tl;dr Is a traditional Comp Sci education needed to be a programmer?

Earlier this week, I was presented the opportunity to adjust teach a class as a local university. It was an introduction to database class with four students enrolled. The previous adjunct dropped a few weeks before the semester started and they contacted Glen, the CEO at Sycamore Education in Fremont, NE to see if he would be interested. Glen, who also happens to be my father, knows that I have a passion for technology and education and passed the opportunity to me.

A few phone calls and an email later, I was informed that I do not possess the ‘formal education experience’ to ‘meet’ the requirements for credentialing. I would need 18+ hours of graduate level Computer Science (preferably a Master’s Degree) to adjunct teach an Intro To Database class.

My initial reaction was of frustration. I’ve been a programmer for just as long as a graduate student would have been studying, and surely I’ve seen enough in my time in the field to fill up an intro course. Or even Glen, who has been coding for 20+ years. He’s got mountains of experience and know-how.

In the educational system though, it’s all about the piece of paper with your name on it.

Please don’t get me wrong- I totally understand the situation. You can’t have every Tom, Dick and Harry out teaching college classes. There has to be some barrier to entry and some way of proving knowledge of the subject matter. But in technology, the “proving” comes more-often-than-not by way of Github repos, conference presentation, and software that has been deployed to production.

This is the reason that coding bootcamps have seen so much popularity. They teach real-world skills to students in a modern dev environment. The teachers are judged by their production, not their credentials. Textbooks give way to expertly written blog posts and Stack Overflow discussions. Lectures give way to hands on learning- to failing, to ‘rtfm’, and to trial & error. Knowledge becomes experiential, not memorization.

I’m deeply involved with a non-profit in Fremont, NE that is hoping to cultivate the next crop of rural junior programmers. We want students to learn in an atmosphere more akin to a start up business than a lecture hall. I hate the cliche (or maybe I actually love it) but we want people to “move fast and break things”. We’ve seen code schools popup all over the Silicon Prairie. Even as close as 30 or 40 miles down the road. There is no reason Fremont can’t help bridge the jobs gap this country is facing with technology workers.

My friend, Jesse, has a good point here. There are still massive benefits to traditional Comp Sci education. The internet as a whole relies on smart people who have dedicated their lives to the ins-and-outs of building and maintaining very complicated IT infrastructure. My argument is this: if you want to make software that will have a real impact on people, hit the pavement and start learning now. What you learn for free on the internet or in a small group at your local Code School is the same, if not better, than what you will learn in a college classroom.