[sllug-members]: Best Computer Science School in Utah

[Walt Haas]

I've had plenty of both self-teaching and academic classes (MS in CS, U 
of U) and have learned different things from them.

First, my advice is don't bother to pay for training in practical 
applications - it's quicker to train yourself, not to say cheaper.  
Besides, applications change so fast that spending money on training 
isn't a good long term investment.  For example, when you've learned one 
C-like programming language, all the others are easy to teach yourself.

Second, when you take academic classes, your best investment is to focus 
on those things that are hard to learn by yourself - specifically, 
theory and an overview of the field.  Theoretical concepts endure longer 
than specific applications and are applied more widely.  Functional 
programming, to pick one example, originated a long time ago and has 
reappeared more recently in, for example, XSLT.  As we try to exploit 
SMP hardware, functional programming will probably see wider use.

As a practical matter, it's difficult to get an overview of the forest 
by teaching yourself about each tree, and it's difficult to get an 
overview of the computing field by teaching yourself about lots of 
individual languages and data structures.  A good academic education can 
help a lot here.  And with a broad education you can look at a new area 
of computing and identify places where ideas from other areas can be 
applied.

-- Walt

James Knowles wrote:
>
>>> Whats the best (in your humble opinion) computer science school in 
>>> Utah?
>>> School of Hard Knocks,
>> ... a CS degree is a very valuable credential in my opinion. :)
>
> This depends on what you're going to do with it. CS degrees are nice, 
> but in my experience they're extra fluff if you've been through the 
> SoHK and know your core CS concepts inside and out. On the other hand, 
> regardless of whether a person has a degree or not, there are a good 
> lot of programmers that are crappy computer scientists.
>
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