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Poll: Do you see a CS major as only desirable for entrepreneurship?
5 points by amichail on June 20, 2009 | hide | past | favorite | 16 comments
no; programming is fun whether you do it as an employee or a founder
79 points
yes; programming is only fun if you do your own thing
6 points



Where's the "Computer Science has nothing to do with programming" option?


I'd also like to request a "Computer Science has nothing to do with Entrepreneurship" option.

Look, programming is about solving problems and programmers are people who know enough tools to solve those problems. What a CS degree means is that person MIGHT have better tools (being educated in various algorithms and system types). That's all.

Entrepreneurship is about solving one specific problem namely: how to make a company successful. The tools you learn in Computer Science have nothing to do with that. More to the point, neither does what you're programming. A person with the greatest program in the world can fail with no business savvy and a person with a crap program can become a billionaire with enough business savvy.

As for fun, the reality is that all programming requires some fun and some tedious work. Even if you're living your dream programming exactly what you want to you'll still need to deal with tedious stuff like error checking and browser compatibility.


You could also say that computer science has nothing to do with almost all computing jobs since programming tends to be pretty routine in an algorithmic sense. Few people invent non-trivial algorithms.


When building an application, one does not think: will I be doing programming or computer science here?

Who knows what will happen? Maybe the implementation will turn out to be straightforward. Maybe not and some novel algorithm(s) might need to be developed.

Even for routine programming a CS major might be helpful. At least you might have a better understanding of sophisticated library usage (e.g., encryption).


Even for routine programming a CS major might be helpful.

Might?

Seriously, I don't think that's what's being argued. The point is that computer science != programming. Reducing CS to programming is flawed.


In most cases, CS majors do go on to do routine programming.

Moreover, companies with work that involves routine programming often require CS degrees.

So there's a strong connection between a CS major and routine programming.

A CS major will give you an advantage even with routine programming.


Most of these are true statements, but I don't see how any of them address the point; we may be misunderstanding each other.

CS is a lot broader than programming ... that's all I was trying to say.


> CS is a lot broader than programming

CS is a lot broader than computer programming, but one can program things that are not computers.


CS is a lot broader than computer programming, but one can program things that are not computers.

One can compute on things which are not computers, too. Computer science is the study of computation, not the study of computers.


I was unclear - I was using computers as "things that compute". (And assuming that there are things that don't compute, Wolfram notwithstanding.)

One can program things that don't compute such as social entities.


Programming is interesting as long as the problem that you're trying to solve is interesting. Simple as that. Entrepreneurship just greatly increases the likelihood that this will happen.


There is a third option. Work for a company with interesting projects and good people (probably not your local government or a financial institution). Do some reputation building by contributing to OSS, blogging, and outside mentoring. All of these are a break from your day time routine. I've given help to a couple of startups recently, and I've seen more companies requiring or encouraging OSS participation of their employees.


Maybe the converse is more true? It's easier to do a web-startup than other kinds of tech startups?


If you like problem solving, programming will be fun whether you are an employee or a founder. Think of programming as doing puzzles. But if you are easily frustrated, you'll hate it whether you are an employee or a founder.


It's sure that programming is fun when you do your own thing.

When you are an employee, it'll depend, if you like the project you are working on or not.


If so, save yourself the money of a degree. Buy some books and put the rest in your company.




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