Notes

Recovering from a Computer Science Education

I originally intended to call this "Undoing The Damage of the Computer Science Education," but that's just too extreme and link-baity. There is a real benefit to having a degree in computer science. For starters, you can easily get a good paying job. You've also been able to create incredible and useful things. However, there is a downside to this, too. You can get so involved in the technical and theoretical that it's easy to forget the joy of it is to create beautiful and useful things. That's what happened to me, and it took some time to recover.



This is a short list of things that have helped me and may be helpful to you as well.



Stay out of technical forums unless they are directly related to something you're working on. It's easy to become involved in discussions about the validity of functional programming, such as whether Scheme is suitable for commercial applications, or just how horrible PHP is. It's easy to lose your way the more you dig into this.



Continue to work on real projects that relate to your passion. If you like designing games, write games. Create an organizer for your photos. Don't take things the wrong way, thinking that "a photo organizer written in Haskell" is more important than "a photo organizer that solves a particular problem with photo organizers."



If you find yourself constantly using a new technology, take some time to learn and apply it. All jokes and snide remarks aside Perl is extremely useful. It's the same for PHP, Java and C++. Who wins the one who has been bashing Java for 10 years or the developer of Minecraft who just used the language and made hundreds of millions of dollars?



Don't become an advocate. This is the opposite of the previous point. If Linux, Android, or Scala can help in the creation of your project then that's great! It's a sign of its utility that you depend on it. There's no need to make everyone else utilize it, too.



Focus on the end result and not the "how" of your hobby. Woodworkers may become tool collectors. Photographers can be addicted to spec comparison. SECURECONTENT Don't get caught up in that and focus on the work you're creating.



Do something artistic. Write short stories or songs, sketch, learn to do pixel art. They also offer shorter turnaround times than any kind of software-based project.



Be a reader. There are endless books about architecture, as well as books written by naturalists both classic and popular modern novels, and most of them have absolutely nothing to do with computers or programming or science fiction.



permalink January 15, 2012



previously



Follow-up to "A Programming Idiom You've Never heard Of"A Programming Idiom You've Never Heard Of2011 Retrospective User Experience Intrusions in iOS 5Photography as a Non-Technical Hobby archives



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I'm James Hague, a recovering programmer who has been developing video games since the 1980s. Programming without Being Obsessed with Organizational and Programming Skills beat Algorithmic Wizardry are good starting points. The 2012 Retrospective is an excellent alternative for older material.


Website: https://securecontent.co/