Does Learning To Code Outweigh a Degree In Computer Science?
- Thread starter DEAD7
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Yeah one of the best developers I work with is black. And I'm not biased.
OCCAMS_RAZOR
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ppl need the opportunity though. i have a real passion for programming, but i didn't even get my own personal computer until a couple of years ago, and the exposure wasn't there when i was a kid. sometimes i wonder how i would've turned out if i'd been introduced to programming as a young'n
i'll give you a little story about me. as a little kid, i'm talking 3rd grade. i was deep into computers. i remember my older bro got one for christmas. he loved them to .but i was ALL over it. and he was 5 years older then me. when i tell you all over it. i aint lying. every moment he wasnt on it. i was. when he was on it.i was behind him watching every move. had a couple of old games on there i use to love. but it was more then just a gaming computer to me. i actually started to learn how to code in "BASIC" no visual basic. REAL..Basic. no one taught me anything. i had a book, as cool as a young dude i was and still am no would have ever known. rapbeats use to carry a little computer dictionary is his back pocket. thats how serious i was. i was so cold with it. to the point i remember translating game programs that use to be in computer magazines for apple's into PC language. some how, some way, i could see the patterns. and i started to figure out how to port the language over. at around 8 and 9. i was bussed out of the hood school, to a really nice school with 90% white kids. the rest were mixed. i knew so much about computers. even though my white teacher disliked black kids. and use to send me to the office daily just cause. i started teaching her computer class. she had to let go cause she realize that i knew way more then she did and i was willing to teach anyone who asked. no lie. i was running the class at 8 and 9 years old.
I just started to learn about how to animate things from left to right, and diagonal. i had this dream of being a programmer that programmed great games as well as other things to help people(didnt know what this meant back then but you see computers now. so obviously i was on to something). This is pre bill gates, pre jobs. Then moms decided she wanted to move down south from cali. when i hit the 8th grade. i'm in middle school now. even in the 7th grade i was killing kids on that computer in class at my school. we leave for the south. and to make a long story short. my computer ended up broken due to the trip to the south. baggage claims i guess. the computer wasnt new obviously. so there wasnt much to get from a claim. and as smart as moms and pops were. they had no idea how valuable that thing was to me. and they had no idea how good i was at it. because they themselves didnt understand it. i was heated about it for a few months then i did what i always do. find something else i'm good at. this is a gift and a curse of being blessed with multiple abilities. when i look back. i should've lost it and went nuts about that computer. if so, my parents would've made it a point to eventually buy me another.
i actually came back to cali in 6 months. but still no computer. by then i was no longer even thinking about it. i'm in love with hoop(which i was very good at) and music( a passion of mines since i was a kid, i was on that keyboard that had the first little bit of sampling ability early in the game).
i didnt touch a computer until let say 11 grade at school. and that was using autocad for this engineering program i was in. That would've worked well. but that progam collapsed by the time i hit the 12th grade. so no computer touches for me at all. i'm in college. i see some people trying to surf the brand new internet. but not doing much cause theydont know what to do. me, i'm seeing this thinking "i should hop on...nawww...i'll just go holla at these chicks, play some ball, and keep it moving." hey i was still in school right.
i just now have started to care about programming again. just to show you even then i havent been on it in a very long time. myself and a co-worker of mine built a small app in excel using vba(which isnt hard to use to us) but most people that are advanced in excel still dont know its capabilities. the app was better then anything a contractor would've put together in the actual system we use at work. everyone knew it. our over head managers were kinda light weight hating on us because we pulled this off without them and proved it worked. thats another story for another day.
but i said all that to say. YES , you need early exposure. we all do. WE being blacks and hispanics. early exposure to computers not just for playing on the net. but joking around with programs, with animation, graphics, 3d modeling, etc. all that stuff ties in. Then when you get deep into your maths you will be able to put two and two together.
see someone made a statemnt about flstudio aka fruityloops. what you dont know is you can create Eq's, reverb's, etc, and instruments for fruityloops, by making vsti's, etc. All by using Trig, Calculus. most people dont know this. So dont knock it. just realize you need to look deeper into it. you can use someone's love for music creation to spawn a possible love or at least understanding of programming. everyone will not become or need to be a great programmer. but you do need to understand the logic behind programming. its the same logic for all programming languages what changes is the syntax(from english, to spanish, to chinese all are spoken languages).
with all that said. all the time i tell people. I know for a fact if i would've had a computer my entire life. i would've been bill gates, steve jobs, zuckerberg, the twitter devs, shoot naspter devs, all the way to devs for any of these video games. as much as i loved basketball, i could've easily been an EA employee during the days when NBA live ruled the consoles. but ish happens. it is what it is. But you can see with even that little exposure i had. because i had a knack and a desire for computers/coding. til this very day i still understand the basic logic behind programming. If this...then that...loop until you get to this point then do this.
OCCAMS_RAZOR
Pro
nice story bro. you could have turned out to be a Donald Knuth or Alan Turing.
it's cool that you'er back in the game though. just go hard at it. put all the distractions away.
it's cool that you'er back in the game though. just go hard at it. put all the distractions away.
Programming is all about passion. and willingness to stick with it... which is just about any other field. If you have a passion for it, you will put in tons of hours to learn. That math that seemed so intimidating in school? If you feel you have a reason to learn and you don't have that idiotic grading system hanging over your head, through perserverence, you will be able to learn.
Yeah I remember when I couldn't do the simplest stuff in C++. Now I write code just like I'm writing this post
Yeah I remember when I couldn't do the simplest stuff in C++. Now I write code just like I'm writing this post
It's a beautiful feeling when things start to 'unlock' and you get the confidence to where you can start making those ideas that come to mind
This is something that I think about a lot. Until I took an intro programming course a few years ago, I didn't even consider that writing software was something I was capable of doing, despite being pretty technically inclined. With the way I tend to dive into subjects that I have a passion in, I sometimes wish I had been exposed to it sooner.
And I think that more than anything is the reason there aren't many blacks trying their hand at programming. The exposure simply isn't there.
this...computer science is more than programming and I have my degree in it...with the exception of assembly language I picked up languages with little difficulty but I also realize that I wasnt passionate about it...I couldn't see myself coding all the time but it gave me a very solid and useful background when I segued into other things and what I do now as a business analyst
I used to mess around with C back when I was in late middle to early high school, but I gave up on it because I felt that it was too complex, and in those days, I was approaching learning programming from the wrong mindset. On the other hand, sometimes it's better to learn it later in life because having a wide understanding of various subjects will actually help you in programming things that people want as opposed to someone who has a strict focus on just the subject of programming and computer science.
Something I found is that it's not necessarily the best programmers who end up with the most success. It's not the guys who are creating languages, but what it comes down to is also having the business sense to make something people want or at least luck up on it. Look at Notch. If this dude was a super elite programmer, he'd have made Minecraft in C/C++ mixed with some Assembly. Instead, his game was made in Java, and yet he just ended up selling his company for 2 billion. That's not to say Java is some inferior language, but for game programming, C/C++ and Assembly yield the best performance. What Notch did end up making was a program that a ton of people wanted and he prospered tremendously from it.
Something I found is that it's not necessarily the best programmers who end up with the most success. It's not the guys who are creating languages, but what it comes down to is also having the business sense to make something people want or at least luck up on it. Look at Notch. If this dude was a super elite programmer, he'd have made Minecraft in C/C++ mixed with some Assembly. Instead, his game was made in Java, and yet he just ended up selling his company for 2 billion. That's not to say Java is some inferior language, but for game programming, C/C++ and Assembly yield the best performance. What Notch did end up making was a program that a ton of people wanted and he prospered tremendously from it.
a lot of times what you have to do is know when its time for you to just plant the seed/lay the foundation and get up from the computer. let the real geek boys have at it. so they can turn your idea into something insane. but without you they wouldnt even have thought of that. even as smart as they are. smarts doesnt always = a designers mind.
yall thought i was joking when i said you can make vsti for FL studio and any other audio software.
this is an old article but same stuff still applies.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/vstdiy.htm
this is an old article but same stuff still applies.
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep09/articles/vstdiy.htm
