depend on where you live. With a bit of luck, there is an uni around with a good program from which you can later go on somewhere else.

Then apply to those and several alternative choices (not getting into your first choice is of course no big deal). Then work your ass off in college in order to get to do an undergrad thesis on one of the telescopes for a first taste. You will be in competition with people who are crazy smart and have always excelled at maths and science, so brace yourself for being a little bit intimidated, but don't let that deter you. You don't have to be the top maths whiz in your cohort to get to do great astronomy research, but you have to become damn good nevertheless. Sometimes it can be better not to go to the most famous and bestest and biggest one, because one might in some cases have a better chance to get a nice project and advisor in a somewhat smaller program with less extreme competition. Still, what you currently know about maths and physics is probably child's play in comparison to what you will have to learn if you want to do groundbreaking research. Why not just for fun check out some college level and graduate level books to get an idea what awaits you.

I know some guys who did their undergrad thesis at MIT on one of the LIGO gravitational waves detectors (watch out for results from that next years, there have been rumours). I can only guess that similar things will be possible in optical astronomy. It doesn't hurt if your advisor is influential in the field. Then get into one of the best phd programs you can get into in the country, and in particular find a phd advisor who is a very active researcher. By that time, you will know which one that might be, and you will have experience, some good connections in the relevant community and with a bit of luck an influential researcher writing a letter of recommendation for you.

I'd say to try and focus on how useful good grades are going to be for the rest of your life, and use that for motivation to finish the work. Also, to do yourself proud, and to achieve what you are capable of.

I can sympathise, there were some subjects I absolutely loathed doing the work for. I found them unbelievably dull and pointless.

I was also given long,boring tedious homework for my Digital Electronics class.
What I did was I looked at all the areas of the homework I could automate and then I wrote a program to do it for me. This gave me a chance to work with what I love(programming) and also minimize the dreaded boring shit I was given to do.

1 stone 2 birds..you know what they say..

(December 21, 2015 at 3:40 am)Quantum Wrote:

(December 21, 2015 at 3:00 am)Heat Wrote: I want to be an astronomer, even though I don't tend to excel in either science nor math[not that i'm bad at those].

Very good choice
I am not exactly an astronomer, but close enough.

So in retrospect I would do the following if I were you, assuming you are USian: check out which universities have the best research programs which are involved in the great telescopes either on mauna kea etc. or in space, you get my gist. They don't necessarily are identical to the top 5 ivy league unis, though there is of course always some overlap. Don't overlook the radio astronomy research, they do great things (beginning of next year, we might get the first radio array images of our central black hole event horizon, how cool is that?). It can't hurt to try and talk to some of your potential advisors there beforehand in order to get a better idea how the process of getting into a research thesis would ideally work (though be aware that in a bachelor level thesis, one can only get to a limited understanding of the field and will only work on a very specific problem - ideally, it has nevertheless some connection to cutting edge research, and it would be useful to have an advisor who makes sure that this is the case).

Look at the best handful or more of them, look at the requirements of the universities to get into the undergrad program. That is the crucial part for what you are doing now. Realize that their tuition fees are insane and work even harder in school in order to get scholarships to ease the pain a bit. If going out of state is out of the question for you, it would depend on where you live. With a bit of luck, there is an uni around with a good program from which you can later go on somewhere else.

Then apply to those and several alternative choices (not getting into your first choice is of course no big deal). Then work your ass off in college in order to get to do an undergrad thesis on one of the telescopes for a first taste. You will be in competition with people who are crazy smart and have always excelled at maths and science, so brace yourself for being a little bit intimidated, but don't let that deter you. You don't have to be the top maths whiz in your cohort to get to do great astronomy research, but you have to become damn good nevertheless. Sometimes it can be better not to go to the most famous and bestest and biggest one, because one might in some cases have a better chance to get a nice project and advisor in a somewhat smaller program with less extreme competition. Still, what you currently know about maths and physics is probably child's play in comparison to what you will have to learn if you want to do groundbreaking research. Why not just for fun check out some college level and graduate level books to get an idea what awaits you.

I know some guys who did their undergrad thesis at MIT on one of the LIGO gravitational waves detectors (watch out for results from that next years, there have been rumours). I can only guess that similar things will be possible in optical astronomy. It doesn't hurt if your advisor is influential in the field. Then get into one of the best phd programs you can get into in the country, and in particular find a phd advisor who is a very active researcher. By that time, you will know which one that might be, and you will have experience, some good connections in the relevant community and with a bit of luck an influential researcher writing a letter of recommendation for you.

Thank you for that well thought out reply, I really appreciate it and what you said makes a lot of sense.

(December 21, 2015 at 4:49 am)Heat Wrote: Thank you for that well thought out reply, I really appreciate it and what you said makes a lot of sense.

It's basically a mixture of what I have done and what I regret not having done properly in retrospect, partly translated to a different country and a slightly different field.