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Ask HN: Does a master's in CS develop you into a better programmer?

4 points by biznerd ↗ HN
I'm not a programmer, just a really curious guy. Does a master's in CS make you a more effective programmer (in the workplace)? Or is it merely the most talented programmer choose to do a MS?

5 comments

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Rekaiden
No. It's not even that second thing.
andher
A masters is not geared towards making you a good programmer. There may certainly be a significant amount of programming involved in completing projects and homework, but they don't translate into being an effective programmer at the workplace. If, like me, you spend all of your masters doing research, you could potentially be programming a lot but the requirements are not the same as the industry, and the skills don't directly map to being good at programming in the workplace. Doing research is geared towards providing you with a framework to ask the right questions and search in a structured manner for possible solutions. It also isn't true that the most talented programmers choose to do a Masters. I've seen programmers of all abilities in these programs.
cpburns2009
Disclaimer: I am a programmer, not a computer scientist.

Computer science is a misnomer because it is a field within mathematics. It's about the abstract, theory of computability rather than actually computing with programs. I think this confusion arises from school curricula blending the two together because both are about "computers". It's really orthogonal to programming and has no bearing on one's effectiveness as a programmer.

grzm
Disclaimer: I don't have a comp sci degree.

I've found having an understanding of the underlying theories supporting the tools (that includes languages and libraries) I use makes me use them better, understand their strengths, weaknesses, and how to improve them. It also helps me look at problems from various perspectives and see how other solutions may fit, including those that don't already have a tutorial or library.

I suspect that if you're an effective programmer, you're doing more than copying and pasting and growing in experience, and you're actually absorbing and apply more computer science than you realize.