Did anyone else cruise through college with their programming experience developed as a kid, only to come out with an excellent knowledge of practical computer programming (i.e., learned several languages, touched most of the frameworks, able to deploy full-stack apps alone) but a complete lack of mathematical and computer science knowledge? And if so, did you ever go back and re-learn some of these fundamentals and find use in it? I'm in this situation now, and while I feel confident in my ability to do my job, I feel jealous of peers who are able to solve complex algorithmic problems, or understand mathematical problem domains with ease (e.g., machine learning)
I kinda did. I graduated with a degree that covered a lot of maths that I, a callow youth, thought was bullshit. A few years later I discovered it was useful for machine learning, and given machine learning was something I was interested in the maths suddenly became interesting. I don't think my maths or theoretical CS knowledge is amazing but I quite like those topics now, and don't seem to struggle to learn them.
You'll find a bunch of tech recruiters asking you about Big O notation for the algorithm you propose. They want to look smart. Most of the times you'll smell shitty code, inefficient loops, slow I/O, waste of memory without formal methods.
An old example from the beginning of the century: if you did matrix algebra you could have understood how to rotate an object position in 3D for a game using math but find it very hard to code. Or you could take Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book [1] and learn it anyway.
You'll do fine.
Yes. I didn't even study math or comp-sci in college. Learned to program BASIC for build BBS systems when I was 12 (in 1982). Took two Pascal classes (1 in high school, one in college while I studied psychology). Discovered I could apparently program professionally while an intern for a startup. Turns out, computer languages of all sorts come to me pretty easily, probably because of that early exposure.
I've ended as one of the better programmers most places I've worked, and my current role is as a director and software architect at a mid-size biotech company (building tools to facilitate genetic engineering; if only my teenage nerd self could see me now!).
I still have no real advanced math or computer science training. My approach and experience is entirely practical/pragmatic, and for user facing applications development, I've almost never felt the lack of comp sci training impacted my work. I think of myself as a bit of a hedge witch :).
That said, I sometimes have pretty extreme imposter syndrome, and find myself bowing out of of roles that would otherwise be exciting but math heavy, especially ML heavy stuff that's all the rage these days.
I still think I'd like to study computer science, fwiw, but there are only so many hours in the day and I am a person with a whole lot of competing interests.
I am exactly in the situation you are describing. I've always enjoyed math but never took it seriously, and now I regret it. Just cruised through college because no advanced math was ever required.
So I'm taking a math course in the evenings and going to try university this year!
I had the opposite experience, but I did an undergrad in CS in university, not college. Learned lots of theory and algorithms, and low-level programming, but hardly did any practical stuff like app deployment.
In the US, there is no distinction between "college" and "university" like some places have. Here the difference is solely that a university is collection of colleges that share admittance and funding to some extent. I attended the college of arts and sciences at my university, but I easily could have taken (some) courses offered by the college of architecture and allied arts, had I been so inclined.
I wouldn't put much stock in word choices like that. Connotations vary so immensely around the world, it's best to presume they're synonyms unless context says otherwise.
A university offers graduate degrees. Colleges offer only up to bachelor degrees. There may not be a distinction in how people use the words, there is a difference in actual fact.
There are also plenty of 4 year institutions called "Colleges" here that are smaller too. Bowdoin College is a random example which even has a CS degree.
I did the opposite. I received what I believed to basically be a bachelors in math with very little real-life coding skills. Yeah, I programmed a ton in my classes, but looking back it was "spaghetti code." I've had to read about principles and patterns of software engineering almost unrelentingly to feel up-to-speed. Thank heavens for "Clean Code."
Boy, I can't wait until that magical day where I can bust out my knowledge of that Pumping Lemma, though, for those proofs I need to... always be writing...?
This describes me pretty well. I started programming when I was very young. I did programming classes in high school. Then in college I started with another major and switched, but quickly got through as many classes as possible to graduate and get a job without really thinking about any of the stuff I had the opportunity to learn. Now I feel a bit locked out of certain companies because I'm not good at HackerRank, but I make really good money as a Software Engineer at a non-tech firm.
I went through the opposite where I learned programming through college but I still don't understand ML math nor complex algorithm problems. I mean I tried taking those courses but I only got through regular DSA class and the first week of ML but dropped out cuz I was not good at the linear algebra required to understand. Maybe I'll try again someday on my own. I admit I wasn't the greatest student though. Graduated with a 2.7
