[pcthrowaway]

University was a pretty big waste of 8 years for me as well.. Some people are just better at learning on their own, and with the number of online resources available, many of them from top-tier universities providing better instruction that you are likely to get at a lower-tier university, I don't think university is the right choice for many aspiring software developers.

[bdamm]

I just don't understand you guys - I'm an introvert, and University exposed me to concepts and ideas I NEVER would have sought out on my own. And through that process I was introduced to people I NEVER would have met otherwise. Would I have met people just as awesome as the people I did meet, if I didn't go to school? Maybe, but judging from my friends in high school who didn't take "The Path", I think the answer is no.

I never would have written an OS kernel, I never would have built an ALU (and gained the deeper understanding of computer architecture as a result.) I never would have learned anything about AI.

Can I do those things, without going to school? Yes, absolutely. But I wouldn't have done it, and that's the point. Would I have met awesome mentors without university? Maybe, but maybe not. And the best part is I didn't even have to go out of my way to try and force it to happen. Going to university, it just happened because of who I am (a geek, smart, and a person who cares about good results.) It didn't matter that I was socially awkward, my work spoke for itself and others came to me.

Graduate work is something I never continued on to; once having my bachelor's, I went ahead and charged into Industry. And I'm totally, 100% OK with that choice.

So it makes me wonder - what were you doing for 8 years?

[maheroku]

That is why I specified it depends, it depends on personalities, the school, your goals in life and much more. My university for instance was terrible, I think I have spent 30% of my time filling out lab reports because they were so many! Took many courses that made no sense and that I had no interests in. I think perhaps 10 Software Engineering courses were plain repetition, some professors didn't even speak English nor knew what the heck was going on, We didn't get the chance to code much, most concepts were outdated, The network opportunity was very poor, I can keep going lool. I actually had to unlearn many things when I started working.

I'm a type of person that likes to get information and knowledge only when needed so it made absolutely no sense to learn stuffs and fill my head with knowledge without having a specific goal to reach. If my goal was to build an OS, then I would read about OS Kernels and start experimenting otherwise it's irrelevant to me.

For my personality, my goals in life and much more, school was a complete waste and a big regret. So suggesting it to someone else without knowing their goals or personality is dangerous because it could ruin them like it did to many.

[pcthrowaway]

I'm not necessarily an introvert, but I didn't gain anything from attending university that helped my career in anyway (besides the CS bachelors degree, which is arguable). I spent 8 years attending school part-time while working in the service-industry. I did very little extracurricular programming, because I was busy with my classes and work. When I graduated (from a mediocre school, with less than a strong GPA), I learned that my degree was not very helpful, and I hadn't learned any of the things that are actually used in the industry.

I've spent the 2 years since graduation teaching myself whatever has caught my interest, and have learned way more applicable to the majority of entry-level/junior-level jobs than I ever did in school.

Did you go to a 'top-tier' school? If so, I'm sure your experience was much different, as the online classes I've taken provided by schools such as Stanford and UC Berkeley have been orders of magnitude better than the ones I took in school.

[bdamm]

I did not attend a top-tier school, but I did attend a new school with something to prove. I feel like I got a great education. (University of Northern British Columbia, by the way.)

[eropple]

Same here, really. Although I intentionally avoided most of the non-critical CS classes. I too wrote an OS kernel and all of that, but I made sure to take as many political science, economics, and sociology courses as I could. Learning tech is fine and all, but becoming a well-rounded person is what a degree at a decent (not great, not expensive) school did for me.

Plus, there were girls outside of the CS classes. That didn't hurt.