[HN Gopher] There's no speed limit (2009)
___________________________________________________________________
There's no speed limit (2009)
Author : melling
Score : 602 points
Date : 2022-08-17 15:39 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (sive.rs)
(TXT) w3m dump (sive.rs)
| braingenious wrote:
| I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to take away from this.
|
| The author is obviously quite musically gifted, as was his tutor?
|
| Berklee has a bunch of nonsense curriculum?
|
| Berklee has a bunch of acceptable curriculum, but if you happen
| to be a musical genius and have a musical genius as a tutor, you
| can quickly prove that you're smarter than everybody else?
|
| Is any of this meant to be inspiring to regular folks, or is it
| just for people that already consider themselves to be
| intellectually far ahead of most others in their age group or
| field?
|
| ... Who is this for?
| soheil wrote:
| I think the part he said the pace is set for the mediocre
| students to be able to finish their degree made his point very
| clear. Then going from specific to the general. More
| concretely, school pace is set for below average students so if
| you're average or above average then you don't have to follow
| that same speed. Once you apply this logic to life in general
| you'll encounter numerous other areas where the pace is also
| set very low and you'll do much better if you pay no attention
| to it.
| lupire wrote:
| lalopalota wrote:
| There is a path laid by those who have come before. You can
| walk it or you can run it.
| abigail95 wrote:
| This is not marginal thinking.
|
| 50% of people are more capable than the other 50%. Being
| smarter than most people is not such a rare thing.
|
| There are plenty of regular people smarter than most of the
| people they encounter.
|
| Berklee sets a standard so low that not just some people can do
| it faster, most people can complete it faster.
|
| The point is, most people can complete everything faster than
| the default. But many don't because of these artifical "speed
| limits".
| braingenious wrote:
| So this _is_ an article about Berklee in particular having a
| superfluous amount of coursework?
|
| This would be the first response that answered _any_ of my
| questions, thanks!
| zamadatix wrote:
| Whether or not the coursework is superfluous is a per
| student question not a per university question.
| braingenious wrote:
| This is confusing to me. If this article is about
| Berklee, wouldn't it necessarily be university specific?
| zamadatix wrote:
| It wouldn't necessarily be so as other universities are
| also able to have students who learn at different rates
| despite the article being about a student that went to
| Berklee.
|
| Regardless, even in the case the article only applied to
| Berklee it still wouldn't be a university specific
| question as not every student that goes to Berklee will
| be able to learn at the same rate. This is what makes it
| a per student question instead of an answered property
| you can apply to Berklee itself.
| braingenious wrote:
| Wait if the article _only applied to Berklee_ it wouldn't
| be university specific?
|
| When I read the article it was about somebody that
| graduated early because of the rules at Berklee that
| allowed them to do so.
|
| Is this actually a universal thing for universities?
|
| Usually (in the US) a "speed limit" is generally a term
| that relates to _maximum speed_ , whereas a minimum speed
| is called... a minimum speed. I'm pretty sure there is an
| actual lower "speed limit" for most universities in that
| it's difficult or impossible to take (for example) 15
| years to finish a BA.
|
| Who is this for?
| zamadatix wrote:
| Even if we took all of those in the most leaning way we
| still wouldn't arrive at a way to remove the student
| specific portion from whether the coursework is
| superfluous so I'm not sure the questions would do more
| than further confuse you from what people were saying.
|
| I'd say this the target audience is anyone looking at or
| working on a degree. Even if you're a slow learner
| already at a university that doesn't have any form of
| testing out it can be helpful to know learning the
| material strictly via the course schedules may not be the
| most efficient way to absorb it. For others in the target
| audience it has some good advice about seeing if you can
| test out to finish sooner too.
| kashkhan wrote:
| this for people learning things that have been already
| discovered and done. You can do it as slow or as fast as you
| want, because really you're just copying information to your
| mind.
|
| Creating new things (research or art) is what takes time.
| rob_c wrote:
| > ...but if you happen to be a musical genius and have a
| musical genius as a tutor...
|
| There's the crux of the story which I'm sure is well intended,
| this is the slight shortsightedness as to place this as an
| inconsequential part. I'm not blaming the author or any editor.
| I imagine they know how important this part is but it doesn't
| come across this way.
|
| Without realising that "small part" for what it is (a huge deal
| breaker) the story comes across as either aloof or detached
| because it's impossible to resonate with unless you had a
| similar opportunity in your education at some stage.
|
| And yes I did with my mathematical ability and will likely
| spend my life in awe at a professional musicians musical
| ability or a great authors writing style, but I enjoy
| understanding higher order patterns.
| 734129837261 wrote:
| Back in 2001, I started work as a web-developer right out of high
| school at the age of 17. My high school diploma wasn't good
| enough to get into a software engineering university in my
| country (the Netherlands), so I had to wait until I was 21 to
| take an admission-test.
|
| So I worked for 4 years before I got to a university and followed
| along for a 1-day introduction. They would tell their prospective
| students what they would learn in the next 4 years, and what jobs
| they would find when they were done. At the end of the day was a
| Q&A with some professors.
|
| It was at that moment that I realised: 1. I know more than these
| professors do; 2. I'm currently a very skilled autodidact
| software developer; 3. I already know all of what they would
| teach me in four years; 4. they were working with outdated
| materials; they taught generics, not specifics.
|
| These professors were academics. Google didn't exist yet. They,
| mostly, hadn't worked in any professional environment. They
| weren't pragmatic. They were slow perfectionists but also several
| years behind on the rest of the world.
|
| And that was saying something: the bleeding-edge books that I was
| reading took at least 1 year from the start of writing to
| publication, so even I was behind on reality.
|
| Even today I sometimes wonder what software engineering students
| learn in 4 or more years. It shouldn't take nearly that long. If
| you spend 20 hours a week studying software engineering you
| should be ready to find work in less than a year. And from that
| point onward, that's where you actually learn how to do it right.
| Calavar wrote:
| Oh man, I remember this attitude from a lot of my classmates
| back in undergrad. "Why are we using Java like dinosaurs? All
| jobs are in Ruby/Rails!" (Today it would be Node/Typescript
| instead of RoR)
|
| It really amazed me how many students didn't see forest for the
| trees. Sure, the college could teach us RoR, but five years
| from now it will be something else. And sure enough, five years
| later it was all about Node. And five years from now it will be
| something else.
|
| Typescript, Node, RoR, and so on are all just icing over the
| same underlying core concepts that have stood the test of time.
| Learn the concepts, and you will be an expert regardless of
| whichever icing is on trop.
|
| When I took our databases course, our professor gave us problem
| sets with long lists of ridiculously complicated things that we
| had to write queries for in relational calculus. The problems
| all ways seemed so contrived. And why the hell were we writing
| them in some stupid mathematical notation instead of code?
|
| But when I started my first job, I found that I had a much
| better understanding of how and when to use joins, derived
| queries, and subqueries than some of my colleagues, who used
| "where in" clauses everywhere. And if they got worked into a
| corner, they queried a huge chunk of data, brought it all in
| over the wire, then used a soup of procedural loops and ifs to
| filter out what they wanted. Unsurprisingly, their code wasn't
| very performant and was filled with bugs.
|
| I ran into a similar thing when I got into an argument with a
| guy about JS on the server. He said JS was revolutionary
| because it allowed for async IO. And I said what's new about
| that? You could do that in Ruby too. The guy refused to believe
| me. He legitimately thought that because Ruby didn't have an
| "async" keyword that it couldn't do async IO. He knew the
| syntax sugar de jour on top of async concepts, but he didn't
| understand the concepts underneath. If fads move on from JS to
| a new language that has a different async programming model,
| what is he going to do?
|
| You can learn SQL or Node from online tutorials or a coding
| bootcamp. And it will feel more useful than a college course
| because they give you concrete examples right away. But they
| will only teach you the surface dressing. They won't push you
| to understand the tough underlying concepts because that isn't
| easily done in a single article or a three week crash course.
| yolovoe wrote:
| In college, I was able to sample a lot of computer science from
| building a pipelined cpu in verilog, algorithms, writing a
| multi-threaded OS, implementing animation engine in opengl,
| quantum computing, machine learning (lots of theory and lots of
| practice), group theory to name a few.
|
| I thought my degree was a bargain at the state school I went
| to. Also majored in math. Both CS and math had so many
| interesting classes, I found myself wishing school was 6 years
| instead of 4. Work is hardly that cutting edge compared to what
| we learned in school, which woukd cover the latest stuff in the
| literature in some classes.
|
| Most of all, I learned that getting stuck at problems is normal
| in college. You have to be patient, spend a lot of time and
| slowly make progress. That helps me immensely in my current
| job, esp. debugging complicated problems.
| drdec wrote:
| > Even today I sometimes wonder what software engineering
| students learn in 4 or more years. It shouldn't take nearly
| that long. If you spend 20 hours a week studying software
| engineering you should be ready to find work in less than a
| year. And from that point onward, that's where you actually
| learn how to do it right.
|
| This is the difference between college/university and a coding
| boot camp. At college, they are trying to teach you a breadth
| of subject matter and experiences to turn you into a well-
| rounded, educated person. At a coding boot camp, they are
| giving you vocational training and nothing more.
|
| Each approach has its benefits and drawbacks and neither is
| appropriate for every situation.
|
| I'm glad you realized that for you, college did not have a
| benefit, and you saved yourself a great deal of time and money.
| legacynl wrote:
| Although I get where you're coming from, I think you're taking
| a big risk by assuming you know everything there's to know
| already. The fact is that you can't know what you don't know.
| You could be dunning-kruggering yourself on a daily basis and
| there's no way for you to know.
|
| > These professors were academics. Google didn't exist yet.
| They, mostly, hadn't worked in any professional environment.
| They weren't pragmatic. They were slow perfectionists but also
| several years behind on the rest of the world.
|
| Maybe you're blinded by your arrogance a bit, because there's
| an actual field of science dedicated to effective learning,
| teaching, practicing. Although it's great that you found
| something that worked for you, it doesn't mean that you've had
| the best or most optimal learning experience. Every teenager
| thinks they're smarter than their stupid dumb teachers, but
| they often aren't.
|
| There's a reason why things are taught in a certain manner, and
| why there isn't that much change in that. It's because these
| methods have been tried and tested, and there's no need to
| chase each new framework, method or technology, because it's
| all built upon the old stuff anyway.
|
| These courses are meant to give you a broad understanding of
| everything there is to know about computer science. Specifics
| change, but generics don't. If you know the generic things it
| doesn't matter what the specifics are.
| lupire wrote:
| lolinder wrote:
| Like a sibling comment, I find my degree to have been well
| worth it. I _did_ know everything I needed to find work before
| I even started--I got a job in my second semester that I held
| all four years. But college gave me perspective on just how
| much there is that I don 't know, in computing and in every
| other field. Most of those things are things I will never learn
| and use, and that's okay. It's valuable to me to know what's
| out there, and there have been many times where I've come
| across a problem and known _what_ to research to solve it
| because of a college class I 've taken.
|
| So, yes, college isn't about career training. But life isn't
| about career. I know it's not everyone's experience, but for
| me, college made me better at life.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| I went through the normal course and the programming part
| wasn't that hard and those of us who could do so already got to
| skip it. Those who hadn't programmed before learned what we
| could do in about a year.
|
| The classes that destroyed people were Algorithms and
| Datastructures, distributed/parallel computing, programming
| language design, OS design, low level hardware design (here is
| infinite transistors and infinite resisters, now go build a
| computer) and whatever the two classes we had that covered
| Sipsers Introduction to Computation was called.
|
| These were all classes that covered stuff you wouldn't ever hit
| upon when you were programming, but which are necessary as to
| know as a Computer Scientist.
|
| Then there were all the classes that were, at even the smallest
| level, related to human computer interaction, which were
| entirely a waste of everybodies time, including the
| instructors.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > the system is designed so anyone can keep up ... this principle
| applies to all of life, not just school.
|
| Disagree. The incentives for school are such that it would
| honestly be surprising to me if the system were not designed for
| all to keep up. Adult, real-life, everybody trying to make money
| life is very different and this rule does not apply.
| kpennell wrote:
| I read this article a while ago and recently re-listened to his
| interview on Tim Ferriss' podcast:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnk4sgOFjBQ He talks about how
| maniacal he was at practicing music at a young age. His friends
| gave him a hard time because all he wanted to do was practice
| scales over and over. The dude was exceptionally motivated from a
| very early age.
|
| The gist of this blog post is that the average pace is for chumps
| and that he was able to finish Berkelee school of music in much
| less time than the average person takes thanks to studying ahead
| of time with a mentor and reading the books and testing out. He
| wasn't a 'chump' and the lesson is that you shouldn't be either.
|
| I remember reading this advice 10 years ago and really taking it
| to heart. I didn't want to be a chump afterall and became
| convinced I could do everything faster than the chumps. But the
| problem with this is that it can make you beat yourself up and/or
| always feel rushed if it does take you a normal amount of time to
| do something. Like I've had to admit that I'm a really slow
| programmer. It took me forever to learn it. And I beat myself up
| a lot in the process.
|
| But now I've taken to listening to more Alain de botton and
| Oliver Burkeman for my self-help/self-development. These British
| authors advocate for a much gentler version of self help. In one
| Alain de botton interview, he mentioned how we've come to worship
| exceptionalism and see being average as being bad. Oliver
| Burkeman's 4000 weeks book plainly states that you can't do it
| all. This has been super refreshing for someone like me who took
| Sivers' stuff seriously in my early 20s and then beat myself up
| for merely being average at many things.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Seeing how I agree with your thoughts in general, I'm now en
| route to pick up a copy of 4000 weeks. Thanks!
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It's not coding you should be quick at but finding a robust
| design, that doesn't need a lot of fixes or rework. It takes
| practice and experience and may not be as glamorous. Also takes
| an experienced boss to appreciate, but there are jobs for us.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > It's not coding you should be quick at but finding a robust
| design, that doesn't need a lot of fixes or rework.
|
| Yes, but you don't even need to be quick (modulo
| company/team-politics, which tends to favor speed). I am a
| slow but good architect, but slow doesn't hurt because it's
| going to be dwarfed by implementation time anyway. Not to
| mention, paper+pencil+contemplating is the most fun part!
| WoodenChair wrote:
| You provided a lot of great context here that wasn't in the
| article. I found it suspect to begin with unless he had a lot
| of knowledge or was exceptional. How did he know how to answer
| those questions in the first lesson with the mentor unless he
| already had a strong understanding of chords going into it? In
| other words, he had enough knowledge that the mentor could
| accelerate accumulating more on top of it. But he had to have
| already spent a huge amount of time (equivalent to several
| college semesters) acquiring knowledge to be at that point.
|
| I found the rest of your comment interesting too, but I don't
| think the overall point of the original article is invalidated,
| it just needs a caveat. There is no speed limit, _except your
| own ability_!
| tasuki wrote:
| > I've had to admit that I'm a really slow programmer.
|
| I am, too! Mostly the people I've worked with were much faster
| than me. Some are genuinely great, some just produce rubbish,
| and some are inbetween.
|
| In my experience, slow programmers produce less rubbish on
| average than the fast ones. Perhaps I'm biased :)
| mmcnl wrote:
| How do you measure programming speed? Everyone remembers an
| instance where they lost a sizeable amount of work, only to
| figure out that you could easily recreate the work in a few
| hours because you know what has to be done. Programming is not
| the only part of the job.
| [deleted]
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I figured this out on my own as I got older. The rules are made
| for the bottom of the barrel, because it has to be that way. The
| instruction not to eat tide pods is not for the average person,
| but they still have to tell everyone not to do it. It's like when
| engineers build for the most common scenarios, and then they have
| to work out corner cases. But they have to be fair, so the rules
| designed to keep fuck ups in line affect everyone. It's a race to
| the bottom to deal with the lowest common denominator, and if
| you're more capable than that it's suffocating.
|
| And what makes someone not bottom of the barrel? There's people
| born with talent, higher intelligence, but the real thing that
| makes someone above that threshold is simply a willingness to
| learn. Unless you've got some extreme disadvantage, persistent
| willingness will take you a long way, farther than most people.
| What makes some better than others is in their behavior, not
| their innate traits, usually.
| gear54rus wrote:
| Problem is that this willingness might also be tied to
| intelligence (which in turn might be nature rather than
| nurture). If you don't enjoy the stimulation that your brain
| receives when you learn and understand something new you aren't
| going to be doing that habitually.
|
| Bit of black pill for this thread :)
| betwixthewires wrote:
| I don't think I've ever met someone that doesn't enjoy
| learning. I've met self conscious people with low self esteem
| that pretend not to enjoy learning because they think they're
| stupid and respond to protect their ego, I've met people who
| don't think learning most things will be beneficial to them,
| I've met genuinely stupid people who just don't grasp
| concepts, but I've never met someone who truly doesn't enjoy
| learning new things.
| balderdash wrote:
| My grandfather did grade school through high school in a one room
| school house, he was able to graduate three years early, since he
| was able to learn/audit the older children's work when he was
| done with his own.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _The pace was intense, and I loved it. Finally, someone was
| challenging me -- keeping me in over my head_
|
| This, I've found is key, but I do think there is a "speed limit".
| You definitely want the student1 out of their comfort zone, and
| challenged. But I do think there is a depth that is _too_ deep,
| where it will simply be so absurdly difficult the diminishing
| returns of the challenge are not worth it.
|
| > _the standard pace is for chumps_
|
| Yes, but ...
|
| So I self-taught CS/programming when I was in high school, and
| asked to take the easier of the two AP tests for CS. These were
| not offered by my school, and the administration balked at it:
| how could a student pass _possibly_ pass a test for which there
| was no class? My mother had to convince them to allow it! We paid
| for the test -- failure would be on me, so who even cares? (And
| yes, I passed.)
|
| And I still find this: _you_ might have no speed limit, but other
| people do. They 'll not want to do whatever you want to do, often
| because it requires exerting a modicum of effort on their part.
| Like, they'd need to _learn_ something, and getting someone to
| study something is, if they don 't want to, is blood from a
| stone. When you can fly solo, it matters naught, but sometimes
| you have to depend on others. IME, more often than not, it's the
| latter.
|
| 1who can handle it? I'm not sure if it applies to all students,
| particularly those that are really struggling. But for those
| hoovering up info, into the deep end.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > But I do think there is a depth that is _too_ deep, where it
| will simply be so absurdly difficult the diminishing returns of
| the challenge are not worth it.
|
| The point is that "too deep" is different for everyone, and you
| shouldn't be prohibited from going deeper just because it's too
| deep for someone else.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Oh, certainly! I meant it more in that it's part of the skill
| of teaching, in figuring out where that "deep but not too
| deep" is for the student. And that there's a limit, and you
| can't drown them.
| nickjj wrote:
| From the post:
|
| _> Then, as Kimo suggested, I bought the course materials for
| other required classes and taught myself, doing the homework in
| my own time. Then I went to the department head and took the
| final exam, getting full credit for those courses._
|
| As someone who never went to university is this really how it
| works? You can do all of the learning on your own, pay the
| tuition fee for the class and take a test without stepping foot
| in class to get your degree?
|
| That's pretty wild if so. Literally tens of thousands of dollars
| for a piece of paper when you did everything yourself.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| You have to sign up to take the rest, and not all colleges do
| this. Berklee is a _very_ "vocational" college. I know a few
| folks that went there.
|
| But I am not one to talk. I have a GED, and a couple of years
| of "redneck" tech school. All the rest has been OJT and
| following passion projects.
|
| It's worked well for me, but, boy, oh, boy, do I look up a lot
| of noses...
| detaro wrote:
| Really depends on the university/program/classes.
| Cu3PO42 wrote:
| It may work like that for some degrees at some schools. It
| definitely wouldn't have been possible at mine. In order to be
| able to take the exam, I generally needed at least x% across
| all homework assigned for the class and to attend the exercise
| classes.
| Arisaka1 wrote:
| I'm of the unpopular opinion that we conditioned ourselves to
| pedestalize speed of acquisition as the most important evidence
| that someone is talented. I see root comments bringing up how the
| person the article is talking about was anything but a beginner
| because he was practicing to the point of obsession at a younger
| age.
|
| Reading the post in isolation omits important details because
| it's hard to quantify how much of that knowledge he was learning
| was first acquisition and how much of that was synthesizing
| things he already know in a way that is different enough to be
| considered a new lesson to learn.
|
| Also, a good point to remember is that direct 1-to-1 contact with
| a mentor also allows for tacit knowledge to be acquired, not only
| instructional (for reference https://commoncog.com/the-tacit-
| knowledge-series/). Meaning that, another argument that can be
| made when you read an exchange like in the article is that 1-to-1
| learning transmits a better quality of tacit knowledge to the
| student than a catch-all instructional knowledge.
|
| And the point of the university is to communicate knowledge that
| is "everlasting". I see the article and the diss of the
| university as something required for software developers and I
| mean it in the nicest way possible but you're missing the point.
| University isn't there to make you a good tool builder (because
| that's what ultimately software is, it's a tool meant to be
| paired with hardware in order to allow the user to do what they
| want).
|
| We already know how to become tool builders, disregarding
| everything that makes software so different than making chairs,
| guitars and swords. Universities aren't there to make you a
| specialist into web, mobile, gaming development either. That's
| why you see self-taughts since forever like John Carmack dropping
| out of college once they learn as much as they want to, before
| they keep grooving on their merry way, ultimately banding
| together with others who share the same passion with them.
|
| Universities will never replace real world experience, and real
| world experience cannot replace universities for what they
| provide, because their goals are different. Universities don't
| have to remove the metaphorical speed limits. Even some of the
| experimental private bootcamps who value depth acquisition of
| fundamentals end up simply forming layers of classes where people
| getting paired with others who are working on the same concept.
| But that's still another form of mass apprenticeship.
| aliasxneo wrote:
| This is good advice to be taken sparingly. I went through the US
| Navy Nuclear program in which "no speed limit" was taken for
| granted. I never stopped operating that way until, one day, I had
| a mental health breakdown (I lasted about ten years). It took two
| years of therapy to deprogram that mentality from my mind.
|
| So yes, it can get you far, but there is a cost to be considered
| if you don't keep it under control.
| chefandy wrote:
| Beyond that, it only works with technical knowledge and very
| specific learning styles. He learned the math behind the those
| progressions, but the taste, depth and creativity to explore
| new ideas and compelling ways to portray them involves play and
| self discovery. Creativity is not a technical problem to be
| solved.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Yes to the above. I'd also add that fine motor skills are
| proven to be trained through sleeping. Music has a ton of
| that, so practicing every day serves a purpose that cannot be
| replaced by intense sessions.
|
| It is however very possible (and likely) that the author had
| already trained and somewhat saturated those parts, perhaps
| even without thinking about it because it was their natural
| state. In those cases you can become a sponge when a new
| modality opens up to you.
|
| Rich kids who get personal tutors tend to not dominate their
| fields. There's an advantage, but it has to be coupled with
| alone-time practicing. People who alone-time practice out of
| genuine curiosity tend to underestimate the magnitude of
| practice they get because it can feel effortless.
| bbarn wrote:
| So glad I chose regular ET over nuke ET. My whole reason was
| not wanting to be on a sub, but I've heard tons of stories over
| the years about nuke life that have cemented that choice.
| randomsearch wrote:
| Speed != total effort.
|
| You need to operate within your capacity. For me this seems
| frustratingly low (50 pretty focused hours a week). Don't know
| if others have a higher capacity or they're just postponing
| burnout, but I have tried to go beyond 50 hours and it always
| ends in enforced holiday.
| stephendause wrote:
| I don't think you're alone in this. That seems to be about my
| limit as well. If one is focusing as hard as they possibly
| can on a complex problem, I think the limit is more like 25
| hours a week.
|
| I have been wondering whether there is any psychological
| research on this. I imagine that it would be hard to do since
| focus and productivity are difficult things to measure in a
| way that would be externally valid.
| drekipus wrote:
| This as well.
|
| I love the no speed limit mindset and was endlessly annoyed at
| uni for not being structured like that, but at the same time it
| does take a toll
| renewiltord wrote:
| So if you knew the material on day one they'd just immediately
| consider you done? Like if I pretrained on the material and
| then went to the program and asked them to determine if I was
| to the readiness they expected at the end, they'd do it?
|
| Genuinely doubt it. But I guess it's possible. The pay is shit
| enough that the guys who would smash it are doing something
| else.
| nickelpro wrote:
| > So if you knew the material on day one they'd just
| immediately consider you done?
|
| The material is largely classified, so there is no way to
| "pretrain" it.
|
| The first 6 months to a year of the program is not self-
| paced, it's semi-traditional classroom learning except its 8
| hours of lecture a day, 5 days a week. Homework and studying
| are done after lecture and the number of required study hours
| are mandatory depending on the sailor's GPA. It is very
| common for students to spend 60-80 hours a week in the
| classroom. You could think of this as an _enforced minimum
| speed limit_. The first year is spent teaching students how
| to learn at all-gas-no-breaks speed.
|
| After that, the next year to 18 months of a nuke's education
| are spent in a qualification program that is entirely self-
| paced. You study the material independently, and when you
| feel you have a solid grasp on it you request an evaluation
| (think technical interview) about the subject. How fast or
| slow one moves through these interviews is entirely up to the
| individual sailor. But too slow and the sailor will be
| dropped from the program, thus why it's important to train
| them how to learn quickly.
|
| Anecdotally, after the nuke program, university (NYU Tandon
| in my case) is trivial. The workload is nothing compared to
| the expectations of the nuke pipeline.
| exmadscientist wrote:
| Does that also apply to the instructors at Nuclear Power
| School? Because one member of my undergraduate class became
| a NPS instructor, and, well, not to mince words but if he
| was the best then I must be off the charts....
| nickelpro wrote:
| Their qualification program is similar, but the Direct
| Input Limited Duty Officers recruited straight to
| instructor duty typically take over a single subject of
| classroom instruction and aren't expected to fully
| understand all subjects in the entire qualification
| process.
|
| More saliently, the nuclear pipeline is not made up of
| "the best". It is ubiquitously composed of academic
| rejects. College dropouts, "smart but lazy"s, clever
| misfits, and a few enterprising criminals. The kind of
| unfulfilled talent that comes a dime a dozen.
|
| The Navy learned that with enough discipline and a
| tolerance for high washout rates, you can get "greatness"
| for pennies on the dollar by making it yourself from the
| raw cuttings left behind by America's higher education
| system.
| soheil wrote:
| I cannot at all relate to your experience specially since
| you're providing details sparingly. You're saying x exists
| without any evidence and then saying avoid x at all costs. Can
| you give more details about what happened to you that you
| needed two years of therapy? How frequent was your therapy once
| a week or multiple? Did you do therapy with a run of the mill
| therapist, one specialized in a particular area or a full on
| doctor, a psychiatrist? I just want to do a cost/benefit
| analysis. Did you consider age a factor if you worked there for
| 10 years, presumably you had other jobs prior?
| saagarjha wrote:
| I was fairly lucky to stumble into a UC program that was pretty
| good about not setting up speed limits for those pursuing
| computer science. I knew how to program going in, was very clear
| on my statement of intent that I did not want to be stuck in
| introductory classes, and was largely able to start where I
| wanted and then take what I wanted. Like the author, I also
| graduated with my degree at 20. Things seem to have mostly worked
| out.
|
| What I will say is that bringing up college as an example of a
| place with "no speed limits" is kind of odd. I happened to fall
| into a place where I could shape things around me to fulfill my
| needs. I abused a program designed for encouraging undergraduates
| to do research to get a rubber stamp on all the graduate classes
| I was interested in. Not everyone can have that. Some of those
| doors have closed behind me, and were already closing when I got
| into the program. At most colleges if you don't have the
| prerequisites you're just not getting into a class, period.
|
| I _do_ think there is something to be said for there not being
| any speed limits on knowledge in general. College is one way to
| get it, and one of the last things I did before I graduated was
| try to design a class for students who were willing to go fast
| and deep. But a lot of it is materials, and people, for which
| college can be a very rigid structure that does limit you from
| moving quickly. In that case you might have to find your own path
| that you can move at your desired speed on.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Great article and interesting story. The combination of innate
| talent plus a beneficient one-on-one tutor can have remarkable
| results and it's really too bad this historically important form
| of education isn't more widely supported.
|
| A case example is Leonard Euler, one of the most significant
| mathematicians in human history by any measure:
|
| > "Euler's interest in mathematics stemmed from his childhood
| when his father would teach him the subject. As luck would have
| it, Johann Bernoulli, Europe's foremost mathematician of his
| time, was a friend of Leonhard's father and the influence of this
| great mathematician on the young Leonhard was immense. Euler's
| father wanted to prepare him for a career in theology and it was
| Bernoulli who persuaded his friend to let the boy study
| mathematics."
|
| https://www.thefamouspeople.com/profiles/leonhard-euler-biog...
|
| However, education for the masses is also important and there's
| just not enough expert tutors to go around for the one-on-one
| approach. It's also true that the combination of innate talent
| and motivation isn't necessarily all that common, or easy to
| identify. Notice how this tutor had a selection system in place?
| I.e. not many people showed up for the offer.
|
| That's where the 'gifted and talented' programs have tried to
| pick up the slack in public education, with mixed results.
| Unfortunately, more often than not, teachers feel threatened by
| such students... not that high-quality teachers capable of
| tutoring such students (notice the low pay) end up being
| recruited by our public education system all that often.
| fisherjeff wrote:
| I agree with most everything you say, except:
|
| > Unfortunately, more often than not, teachers feel threatened
| by such students
|
| My wife and many (most?) of our friends are educators, and my
| impression is quite the opposite. By and large, they would love
| to provide more for these students - there simply aren't any
| resources provided to do so.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Yes, that might have been a little unfair. I must admit I was
| thinking more about 'institutions of higher learning', where
| some professors fear being replaced by their students. That's
| not a risk faced by instructors in K-12.
| gene_takavic wrote:
| One of the really awful things that happens if you end up in the
| private sector is that the stupid speed limits come back--and
| this time they're malevolent and political, so the smarter you
| are, the more eyes are on you watching for "bad attitude" when
| you realize you're "not allowed" to learn at your natural rate of
| 10 times the prescribed one, and that this is not for your
| benefit but because some spreadsheet eichmann needs to get more
| grunt work out of you.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _There 's no speed limit (2009)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761013 - March 2012 (194
| comments)
|
| _There 's no speed limit (2009)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2766060 - July 2011 (25
| comments)
|
| _There 's no speed limit. (The lessons that changed my life.)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945 - Dec 2009 (60
| comments)
| iuvcaw wrote:
| Life's not a race
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I doubt this comment will get far on this forum, but it does
| jog my memory of my favorite professor and mentor in college (a
| very long story). Anyway, I was complaining to him that I was
| struggling with keeping up learning something in fluid
| mechanics, and he pointed out that it took Bernoulli 20 years
| to put together his general equation, but, as students, we're
| expected to master it in a weekend. Anyway anyway, life isn't a
| race, unless you're trying to get ahead of someone else. To
| your point, plenty of people can do wonderful things in their
| own time and on their own pace, and that may not be as fast as
| someone else.
| __t__ wrote:
| I'm still in my 20s and I've fell to the idea that if you
| haven't achieved everything you want early on then you just
| don't want it enough or you're not working hard enough.
|
| However, what if I achieve everything before hitting 30? What
| would I have to look forward then?
|
| I think some things are just meant to be hard and take a long
| time. You just have to learn to enjoy the process and
| understand that everyone has their own pace and that's okay.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| There are often compounding benefits to moving quickly.
| devmunchies wrote:
| I had a different takeaway. That you can fast-track the
| pointless "traffic jams" (using the race analogy). Why sit in
| traffic for no reason?
|
| In his example, he tested out of classes that he was already
| proficient in--not _all_ classes. Doing this occasionally would
| allow you to have more time for things that matter.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| With that attitude, I'll finish life way before you!
| askafriend wrote:
| Well, it's more like - if you can afford 1:1 instruction and
| find a teacher whose style really fits you, you can really
| speed up your learning.
|
| I've experienced this with guitar. Self-study can be done but
| you really need a coach who can push you further than you think
| you're ready to go, along with tailored instruction. You'll
| make years worth of progress in months this way.
| anyfoo wrote:
| University was a wonderful time that shaped me in many ways.
| Technically, because it gave me the time and freedom to branch
| out as much as I wanted, and socially because I had a fantastic
| time with friends I made there, at a time where I was still
| unencumbered by commitments.
|
| Cutting that short would have been the last thing on my mind.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Not relevant. In modern day if you have time and freedom at a
| uni you're the top 1%. Today the costs are so high you have to
| be working and studying full-time. Sometimes at the same time.
| During covid schools made whatever rules they liked, even if
| they infringed on basic rights of your rented home/property.
|
| You don't need to spend 80K and drop out in the third year to
| get social experience. Everyone else outside of universities
| does it just fine.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Tell me you're American without telling me you're American.
| anyfoo wrote:
| I went to University in Germany, where there is no tuition,
| and admittance is gated by pre-academic grades.
|
| The only money I had to spend[1], was for the apartment I
| rented out with my roommates and for feeding myself. I had a
| fun and flexible part-time job for that. A lot of my friends
| stayed with their parents. Certainly not 80k...
|
| [1] Technically that's not true. My studies had the
| misfortune to overlap with the brief time where there _were_
| tuition fees in Bavaria. It was around 300EUR to 500EUR per
| semester, and a massive pain in the a**. I was able to get
| by, and it got voted off pretty quickly.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Why get a bachelor's degree in music? Why not study with the best
| teachers you can afford, play with the best groups you can get
| into, and upgrade both when you can? The degree doesn't really
| get you anything you couldn't get faster and better without all
| the fluff that comes with a degree. (Source : got the degree.)
| wizofaus wrote:
| I also got the degree, despite being pretty sure I'd never
| pursue music as an exclusive career choice (and well, 25 years
| later, haven't at all, but still hope to in semi-retirement!).
| Most of the benefits weren't so obviously related to the degree
| itself but rather the setting, of being among like-minded
| students. I still stay in touch with a number of them (which is
| more than I can say for students I did a comp. sci. degree
| with), and I'd say they'll provide useful connections if I did
| consider pursuing music professionally. I'm not sure exactly
| how much theory etc. I learned that I didn't know already or
| could have easily exposed myself to easily, but I certainly
| have no regrets doing the degree.
| archi42 wrote:
| Really depends on the program. A friend taught CS in the US,
| Germany and now UK, and (Sanierung to him) the German university
| has the hardest requirements of the three.
|
| One barrier are also tedious requirements like "do the exercises
| and attend tutorial lessons if you want to be allowed to take the
| exam". For a lot of people that's a good idea, but for some it's
| just a waste of time (tutorials/exercise sheets don't influence
| the final score at my Alma mater, but larger software projects
| sometimes did).
|
| Not to say it's impossible here, just harder. I know a few people
| who were faster than the average student, which means they either
| took the expected time for their BSc/MSc or a semester less,
| since the average student took a semester or two more (or didn't
| finish at all). But people who really broke the speed limit? One,
| maybe two. Though of course that's biased since I didn't know
| everyone in the dept. For the one I'm sure of, I vouched that he
| should be allowed to take the exam without the formal
| requirements (I was his tutor in that course). He obviously
| passed, and IIRC he had one of the best exams while doing twice
| the courses everyone else did. A real genius & also a nice person
| as well!
| archi42 wrote:
| s/Sanierung/according/ - one would think the multilingual
| keyboard would take the currently used language into
| consideration.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I did most of my Uni Comp Sci degree in 2 years (only took 2
| courses the last year and worked on the side, learned a lot
| working) - not on purpose - it was mostly by reading ahead
| because that stuff was more interesting
|
| (Note: in the NZ system most degrees are 3 years not 4, largely
| because we have entrance tests that cover much of what in the US
| is "general ed")
| agumonkey wrote:
| It's a global problem in society. We're all coupled and have to
| flow at average speed.
| moffkalast wrote:
| It's to the determent of almost everyone, honestly. Below
| average speed learners struggle to keep up and speedy learners
| are bored to tears. Neither are able to reach their full
| potential.
|
| In a hundred years teaching will probably be done by
| personalized AI tutors or something and they'll look back at
| the era of some person talking beside a blackboard explaining
| things as some kind of barbaric idiocy.
| d0mine wrote:
| As many students know, you can cram a whole semester worth of
| material in just a few learning sessions before an exam: you can
| pass exam but you forget everything as fast as you've learned it.
| Use such methods for subjects that you don't care but must pass.
|
| If you do care about something long term, spread the lessons over
| time.
|
| For fundamentals, Learning to learn course is recommended
| https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn
| 8jef wrote:
| What applies to music, which I consider heavenly, do not apply to
| every field in life. Taking loads of music without limits may be
| harmless, even good, but some other things, nah! You gotta Love,
| really Love what you do, to speed up like that. It makes no sense
| otherwise.
| jerrygoyal wrote:
| Great and short article by Derek as always. I wish more authors
| would write in a concise manner.
| sowbug wrote:
| Lately I've been enjoying Matt Rickard's blog, so much so that
| I subscribed. His articles are so short that it's faster to
| just read them than to decide whether to read them.
|
| https://matt-rickard.ghost.io/events-vs-webhooks/
| kuharich wrote:
| Past comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=970945,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3761013
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I see a lot of discussion between a couple of different "camps"
| on this.
|
| I would have _loved_ to have gotten a degree at a great
| university. Most of the arguments for a formal education are
| absolutely correct. But many of the arguments against it, are, as
| well.
|
| But we make plans, and God laughs. Things turned out the way they
| did for me, and I ended up getting my undergraduate from The
| School of Hard Knocks, and my postgrad from The College of
| Getting the Shit Kicked Out of You. It's just the way things
| went. Long, sad, story (get your hankie).
|
| I love learning, and still do it, every day. That's one of the
| reasons that I love this industry (It sure ain't the people).
|
| The way I was "reared" in this field has given me some really
| useful, powerful, skills and habits, but I definitely feel the
| "holes" that are there, from not having the luxury of a complete,
| comprehensive education.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Whenever you're watching YouTube videos from an influencer or
| popular educational channel, remember this. Most of these
| tutorials can just be a 3 paragraph blog post in its most
| condensed form.
|
| We have too much bullshit in the world.
|
| Hell, no one writes dense highly informative books like the K&R's
| classic C programming language:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_C_Programming_Language
| [deleted]
| adultSwim wrote:
| I enjoyed the read but would take the advice more seriously had
| he become a successful musician.
| smcf wrote:
| When I went to college, having already done full-time software
| work and countless hours of programming in my spare time, I went
| to a departmental advisor confidently requesting to test out of
| the introductory CS classes aimed at first-time programmers. I
| nearly got laughed out of the room. I pushed the department on
| this, but it was clear: they simply did not do this. Everyone
| takes intro to CS. Everyone.
|
| It sucks, but there are people out there no smarter than you yet
| more powerful, and sometimes they impose a speed limit.
|
| If you get the opportunity though, I'd still suggest doing what
| the author did. No harm in learning something twice, particularly
| from two different perspectives.
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| In contrast, Western Governors University allows students to
| test out of any course.
|
| For example, I completed my CS degree in 3 months:
| https://miguelrochefort.com/blog/cs-degree/
| iratewizard wrote:
| The best option is not to go. I had also done full time
| programming for clients from age 15 on. 5 years after that I
| got opportunities to lead small projects. 10 more years after
| that and I was made VP of an engineering department. I've
| worked a lot with fresh graduates from "good" schools with good
| GPAs. I've always been thoroughly unimpressed by what they know
| and what they think is important for the job.
| eBombzor wrote:
| You sound like someone who thinks they're better than
| everyone else.
| adamisom wrote:
| Maybe they are. Better at programming and leading projects,
| that is.
| gwbrooks wrote:
| Across virtually any measurable trait or collection of
| traits with a reasonably normal distribution, about half of
| the people will come out better than average.
|
| Iratewizard may or may not be better than everyone else;
| but he/she is almost certainly better than average at a lot
| of things. We all are.
| iratewizard wrote:
| Your skill at a job doesn't equate to your value as a
| person. A job is just a way I and most others contribute
| back to the world. It's in everyone's best interest if
| there aren't unnecessary barriers to that contribution. For
| instance, universities' poor curriculums and the way they
| predatorily pretend to be the gatekeepers of "prestigious"
| jobs.
| kevincox wrote:
| This is basically what I did. The only complication were
| "quizes" which were just completion marks but at random
| times. So I would skip 4-5 classes after each quiz then come
| to classes and so personal programming in the back until the
| next quiz landed.
| gravypod wrote:
| > I went to a departmental advisor confidently requesting to
| test out of the introductory CS classes aimed at first-time
| programmers. I nearly got laughed out of the room. I pushed the
| department on this, but it was clear: they simply did not do
| this. Everyone takes intro to CS. Everyone.
|
| I tested out of the _maximum number of courses_ for my degree.
| It 's insane. This is why I have such a low opinion of
| structured education. I hope to be someone's Kimo. I had my own
| who pushed me to build good software, not be lazy, and a lot of
| fundamentals on simplicity.
| yesdocs wrote:
| Some of the greatest coaches of all time start every season by
| going over the basic's like 'How to tie your shoe'. Drop your
| ego at the door.
| bnralt wrote:
| After learning programming and CS on my own, I thought I'd go
| back and pick up on areas I missed by taking some courses at a
| university (I already had a degree). It was a fairly highly
| ranked university for CS (in the top 20), but the whole thing
| was honestly a waste of time and money and I was shocked by how
| little I learned.
|
| I did test out of some classes, though they only allowed it for
| a handful of classes. And you needed to be able to get a higher
| score than students who had just finished the class, while
| doing so with much less material (students going through the
| class get told specifically what's on the test and are given
| materials accordingly; people trying to test out aren't given
| either). It was also surprising that on the Computer Science II
| test they had a large amount of the score based on memorizing
| default Java methods.
|
| Because I was doing this strictly for educational purposes, I
| got really interested in how much students were retaining
| between semesters. It seemed to be very little, and there was
| little that they needed to retain. Most would remember big O,
| but no one remembered little O, big theta, Big omega, little
| omega despite the time they were required to memorize it. As I
| mentioned, CSII was very Java focused where students had to
| memorize specifics of default methods and Java inheritance edge
| cases, but after the class was over that information was almost
| all forgotten. You might have a class where you do a few weeks
| of stack based programming in a toy language, but it's not
| enough to actually do anything with and, again, is wiped from
| the students mind as soon as they finish their finals.
|
| All this was driven home even more when I tried to discuss
| topics with colleagues who had CS degrees. They retained a very
| small amount of the things they studied in college, with the
| vast majority was met by "Oh yeah...I think we studied that?
| Isn't that the thing where [insert some vague broken memory]."
|
| The whole thing felt mostly like a waste of time in order to
| justify four years of teaching. Of course, someone who never
| studied programming or CS would get _something_ out of it, but
| even there it seemed to be in the most inefficient way
| possible.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| I don't think anybody is expected to have perfect recall of
| all those small details, but it will all come back easily
| when you need it and go back to skim over the material to
| refresh your memory.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| I was on the competitive programming team at my college. I was
| able to join on one of the more advanced teams pretty early, my
| other teammates were college seniors while I was a freshman.
|
| I actually was able to get our 2x weekly meetings to count as
| course credits for basic classes and the professors who ran the
| group vouched for me to skip some of the pre-requisites for
| higher levels classes. (e.g. I took Algorithms II while in the
| same semester the competitive team meetings counted as
| Algorithms I).
|
| Then my family moved, I wanted to transfer schools to keep
| living with my parents while attending school. The new school
| wouldn't accept my "free" credits. So in my third year of
| college I had to take intro to computers, intro to programming,
| etc.
|
| I did that for one semester, hated it, then managed to find a
| job writing Python. I still haven't graduated, heh...
| devwastaken wrote:
| Any publicly funded uni that does not allow testing out of
| every class should be blacklisted. They intentionally prevent
| it due to quote "costs". They depend on the tuition so admins
| can buy lake homes. That's straight out of the words from
| someone whom handles it.
| jghn wrote:
| I had the opposite problem. When I was a freshman, if you took
| AP CS you were allowed to self choose out of CS1. And I did. It
| was a terrible decision for me, in retrospect. It set me down a
| bad path. I was a very bad student. I could keep up with the
| software stuff in HS but that was about it. I shifted to
| college where everything was in C and pointers and I was
| struggling to wrap my mind around them at the time. And oh by
| the way, I was a freshman in college, with a million other new
| things going on in my life.
|
| I very much get the desire to place out of CS1 or whatever. My
| experience was that the overall college experience was the jam.
| A low level class here or there isn't going to change your
| life.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| When I was in college I needed to take two classes, one of
| which was a prerequisite for the other, within semester to
| graduate on time. The CS advisors adamantly refused to add me
| to higher level class because I was missing the prerequisite
| class. Furthermore, the classes were taught at the same time to
| prevent people from taking them in the same semester, for some
| reason.
|
| I talked to the more friendly advisors in the Philosophy
| department, who also had the ability to add and drop students
| from classes, and got them to add me to both classes I needed.
| I persuaded them not to worry about the overlap. I completed
| the semester by attending the higher level class except for
| exam days (I had to get a special dispensation to take one
| final early because their final exams were scheduled at the
| same time).
|
| My point with this anecdote is that sometimes more powerful
| people try to impose a speed limit and sometimes you can get
| around them.
| devwastaken wrote:
| This isn't possible anymore. The system has been fully
| automated.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| I think the scheduling both at the same time might just be an
| "optimal" solution if you already know that people can't take
| them at the same time. That frees up other time slots for
| courses people taking either one might take.
| drekipus wrote:
| This happened to me twice. I'm actually endlessly annoyed at
| the whole college system being structured like this.
| bruce511 wrote:
| So I get that college in the US can be expensive, hence the
| rush, but for me, one of the main benefits of university was
| time.
|
| My CS class very quickly divided into "those who could
| already program" and "first time programmers". (testing out
| was not a "thing" then - at least I never heard of anyone
| doing it for any class.)
|
| Interestingly it was more classification than groups. I spent
| time helping friends who were stuck, but I also spent a lot
| of time with other advanced students, in the lab, pushing
| each other. The assignments were trivially simply, so we just
| spent time making them more interesting.
|
| Because the course work was done quickly, we had a lot of
| time to go the extra mile. Time we wouldn't get later in
| life.
|
| The important things though, the theory, stuck with me, and
| even the early classes were valuable. Intro to programming
| only lasted a few months, then there was a lot more theory,
| and we could meld that into our code a lot more.
|
| I went into college knowing how to code. I came out knowing
| how to program, and there's a big difference.
|
| If you are in college today, funding aside, I'd say - don't
| be in such a rush to finish. Fill your spare time by sucking
| in riches, seek out every nugget, help others, be challenged,
| see the time as an opportunity, not a class to simply pass.
| bayindirh wrote:
| This is my experience as well. I was doing well in CS
| courses, but struggling in others, and didn't graduate
| early (well, didn't try to either). However, finishing
| whatever they threw at me allowed me to go ask for more, or
| try more harder things.
|
| As a result, I learned way more than curriculum offered,
| got way harder assignments and projects (like designing a
| compression algorithm from ground up as a graduation
| project), and satisfied much more overall.
|
| I continued my M.Sc. and Ph.D. at the same university
| (because I already had a job, and I just wanted to learn),
| and this head start (and being in good terms with the
| professors) allowed me to do similarly heavier curricula
| during these studies, too.
|
| It's worth it.
| jvvw wrote:
| I'm in the UK and this studied in a system where you can't
| just skip ahead, but I also got so much out of sucking in
| the riches as you say and helping other students. Because I
| already knew the basics I could spend time really mastering
| every last part of the courses and it was wonderful (and
| also gave me space and time for lots of non-academic
| activities!)
| sircastor wrote:
| I think the one course requirement I got waived based on my
| experience was an internship requirement. Everything else I had
| to take. I don't regret missing out on the early courses as
| they provided a lot of surprisingly useful instruction. A lot
| of the "why"s that I'd take. For granted.
| soheil wrote:
| I think the bigger point in this story is not that there will
| be times in life where you're confronted by authority to stop
| you from going over the speed limit, but that for every one of
| those cases there are countless other scenarios where _you are_
| the authority yet still think there is a speed limit.
| jonas21 wrote:
| I tested out of multivariable calculus in college and to this
| day, it is one of my biggest regrets. My peers who took the
| course have an intuitive understanding of the material that I
| never developed. Sometimes there's a difference between
| learning on your own and working through the material with
| others.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I'm still struggling to find the right blend of self study
| and group study. With peers you can coast along through the
| help of others to pinpoint you where you missed something,
| what's the "right" path to a solution. Which means .. you
| didn't really understand it. But sometimes I found solutions
| on my own, but then I realized that there were still some
| issues in them. I'd say it's important to self study but to
| reality check regularly.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Introductory multivariable calculus courses are seldom
| amazing and often mediocre.
|
| If you want to work through this material yourself, you may
| enjoy Hubbard & Hubbard's book,
| https://matrixeditions.com/5thUnifiedApproach.html
| lupire wrote:
| For 99% of multivariable calc students, once the course is
| over and the social environment moved on, there is no
| reason or motivation to leaen it. Like most of college
| coursework, it's just a ritual.
| nextos wrote:
| Seconded, IMHO the most underappreciated modern mathematics
| introductory textbook.
| drhodes wrote:
| The first part of 18.02x (Multivariable Calculus) is open at
| the moment, not for certificate, but the autograder works.
| The second part starts next month
|
| https://www.edx.org/course/multivariable-
| calculus-1-vectors-...
|
| https://www.edx.org/course/multivariable-
| calculus-2-surfaces...
| the__alchemist wrote:
| There are loads of information available on this. For
| example, Khan Academy has a very nice multivar glass, done by
| Grant Sanderson (3Blue1Brown). Why are you limited by what
| happened (presumably) years ago?
| R0b0t1 wrote:
| The lack of homework, I think. It's not a natural thing to
| do. Apart from an explicitly pedagogical environment I have
| found the best thing to suggest people is to try to work
| their learning into a project. For math this can be hard
| unless you also have relevant engineering experience to
| make something with your math you are learning.
| dietrichepp wrote:
| I started by talking to advisors and professors in the CS
| department, and they agreed that I should test out of intro
| programming classes.
|
| The dean was a cruel man named Warren Harrison who accused me
| of trying to "game the system" and told me that they don't
| tolerate people like me here. I shared the story later--other
| people had similarly negative experiences with the guy.
| ekianjo wrote:
| > It sucks, but there are people out there no smarter than you
| yet more powerful, and sometimes they impose a speed limit.
|
| College's point was never about learning anything for a while
| now, it's a credentials machine and the machine only works in
| one way: the one that extracts the most value out of students,
| the longest.
| taneq wrote:
| College's point is to prove that you can learn a couple of
| dozen knowledge sets in six months each, to a testably
| adequate level, and also stick with something for three years
| (a reasonable guess at how long a technical employee takes to
| pay off the investment of hiring them.)
| ekianjo wrote:
| > you can learn a couple of dozen knowledge sets in six
| months each
|
| You mean shallowly enough just to pass a few tests that can
| be easily hacked by accessing the previous year's? You can
| definitely fake it until you get the paper, I've seen that
| so many times.
| taneq wrote:
| That's not hacking or faking it, any more than shipping a
| couple of products using the some pointers from
| stackoverflow. If you show you're actually able to stick
| with a thing and finish it to a sufficient level of
| quality, that's kind of the point. Developing a deep
| understanding of esoteric topics can be fun and
| intellectually satisfying but is usually a tiny part of
| most careers, even the fun and satisfying ones.
| thayne wrote:
| I had a similar experience. They said I could test out of it if
| I took every test and did every homework assignment. And that
| is why I didn't get a minor in CS. Fortunately, at the time
| they didn't strictly enforce course prerequisites so I was able
| to take a few higher level CS courses, but for 300 level
| classes you needed a signature from a CS advisor, which I
| couldn't get.
| cobertos wrote:
| I had this too. I had worked the system a bit to wait until my
| final semester of college to actually take the intro CS courses
| (I had one of two possible prereqs to the second course so just
| started there).
|
| I asked to test out and the department head said no. I had
| almost an entire CS degree and still had to take the easiest
| course. We made a compromise that if I take the midterm and
| exam with all the other students, I can pass the class. I got a
| 100% on both and spent like, 1 hour learning Octave and C for
| each exam.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| On my first day in university the intro CS professor started
| his slide deck with "this is what a keyboard looks like", so I
| walked out of there, into the department office, demanded to
| see the chair, talked my way out of the first year courses, and
| demanded to take all of the required 2nd year courses in
| parallel that first semester. Not sure if the department chair
| was bemused, or just wanted to drop me in at the deep end, but
| he agreed to it, and I got out of there with a double-major
| undergrad and a masters in 5 years...
|
| Where there's a will there's usually a way, but you need to
| either know how to manipulate the powers that be, or have
| enough confidence to bypass them.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| If they don't another option is to build a startup, or start
| on your phd research while ducking out of the the first year
| classes.
| dangarbri3 wrote:
| Counter story, when I was a senior I found I missed a freshman
| requirement. The teacher saw me in the class, I was fine with
| having the blow off class but the teacher recognized me as a CS
| student and said I shouldn't be there since I was a senior. Had
| me schedule and take the final for the class, I passed, and I
| was able to skip it for the semester.
|
| Doesn't hurt to ask either.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| The difference is that you still paid for the class. The
| university wants the money.
| njarboe wrote:
| I believe at most 4 year universities, in the US at least,
| you pay by the semester or quarter and not on the number of
| classes you take. So the university won't generally make
| more money if you test out.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| They will make more money if you do NOT test out because
| you have to pay for the credits, not pay by the semester.
| BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is due to formal curriculum standards
| and accreditation. It seems like the only permitted method of
| skipping a course is having had taken an AP course and scoring
| high enough on the exam.
|
| I'm guessing standardized education prevents the kind of
| judgment calls that would allow a department to let a
| knowledgeable student skip classes they don't need to be in.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| If anything the issue with AP courses is that the bar is so
| low to pass one. Indeed it's a bar based on percentile and
| not on actual knowledge. Someone getting a 4 or 5 on the APCS
| test tells a department zero. Which is why some schools have
| the policy that APCS does not allow students to skip the
| intro CS course.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I had a 5 on each of the AP physics exams and still had to
| take freshman physics.
|
| The school had a policy that you could not test out of the
| core courses in your major (I was a physics major; had I been
| a different major, I could have at least gotten placement, if
| not credit.
| snerbles wrote:
| It can get even more ridiculous as a transfer student.
|
| I had to re-take two physics courses at a California State
| University school that would have otherwise transferred
| from a junior college due to minor catalog year changes.
| Ironically the JC physics courses both had labs (the usual
| stuff in Electricity & Magnetism, and a whole bunch of
| optics and slit diffraction fun in Modern Physics), while
| only the E&M lab remained at the four-year university. The
| Optics/Modern Physics prof from my retake also taught
| astronomy, and was still harboring a minor grudge against
| Neil deGrasse Tyson from some shared research work in the
| '80s.
|
| Also couldn't test out of or otherwise apply transfer
| credits to freshman biology, and the subject matter was at
| about the same level as what I experienced in 7th-grade
| science at a rural public school.
|
| Intro to CSCI was unavoidable, as my previous programming
| coursework was coded under MIS. The cherry on top was the
| professor pulling me aside after the first midterm, telling
| me "you could teach this, since you can't test out I'm just
| giving you an A for the whole course". Despite this I still
| attended his rambling lectures, and found that he did
| actually manage to tie all of his tangents together rather
| like a call stack in human form.
|
| On top of all of that, the transfer coursework that
| _actually_ applied toward the degree that did surprise me
| were my technical training credits from the Community
| College of the Air Force. Ten units under law enforcement
| and field work actually took care of general education
| elective requirements - "Fundamentals of Ground Combat"
| was rather amusing to see on the graduation transcript.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to having to take courses on material you
| already know, but I do think there is some justification to
| making everybody take an intro CS course. Specifically if it's
| a course that is about teaching the ways of thinking about
| programming, such as abstraction, composition, state, rather
| than a rote course on how to write code, then it provides
| students with a foundation that is rarely seen in AP courses or
| self-study. It can be an opportunity for a professor to provide
| their views and experiences on programming. It can also be a
| chance to talk about other essential, but rarely discussed
| topics such as ethics, the qualities of a good programmer,
| programmer culture, etc.
|
| Of course an intro course that is this well thought out is
| rather rare, in which case experienced people should by all
| means skip the rote nonsense.
| lupire wrote:
| atoav wrote:
| As someone who teaches in university I can tell you by
| experience that the worst students are those who think they
| already know what you are going to tell them.
|
| The thing is: it is hard to tell them apart quickly from those
| who _actually_ already know, without having them take some
| test.
|
| And even if you have them take the test, you cannot be sure
| they miss some fundamental core concept that will be crucial to
| understand later.
|
| I myself had to go through introductions more than once that I
| thought will not offer me anything new, but going through the
| basics once in a while with a better understanding can be of
| incredible value
| jstummbillig wrote:
| > And even if you have them take the test, you cannot be sure
| they miss some fundamental core concept that will be crucial
| to understand later.
|
| That seems like a bad reason to err on the side of
| unconditional speed limits. Opportunity cost is real.
| atoav wrote:
| In practise your university will not provide you with the
| time/resources to do extras like these.
|
| On top of that as an educator you have a real
| responsibility not to send someone on a hail mary without
| fundamentals, which might ultimately drive them out of
| university because it will not get easier after that. This
| is a real risk.
|
| Another aspect: What so you think how many students will
| try to skip classes if word gets around it is actually
| possible to do so? How many of those will cheat to do so?
| And bow many of those who made it through will be able to
| face the next exam without cheating?
| bschne wrote:
| I sympathize with this and have definitely been horribly
| wrong about basics before, but it's also crazy how many
| teachers don't manage to set up courses and asssignments such
| that they really force you to understand the basics.
| atoav wrote:
| This is sadly true. I have suffered under this as a student
| myself, so I try to not forgot how it felt and constantly
| check my material for unexplained aspects, that I just
| assume blindly.
| yason wrote:
| In school, you for some reason take the lessons first and
| then the test. In real world, on so many levels, you start
| with a test and then proceed to lessons as needed, if at all.
|
| If you pass an earlier test while missing some fundamental
| concept, then you'll simply spend the time learning it when
| you do need it. If you never need it, maybe it wasn't that
| fundamental after all.
| icefo wrote:
| I think it's a similar situation as if you only have a
| hammer everything looks like a nail.
|
| You can probably find a solution with what you already now
| (as a junior programmer) as most problems programmers have
| to solve are not that hard but you may completely miss a
| better solution because you had no idea it was possible. I
| may be fine but you may also lose a lot of time later
| because it wasn't.
|
| I agree that it's possible to self teach almost everything
| in CS but the point of university is to speed up the
| discovery of CS from scratch and have solid foundations.
| You certainly don't know everything graduating university
| but should now where to look when you have a problem imo.
| ivanhoe wrote:
| Sounds a bit like 2nd-graders who wish to skip the
| multiplication because they don't need 2*3 - they can pass
| the test just by calculating 3+3 after all...
|
| When learning, unlike the person teaching you, you don't
| know what's coming in the next lesson or the one after it,
| so it's sometimes a good idea to trust them on a
| curriculum. It's also the one of the biggest downsides of
| being self-thought (as I am in big part), you always have
| holes in your perspective that you're not even aware of and
| it takes years to stumble on something that someone else
| was told in the 1st year of being a dev.
| laserlight wrote:
| > If you pass an earlier test while missing some
| fundamental concept, then you'll simply spend the time
| learning it when you do need it.
|
| Only if one knows what they don't know. And fundamental
| concepts have a habit of hiding in plain sight. It's easy
| to waste lots of resources because one doesn't know about a
| fundamental concept.
| randomsearch wrote:
| I think in 10 years of teaching I met one student who
| genuinely _might_ have skipped through the intro programming
| course without too much harm.
|
| Being able to pass a test is indeed not a sign of mastery of
| the material (this might come as a shock to some! Just
| because you got good grades doesn't mean you've mastered the
| subject! It just means you're good at the test! But wait, why
| use tests then? Well, sit down, get comfortable and let me
| tell you a tale of how we got here...)
|
| The fact this conversation exists highlights that our
| education system is silly. Without evidence, I subjectively
| like the ideas in "One World Schoolhouse" as an alternative.
| SilasX wrote:
| >Being able to pass a test is indeed not a sign of mastery
| of the material
|
| I think/hope you mean "guarantee" rather than "sign",
| because, yes, someone who has mastered the material is
| indeed much more likely to pass the test than someone who
| has not. The existence of non-representative
| counterexamples does not refute that.
| atoav wrote:
| The way I see it people who just like to get a degree will
| complain about having to take classes with material in it
| they already think they know.
|
| People who are really interested in the subject will not
| complain. I for example have been programming for the past
| 15 years and I will still read something like an
| introduction to C programming, just because there might be
| some ideas, explainations or examples in it that will help
| me deepen the fundamentals of what I already know.
|
| Arguably there are topics where this works better and
| topics where this works worse. In electronics or mechanics
| groking the fundamentals is so essential to the whole field
| that you should know them by hard. And the only way to know
| them by hard is spaced repetition. So having some overlap
| in the things you learn is not only necessary here, it is
| crucial.
| tambourine_man wrote:
| You mean "by heart", right?
|
| I know you typed it twice, but I just never heard that
| expression.
| tacitusarc wrote:
| autocorrect, perhaps.
| luma wrote:
| Your response neatly encompasses everything I disklike about
| academia. It's easier for the institution to bucket everyone
| into a group and disregard the individual, so that's what
| inevitably happens.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's not only easier, it's the only way you can teach a
| large number of people at the same time.
|
| College wouldn't exist without it.
| thombat wrote:
| Well instead you could get one-to-one tuition sensitive to
| and tailored for your unique strengths, brought by the very
| best in the field. That would be pretty resource-intensive,
| but maybe you are worth it. But now look at from the
| providers' perspective: they can only afford to do this for
| a small fraction of the students that will think themselves
| deserving of it. What approach will let your special gifts
| shine through all the competing candidates?
| mattkrause wrote:
| This is, more or less, how graduate school works.
| atoav wrote:
| Not sure you are projecting a little bit here, what I do
| and how I do it is very untypical for academia (I teach at
| an art university, so it just counts to give people skills
| not to teach them some fixed curriculum), I also get the
| chance to do one on one teaching sessions where students
| will profit because I can do things at their level. Also we
| don't have tests and students are _free_ to choose their
| courses.
|
| Given that environment if someone comes to "introduction
| into analog sound synthesis" I can expect them to want to
| hear just that (or they need the credits). If people don't
| come to learn, I will not force them. They are grown ups,
| it is their decision if they want to learn.
|
| Please also consider that unless you have experience in
| teaching groups you might have a rose tinted view of what
| an instructor can practically achieve. If you have a group
| of 20 people with 10 of those having no clue what you are
| talking about, 2 that are very advanced and the rest with
| mixed levels inbetween you must find a way of teaching the
| 10 that have no clue while also not boring the 2 who are
| more advanced. This can be a hard problem to solve in a
| good way as you cannot split yourself. If your group is
| bigger it gets harder even (and at some point you have to
| stop worrying).
|
| I am totally for people being able to skip classes where
| they can demonstrate they already know everything thought
| in it. But practically it might be a lot of work for
| anybody working at university to create such an test for
| e.g. just one person. From the perspective of a student it
| all looks a lot simpler than it might be. For example even
| if someone _could_ test a student to make sure they are not
| sending them into a hail mary be letting them skip
| fundamentals, maybe that someone has so many other tasks on
| their shelve that even if they wanted they cannot do that?
|
| Also: for every student where this might make sense you
| will get 3 or 4 that _really_ overestimate themselves with
| a nearly narcissistic inability of judging their own
| ability. You know, the type that would like to construct
| the equivalent of an iPhone in circuit form while not being
| able to explain ohms law.
| auganov wrote:
| > Also: for every student where this might make sense you
| will get 3 or 4 that really overestimate themselves with
| a nearly narcissistic inability of judging their own
| ability. You know, the type that would like to construct
| the equivalent of an iPhone in circuit form while not
| being able to explain ohms law.
|
| But of course they could. And indeed, considering them
| narcissists is what many hate about the academia. Maybe
| they'd be better off taking a less linear path. Sure, in
| the context of the academia skipping classes is not
| justified and there's no problem with anything you're
| doing. But when one is frustrated with schooling, the
| first instinct is often to try to go faster. Quitting
| school is supposed to be a very bad thing, that's the one
| acceptable way to do something different.
|
| For the most part I had the nicest and most accommodating
| teachers, had no problem with them, they had no problem
| with myself, can't blame them for anything. But I do
| strongly dislike the nearly universal borderline
| religious belief in traditional schooling being the
| _right way_. It 's okay to not know some thing and not
| want to know them.
| xahrepap wrote:
| Ugh. I was told by the administration that I couldn't test out
| of my intro to programming class in college. Then I had several
| professors ask me why I hadn't tested out.
|
| I've wondered if the professors didn't know or if the admins
| just didn't believe me I would've been able to. (And this was
| with a passing AP test score from high school)
|
| I feel like Accreditation is to blame. It's such a racket.
| CrazyStat wrote:
| I was told I couldn't test out of calculus (university didn't
| recognize IB calc), but course prerequisites were easy to get
| around so I just started registering for higher level math
| classes. My junior year I went to my advisor and he happily
| waived the calc requirements.
| devwastaken wrote:
| They lied. Highschools do this too. They will try everything
| to prevent you from testing, because they lose the tuition.
| swyx wrote:
| i am unfamiliar with the accreditation racket, but on the
| face of it if Berklee lets you test out of 2 years of music
| theory, surely you can test out of computer science. I know I
| tested out of 2 years of math.
|
| its probably a more boring answer like university bureaucrats
| refusing to budge because they just didnt feel like it, which
| is a rather more tractable problem (in the large; individual
| students are powerless of course and i have been there too)
| than the accreditation system.
|
| we need university entrepreneurs to disrupt lazy universities
| who arent serving their customers well. sadly lambda school
| has left a black taste on all trying to do this. but i have
| hopes that freecodecamp will do it the "right" way -
| patiently.
| oceanplexian wrote:
| I spent my childhood learning classical violin and it's a
| completely parallel education system that's unaffiliated
| with public education and goes back centuries (With
| freelance teachers, dedicated schools, Church run programs,
| and so on) so I'm not surprised it's possible to test out.
|
| The same thing doesn't happen with computer science.. i.e
| we don't send young children to CS tutors 2-3 times a week
| and make them practice on a daily basis. Perhaps society
| has yet to master creating virtuoso programmers in the way
| it has spent hundreds of years perfecting the education of
| young musicians.
| badrabbit wrote:
| There is harm. Is anything more valuable to a human than time?
| teucris wrote:
| When I started college, I thought I could fly through the intro
| CS courses. Within the first week the professor had completely
| reset my understanding of computer science, rebuilding it from
| the ground up using purely functional concepts. I'm incredibly
| grateful I could not test out of that class. I would have done
| so in a heartbeat and missed out on the most important lessons
| I'd need for my career.
| kristiandupont wrote:
| Pretty much the same situation for me. I was already writing
| C++ professionally and had embarrassingly high thoughts of
| myself.
|
| The first language we started with was SML and for a good
| couple of months I just laughed at this stupid language with
| its silly and unnecessary limitations. It wasn't until we had
| to implement a parser in it, something I coincidentally had
| struggled with on my own, that I started to realize that I
| was dealing with a different paradigm, and a very powerful
| one at that.
|
| I was less cocky after that.
| treeman79 wrote:
| Things are different now. I spent my intro class constantly
| correcting the instructor.
| _the_inflator wrote:
| Same here. I came from the demo scene and was disgusted by
| the thought of having to sit along total beginners, because
| hey, I had demos ranked in the charts.
|
| CS is a totally different beast and I am glad about the
| humble experiences around CS. I might not totally agree with
| all the educators tell you, especially around OOP, however
| especially the mathematics around CS was impressive and very
| helpful.
| vidarh wrote:
| One of of the TA's when I did CS was a member of the
| Crusaders [1]. We had a lot of interesting discussions of
| the difference between demo-style coding and CS...
|
| [1] https://demozoo.org/groups/12/
| Jensson wrote:
| But as long as you know the math it is easy to self learn
| the other parts of computer science. I just studied physics
| and math in college and self learned the rest and learned
| algorithms, compilers, distributed systems etc on my own
| and have worked on those at Google and never had a time
| where someone knew something they learned in CS that I
| didn't know. It was the opposite, since when I self learned
| I went through every CS topic you can take I often knew a
| lot of CS things that the CS grads didn't know since they
| were limited in how many credits they could take.
|
| I know many who took a similar route as me, but I've never
| met anyone who self learned math to a reasonable level. And
| since math is a very small part of a CS degree you could
| learn all of it in 1-2 semesters, so the optimal way to
| learn computer science would be to take 1-2 semesters of
| college math and spend the rest self learning. I bet you'd
| get a better understanding that way in much less time than
| it takes to go through a CS degree.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| Our "week 6" assignment was to implement optical character
| recognition (OCR) in Haskell, a lazy pure functional
| language. That assignment blew my mind!
| bschne wrote:
| Is that online somewhere? Sounds like a fun thing to try!
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This was decades ago, so I doubt it!
|
| The lecturer pre-generated small black & white square
| bitmaps of single characters from a sample set of fonts
| to use as aids during development. (Just the lower case
| letters a to m.) Then _your mark_ was the percentage your
| OCR could recognise from a much larger set generated from
| about a thousand fonts.
|
| In the same course the next major project was to make an
| AI for the card game Hearts. This is a four-player game,
| and the project materials included an automated tester
| that could be given any 4 AIs and would score them
| against each other. In the labs we would battle our AIs
| while developing them.
|
| I ended up getting the second highest score out of a
| class of three hundred students and I still don't know
| how to play that game well. (I got the AI to teach itself
| the probability tables for optimal play, which I didn't
| memorise.)
| johanvts wrote:
| You might want to have a look at the detexify source.
| https://github.com/kirel/detexify-hs-backend
| vidarh wrote:
| The approach when I did CS seems pretty reasonable: Lectures
| were attendance entirely optional for most courses
| (exceptions were some courses with small number of places;
| e.g. I did a "French for sciences" class where attendance was
| compulsory), and for the intro course I showed up to the
| first and last lecture, but you had some compulsory lessons
| in smaller groups and a couple of compulsory group projects.
|
| I got to save plenty of time by opting out of most of the
| lectures, but the groups and projects gave you feedback if
| you started skipping too much (something I learned in the
| introductory maths course that I also first thought I could
| get away with not going to every lecture for) and forced you
| to read at least the main set books so you got a good idea of
| whether it was material you understood.
|
| It's indeed easy to think you know more than you do, but at
| the same time, sometimes you do know exactly what you know -
| been in both situations.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| Like why bother going to college to skip the in-person
| classes? Might as well just buy books and work through them
| and save money. Make yourself a bookcase. That's cool. Not
| "well-educated", a term I hate, well-read. Though you do at
| some point have to interact with the medium for real, can't
| just read about martial arts. At that point hire a tutor--
| in-person classes.
|
| Matt Damon as the protagonist of Good Will Hunting: "You
| wasted $150,000 on an education you coulda got for $1.50 in
| late fees at the public library."
|
| That wasn't true before the pandemic but without in-person
| classes it is absolutely true.
| vidarh wrote:
| Because there were other classes more worth my time, and
| so by skipping the in-person classes of subjects I needed
| to take but where I knew the material well I could take a
| higher course load and get more of the things I actually
| learned new material from.
|
| By the time I started university, I'd been programming
| for 13 years, I'd done paid freelance development jobs,
| and written my first compiler, and I'd done more advanced
| stuff than the first several semesters worth of classes.
| I had gaps, and I filled them with the group work and
| books, but there was no value to me in the in-person
| lectures for the introductory computer science courses.
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| That's a pretty good answer but there's a few gaps in it.
| Like I get there's still "taking a higher course load" ie
| score points by jumping through hoops to impress the
| future. Like I did a lot of this in high school, endless
| jumping through flaming hoops, and good exercise in
| hindsight, but come on. Well I guess everyone has little
| choice.
|
| Yeah and you did pay some attention, got a sampler plate,
| makes sense.
|
| Plus it's fun acing courses with no effort every once in
| a while. It's a good sign.
| jchw wrote:
| I was only in college for a brief stint, but I ran into this
| problem as well when I went to college. Although I hadn't been
| in the industry yet, I was a hobbyist for a long enough time
| for the intro to CS at my college to be simply pointless. After
| a couple weeks, I was able to convince my professor that I
| should be able to test out, and despite the fact that there was
| no procedure, I was able to just take the final exam, pass, and
| move up to the next course.
|
| That next course also seemed pretty basic, but I hit a brick
| wall, because I didn't have the required math credits to get
| into the next course up if I tested out of that one. And
| testing out of a math class, while certainly doable, was not as
| enticing as a prospect :)
|
| The truth is, while it's reasonable for an intro to CS course
| to be kind of basic, I think it was a good sign that either
| college, or at least the college I was going to for computer
| science, was not a good option at that point in my life.
| Thankfully, circumstance would knock me into the industry
| instead in short order.
|
| ( _Now_ I 'm interested in college, but not for computer
| science.)
| zanny wrote:
| I graduated in 3 years and also at 20 (so one more semester) and
| was way less inspirational in doing it.
|
| I took 5 AP classes in high school that got me out of 5 classes
| and took 4 CLEP tests the summer before my last year so it would
| be my last (those tests are a very easy way to get credit
| requirements you don't care for filled). Then I dropped analytic
| geometry my last semester and only did 3 classes including the CS
| capstone because I just wanted to code at that point.
| jedberg wrote:
| I always preferred summer sessions for this reason. The classes
| moved at twice the speed, which always felt like my preferred
| pace. I always did better in those classes too.
| labrador wrote:
| The last comment by Fran Snyder was good too. I never really
| thought of it this way, but lately I've been going fast (coding)
| and not letting my natural inclination to think "this is too hard
| so I should procrastinate and yak shave." I've been pushing
| through that and confronting the hard parts of the code and
| finding it's really never as hard as I worried it was.
|
| fran snyder (2009) _Speed kills the censor. One of my favorite
| quotes from "An Artist's Way." There are multiple benefits to
| setting challenging deadlines and defining your goals for
| yourself._
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| Instead of treating college as "no speed limit" treat it as "no
| bandwidth limit".
|
| If for example, you have been programming since you were 5, but
| you still are required to take an intro to CS course, instead of
| griping and pushing to skip it, just take advantage of the freed
| up brain bandwidth and maybe go take a class on history, or art
| or philosophy.
|
| Taking advantage of the college environment to broaden your
| knowledge will serve you far more than graduating one or two
| years early.
| Avamander wrote:
| That is only possible if the intro course doesn't waste your
| time with menial work.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Imagine paying someone to take your exam not because it is
| too hard, but because it is too easy.
| Avamander wrote:
| You're joking to some extent, but what I ended up doing is
| not too far off. I got so fed up with all the graded,
| nitpicky and laborious online tests, that I automated them.
| An entire browser extension to collect the entire question
| bank and then statistically figure out all the answers
| (because often I only had the final score).
| Kostchei wrote:
| Speed kills the censor. From an artistic perspective, but also,
| innovation in tech, revolution of ideas ettc. Status quo spots
| and counter-acts slow change. Ok, sometimes, maybe when it
| impacts them, they try to counter it. sub-optimally, using bad
| sweeping legal gestures....
|
| (just my take-away)
| megablast wrote:
| > By doing this in addition to completing my full course load, I
| graduated college in two and a half years. I got my bachelor's
| degree when I was twenty.
|
| Instead of 3 years?? OK.
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| A typical university program in the US is 4 years.
| drekipus wrote:
| This is what I was wondering, but I imagine it was instead of 4
| years (giving the benefit of doubt)
| noodlesUK wrote:
| This is true for kids as well as adults. I started homeschooling
| as a child because of some health issues, and it was stunning (to
| my parents mostly) how much more efficient learning could be when
| your day wasn't full of empty space, and your schedule was
| actually organized to be the best for you rather than for other
| people.
|
| I've carried that lesson throughout my life. You can do a lot
| more, in a lot less time, when you're in charge of your own time.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| This was pretty clear when our kids were all sent home during
| Covid. We pushed very far ahead using Khan academy. Keeping it
| simple with basic math, reading, and writing.
|
| About halfway through Covid schools started sending home this
| work they wanted the kids to do. 80% was a waist of time.
|
| I never really thought about it till then, but primary school
| is basically babysitting where they happen to do some learning
| as well.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| You know, I overlook a lot of grammatical errors, and I
| usually don't like to be that guy, but when it's an "oh look
| how smart I am" type post I can't help myself. It should be
| waste of time, not waist.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Then I will have to be the annoying person who points out
| that English is not a prescriptive language and that the
| more we push for incorrect spelling the more correct it
| will be.
|
| Anyway English is an ugly hack of a language, the more we
| mispell it, the better chance we have to get it fixed to
| something closer to Esperanto.
| ahmedalsudani wrote:
| 1. It could easily be auto correct
|
| 2. A lot of brilliant people much smarter than you and me
| have trouble with spelling. It doesn't take away from their
| ability in other areas.
|
| 3. Hate to be that guy :) but it's not a grammatical error
| InCityDreams wrote:
| 1. Auto-correct can be corrected. 2. Check your worm
| before sending?
| mejutoco wrote:
| > worm
|
| I assume it was "work" and that's the joke :p
|
| I am curious if there is a name for this situation where
| someone corrects others' grammar and then make a grammar
| mistake themselves?
| cyberlurker wrote:
| This is a jerk response. They were not bragging about being
| smart.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Indeed it is a jerk response.
|
| They were bragging that primary school is mostly busy
| work while ironically making a primary school mistake.
| hattmall wrote:
| I'm with you. It's like the most ironic setup possible
| for an error in grammar. I was glad to see your response.
| robotresearcher wrote:
| Ironically, the error was in spelling, not grammar.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| If you're going to be pedantic be correct. That was a
| spelling error, not one of grammar.
| devmunchies wrote:
| How is it ironic? I'm assuming that they themselves were
| brought up in public school and this mistake just makes
| their point stronger.
|
| If OP's homeschooled kids were the ones denigrating
| public school while making spelling/grammatical errors
| _then_ it 'd be ironic.
| LtWorf wrote:
| OP showed he isn't qualified to judge.
| eptcyka wrote:
| Auto-correct will make even the most well written posters
| appear to have room temperature IQ.
| raverbashing wrote:
| For real, true
|
| Can't wait for sentence level autocorrect to appear.
| Because doing it at word level is not enough.
|
| I mean, ok, swipe typing has been a great improvement.
| But depending on the keyboard it manages to do stupid
| crap even at word level (like suggesting a 8 letter word
| if you just "typed" 3 letters)
| [deleted]
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| haha, I'm not offended, and I _am_ a terrible speller. I
| didn't mean to sound super smart, I just parked the kids in
| front of Khan academy and did some reading with them.
|
| I was trying to point out actually how simple it was to be
| better that what the schools were sending home.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| And I don't really disagree with you. I think Covid
| proved that childcare is indeed a major component of
| school. I doubt that a public school or all but the most
| expensive private schools have much ability to tailor
| education to the individual needs of children.
| megablast wrote:
| And you had a one on one teacher. Come on.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| You're right, I did (to an extent). Homeschooling isn't
| really scaleable. If you did try to, you'd probably invent
| something that very closely resembled a school.
|
| However, my mother (who was much more heavily involved with
| my education) generally described her role as "less like a
| teacher, more like a principal". She certainly was in charge
| of the overall shape of the education, but a lot of the
| teaching happened in small group settings (effectively mutual
| tutoring) at the local homeschool group. Of course she did
| teach me lots of things in her area of expertise.
| onos wrote:
| I'm very interested in home schooling for this reason but am
| concerned about two things: both my wife and I work, and social
| interaction for my son with kids his age. Trying to think about
| solutions for both of these. Advice?
| Bud wrote:
| Home-schooled kids are missing out on a lot even if you
| assume they are getting a good basic education and you're
| also somehow compensating for the social aspects.
|
| Just to cite one example: music programs. Drama programs. The
| arts in general. Hard to substitute for these at home.
|
| In addition, more widespread home-schooling serves the right-
| wing interests that are trying to tear down society in
| general, and to tear down the public school system in
| particular, in favor of religious indoctrination and elite
| schools for the rich. Those interests are dangerous and
| ascendant enough as it is. They don't need any more help
| right now.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| What? The right-wing purpose of home-schooling is to get
| away from the religious indoctrination in public schools.
| And their support of school choice means elite schools for
| everybody, instead of just the rich, which is the status
| quo.
|
| And at least in my school district, homeschoolers in the
| district could participate in extracurriculars like band
| and drama a la carte.
| 8mHMCkRHnyBi4DH wrote:
| > The right-wing purpose of home-schooling is to get away
| from the religious indoctrination in public schools
|
| Not even close.
| https://www.texastribune.org/2022/08/18/texas-schools-in-
| god... https://www.npr.org/2022/06/27/1106290141/supreme-
| court-high...
|
| Their purpose is to get away from the _political_
| indoctrination in public schools. And honestly,
| considering how much of what 's taught in school about
| our government and society just isn't true... I don't
| blame 'em.
|
| (To be fair, a lot of them would probably try and get
| away from religious indoctrination if it weren't
| Christian.)
|
| > And their support of school choice means elite schools
| for everybody, instead of just the rich, which is the
| status quo.
|
| How do you figure that? The well-off are still the only
| people who will be able to afford the best education,
| because the reality is the amount of money you spend on
| education is highly correlated with the success of that
| education. The only thing it will do for the rest is take
| those with plenty of money out of the public school's tax
| base, decreasing the quality of education there even
| further.
| Bud wrote:
| Elite schools for everybody? Hard to laugh hard enough at
| that. No. It doesn't mean that at all.
|
| We were a lot better off when participation in the public
| schools was much higher. Draining resources from that
| system cripples it, and only a tiny minority can afford
| to send their kids to a quality school without it.
| Ferrotin wrote:
| But our public schools are fine, except in places where
| they have a lot of violence (and private schools are not
| a factor). Education everywhere is throttled by students'
| time and attention, not the quality of the schools.
|
| "School choice" means vouchers, so that means everybody
| can afford to send their kids to a private school. That
| won't make the kid any smarter, but they're usually in a
| better school culture.
| LtWorf wrote:
| choice means a religious indoctrination school normally
| [deleted]
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I don't really agree with your first point. In my
| experience, most music, arts, and sports programs are in
| the form of after school activities that are open to all
| kids, and don't usually happen at school. Those sorts of
| things are a lifeline for homeschooled kids, as it's one of
| the best ways for them to still be around people their own
| age.
|
| As far as your second point, I have definitely met a number
| of people as you describe, but they are significantly
| outnumbered (at least in my area) by perfectly well
| adjusted people whose kids just can't make it in school for
| whatever reason. Not every kid is capable of tolerating 8+
| hours a day of institutionalisation, especially if they
| have some kind of medical issue.
|
| I think the approach that local government takes with
| homeschoolers in my area (of the US) is too hands off: I
| never once met someone from my educational service district
| who might have checked that I was even alive and not just a
| tax cheat. However, I think that we should be careful not
| to restrict the ability of people to home-educate if they
| want to. Its an important backstop if they can't make the
| school system work for them, and trying to fit every edge
| case into the school system is a recipe for some seriously
| unhappy kids.
| nextos wrote:
| Lots of activities can lead to more healthy socialization
| than school, e.g. sport clubs.
| mod wrote:
| I used to work at a YMCA, and I taught PE for local
| homeschool kids. They would come every-other Thursday or
| something, and we did swimming, rock climbing, badminton, and
| a bunch of other stuff.
|
| That's a start, but I'll say that homeschool kids are a bit
| off, socially. It's not always a bad thing, but it's
| noticeable. And, a few don't have that problem--I think it's
| the kids with a lot of interaction, like on sports teams etc.
| Honestly, a lot of the weirdness of those kids was often that
| they just seemed very grown up. They interacted a LOT more in
| 1-on-1 conversations with adults than most kids do. Nearly
| all of them seemed smart for their age.
|
| Scouts, karate, MTG clubs are some ideas. Honestly, gaming?
| In our lives I'm sure a lot of social activity will move to
| some virtual spaces, maybe VR etc.
|
| Anyway, just some thoughts. Good luck!
| 8mHMCkRHnyBi4DH wrote:
| > They interacted a LOT more in 1-on-1 conversations with
| adults than most kids do.
|
| That's not really a surprising result, is it? Most kids
| spend all day at school being told not to talk unless
| called on; plenty even spend most of their day at home like
| that (at least with the adults in their lives, parents "I'm
| too busy" and such)...
|
| > Scouts, karate, MTG clubs are some ideas
|
| Yeah, there were definitely a lot of kids in cub and boy
| scouts who were home schooled when I was growing up. For
| the religious folks, church and church events had an
| outsize proportion of homeschool kids as well (I suspect
| cause and effect goes both ways there). It's likely the
| homeschool community in your area also coordinates social
| events (even if it's just going to a park).
| mod wrote:
| No, not surprising at all. In my time at the YMCA (in
| non-homeschool areas), I often found that new kids were
| not used to talking with adults, like me--their "group
| leader." At home, mostly they ate dinner and went to bed.
| At school, you just don't get one-on-one time, especially
| just to chat about yourself or off-curriculum topics.
| pronlover723 wrote:
| > I'll say that homeschool kids are a bit off, socially.
|
| Nice anecdote. My experience is the exact opposite. The ~20
| home schooled kids I know are the most socially adept kids
| I've ever met. They aren't shy. They hold nice
| conversations. They actually like talking to a mix of
| people.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Social adeptness stands out too, though.
|
| "Socially adjusted" means behaving like someone who spent
| twelve years in a public institution. No more or less.
|
| I think highly of the homeschooled kids I've known, for
| the record.
| mod wrote:
| I think they're the most socially adept kids _when
| speaking with adults_ , and the most socially inept when
| hanging with other kids, particularly medium-to-large
| groups. On average. I knew plenty of them who didn't fit
| the mold.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I'll echo some of the other posters here in saying that
| homeschooled kids are usually shockingly good at holding
| conversations with adults for their age. Not being in an
| institutional environment where you only really talk to
| schoolteachers means they get a lot more practice having
| normal conversations with adults. That was a benefit for
| me in my later teenage years for sure as I transitioned
| into the grown-up world.
| nomdep wrote:
| > They aren't shy. They hold nice conversations
|
| So they _do_ seem very grown up
| internet_user wrote:
| seem or are?
| tleilaxu wrote:
| Homeschooled here, and I fully agree with all the above.
|
| Described me to a tee.
| [deleted]
| labster wrote:
| Does your child actually need social interactions with kids
| his own age? The answer is pretty dependent on the
| individual. Some people need the social activity to play and
| stay motivated, but it mostly brought me misery and
| distraction. Adults can socialize kids too -- there's no
| speed limit. Prehistorically and for most of history kids
| grew up alongside their parents and a wide range of ages in
| peers, and followed their parents around as they worked.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| The issue is that all the other kids of their age and of
| different ages will be at school. I'd say that the
| generalisation that kids need social interactions with kids
| their own age is true - an 8 y/o definitely shouldn't be
| interacting exclusively with people aged > 18 - although we
| drive that to an extreme with our rigidly age segregated
| schooling systems. Life around adults can be dreadfully
| serious and I think the innocent play of childhood amongst
| peers is generally crucial.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| > The issue is that all the other kids of their age and
| of different ages will be at school.
|
| This is definitely a big one. There are homeschool groups
| which provide enrichment during normal school hours. The
| biggest boon for socialising as a homeschooled kid though
| is after school classes of various kinds (sports, etc).
| They generally don't happen at school.
| labster wrote:
| > Life around adults can be dreadfully serious
|
| Me, singing a few bars of Brave Sir Robin as our D&D
| party _expeditious retreats_ from an adult red dragon:
| huh?
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I'd say kids definitely need interactions with other kids.
| Homeschooling generally has wider bands than school grades
| in terms of age ranges, which can help kids learn to
| socialise with a variety of different age levels. On the
| other hand, I definitely knew a good number of homeschooled
| kids (myself included) who took a somewhat unhealthy level
| of pride in preferring the company of adults.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Homeschooling takes 2-3 hours per day, not 8, and it doesn't
| have to be 5 days per week. Once the kids are around 10 or
| so, they can do a lot on their own as far as reading
| material.
|
| For socializing, there's karate class, or other kid sports.
| Church groups, going to the local park. You know, getting out
| into the world.
| andsoitis wrote:
| Have you considered quitting your work to be home with him;
| then you can also chaperone kids get togethers.
| noodlesUK wrote:
| If you're looking for advice, here are my top thoughts:
|
| Your approach really depends on the age of the kid. I wasn't
| homeschooled until I was about 10, so my knowledge of how
| primary education works is much more limited.
|
| You will definitely want to ensure there are after school
| activities your kid enjoys that they will be able to continue
| if you decide to homeschool them. It's important to not rip
| them out of all of their social circles.
|
| See if there are any local homeschooling groups in your area.
| I assume you are in the US or Canada, where this is more
| widespread than in Europe. They will be able to advise you on
| what's good locally. I'd be careful to ensure that the groups
| are relatively well-aligned with your vision of what you and
| your kid want (it's often easier to find religious groups as
| they are usually more vocal, my assumption is that you are
| probably looking for a secular one). If you can't find a
| group that you like, seriously consider before deciding to go
| it completely alone.
|
| Don't expect magic to happen overnight if you do decide to
| homeschool the kid. You mustn't push too hard, especially at
| first. It's a big change. The most important part is to help
| your kid learn how to learn as a self-driven person.
|
| Give the kid agency. Let them choose what they learn (to a
| certain extent). You need to secure buy-in to the process.
| Without that you will just be fighting, and it will suck.
|
| If you're both working full time in an office type job, it's
| not going to be easy. I did know one or two people who did
| this, but it's much more common for one or both parents to be
| either WFH and have a flexible job or for there to be a stay
| at home parent (sadly this is almost always the mother in my
| experience, it can be hard for stay at home dads to break
| into those circles).
|
| If your kid is high school aged: think about how they might
| be able to go to university if they want to. Local community
| colleges often have programs that are suitable for dual-
| credit. I didn't do this but many of my friends did. Look
| into exams like the SAT/ACT/AP and how you can take them as
| an independent person. I was able to get into UK universities
| (I am originally British) with results in those American
| exams. Many of my friends used their community college credit
| to transfer into 4 year universities. Talk to other parents
| and their kids who did go to university about the route they
| took to get there.
|
| The other fun benefit is that you'll have a much closer
| relationship with your kid than most other parents do, as
| you'll spend much more time with them.
|
| If you decide to give it a go, good luck!
| pronlover723 wrote:
| My sister was part of the mom's club
|
| https://momsclub.org/
|
| I believe she met lots of moms and socialized her kids with
| activities with them. She also did all kinds of things with
| her youngest son. For example they were docents at the local
| aquarium for a few months.
| tleilaxu wrote:
| As a child homeschooled since 5 years old myself: _do not do
| it_.
|
| Any academic gains are not worth the social stunting,
| especially if the child is already shy.
|
| Happiness in life is rarely based on academic achievements,
| but rather on the relationships we build. These relationships
| are built through social skills, and our interactions with
| our fellow man. Homeschooling severely stunts this at a very
| vulnerable time in a child's life.
| internet_user wrote:
| What if there is no other option but homeschooling?
|
| What helped you with socialization?
| noodlesUK wrote:
| I personally did sports. I didn't really like it when I
| was younger (10-13), but I got pretty good when I was a
| bit older. The flexibility of being homeschooled allowed
| me to pursue being an athlete more thoroughly through my
| teenage years whilst not missing out on academics.
| Luckily my parents had the financial means to let me
| pursue that (being an athlete on a national team is
| expensive af). It was probably the single best space for
| me developing into a relatively well adjusted adult.
|
| I wasn't homeschooled before age 10 or so, so caveat
| emptor with younger kids.
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| I wasn't homeschooled, but I knew homeschooled kids growing
| up, and they all had friends and active social lives.
| Homeschooling doesn't have to mean you're locked away never
| interacting with anybody - in fact my homeschooled
| acquaintances had lots of friends who themselves were
| homeschooled, since their parents met through one of the
| various homeschooling support networks that exists in the
| UK.
|
| Meanwhile I went to school like everyone else from the ages
| of 5 to 18 and I still came out at the end with the social
| intelligence of a potted plant. Sending your kids to school
| doesn't guarantee they'll turn out normal - if that was
| true then everybody would be normal.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Not as many people develop (useful) social skills in school
| as you may think. It's a reason many, many people (in the
| US) have very negative experiences in high school and want
| to forget it.
| charlieflowers wrote:
| The thing is, you don't know that you would be better off
| socially had you gone down the normal path.
|
| School suppresses kids and forces them to conform. That's
| probably the thing it does more strongly than anything
| else. And it does it even more strongly to shy kids.
|
| So you might've missed out on deep friendships, but maybe
| not. And you almost assuredly missed out on bullying
| (physical and emotional) and negative, oppressive social
| pressure during those formative years.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I went to a science and tech magnet school for HS, so there
| were a fair number of homeschooled kids. By winter break
| freshman year, you couldn't tell most of the homeschooled
| kids from the rest.
|
| In at least two of the exceptions, the kids were
| specifically homeschooled because they were getting picked
| on in public school for being socially awkward.
|
| Counterfactuals are difficult; I was _far_ more socially
| awkward than most of the kids in t high school that were
| homeschooled, and I was in public school from kindergarten.
|
| I think it is true that parents home schooling their kids
| ought not neglect social and emotional skills any more than
| they should neglect science or math.
| internet_user wrote:
| where social and emotional skills somehow taught with
| purpose? or it just happened on its own?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If you are asking about the highschool, it just happened
| on its own.
| mightybyte wrote:
| I was home schooled K-7 (skipped 8th grade). The flexibility
| was great and allowed me to start taking college level
| computer programming courses when I was 10 years old. I think
| I came out of it reasonably socially adjusted. I have two
| recommendations for anyone thinking about doing something
| similar:
|
| 1. Make sure your kids are involved in a decent amount of
| outside activities during the elementary school years that
| get them interacting with other kids. Things like team
| sports, music groups, etc.
|
| 2. Do NOT home school your kids through high school. I knew
| other kids who were and thought that they had socialization
| issues. You could easily argue that this point is mostly
| anecdotal and I couldn't really disagree, but I have a gut
| feeling that the high school years are particularly important
| when it comes to socialization.
| skybrian wrote:
| I wish he had actually explained it. I can look up what a flat
| VII chord is, and I know what a tritone is, but what's the
| "tritone in the 5-chord?"
|
| If he actually understood that explanation going in, I don't
| think he was studying music theory casually before he got there?
|
| If you don't actually explain things at an object level, it's
| insight porn, not real learning.
| mtinkerhess wrote:
| If you're in C major, the V chord is G7, which contains a
| tritone between its 3 and 7, B and F. You can say, what if
| instead of B being the 3 of the chord and F being the 7, F is
| the 3 and B is the 7? Then you discover that the root of this
| other chord is C# (or Db). Because the function of a chord is
| largely dictated by the 3 and 7 in it, this means you can
| substitute any dominant 7 chord with another dominant 7 chord a
| tritone away and it will still basically function the same
| (this can create some extra dissonance before the cadence which
| is nice and it creates some nice chromatic movement in the
| bass).
| skybrian wrote:
| Thanks! What I was missing is that for "V chord" I was
| thinking G not G7, and G doesn't have a tritone.
|
| (He did say "with the flat seven" which sounded like another
| chord entirely, but that just means seventh chord.)
| theonemind wrote:
| There may be no speed limit, but there's also no destination.
| (ref: sages since 500 BC)
| sambapa wrote:
| "Nor is there pain, or cause of pain, Or cease in pain, or
| noble path To lead from pain; Not even wisdom to attain!
| Attainment too is emptiness."
| pastaguy1 wrote:
| Never considered the speedrun route, but I also had someone (a
| prof. in my case) tell me something that changed the way I viewed
| college/the curriculum.
|
| Paraphrasing, he said, "don't get too wound up with the syllabus,
| treat class and deliverables as touchpoints for your own self
| study". I guess it may have the same net result as "read the
| text" or "study outside of class" for some, but that view of
| things really resonated with me.
|
| It felt a lot healthier to me to work in this way. I went down
| whatever rabbit holes interested me. It's not very efficient in
| terms of grades and stuff, but I had the time back then anyway,
| and I never really felt like I was cramming or grinding. When
| exams rolled around, I usually felt like I was in decent shape,
| just needed to do a little adjustment based on class hints or
| whatever.
| [deleted]
| tasty_freeze wrote:
| From what I've heard (via youtube) from graduates of Berklee, the
| number one benefit of going to Berklee is the network of
| musicians you develop, and number two is getting to play with a
| lot of other highly motivated young musicians. From Sievers'
| description, what he did was counter to both of those goals.
| khazhoux wrote:
| > He was quickly explaining the chords based on the diatonic
| scale -- how the dissonance of the tri-tone in the 5-chord with
| the flat-7 is what makes it want to resolve to the 1. Within a
| minute, he started quizzing me.
|
| > "If the 5-chord with the flat-7 has that tri-tone, then so does
| another flat-7 chord. Which one?"
|
| > "Uh... the flat-2 chord?"
|
| > "Right!"
|
| What chords is he talking about (or did he mis-type)? I read
| "5-chord with flat-7" as G7 and "flat-2" as Dm7, but G7 and Dm7
| don't share a tri-tone, only an interval. ?
| zodiac wrote:
| The chord is D-flat dominant 7
|
| It's the same example as on the wiki page for "tritone
| substitution" - 'For example, in the key of C major one can use
| D7 instead of G7.'
| chrchang523 wrote:
| (2009)
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I completely agree with this. The problem is that to learn that
| quickly you generally need a dedicated mentor who is very
| skilled, and those people aren't usually readily available.
|
| I've thought about this in regards to SWE before. If I had an
| experienced SWE who was my dedicated mentor I'm sure I would
| improve extremely quickly. Unfortunately, that's just not
| tenable.
| woevdbz wrote:
| This is a great outlook on learning. It brought back memories of
| being accepted in a highly selective school. Using this analogy,
| it was a _fast lane_. The curriculum would 've taken 8 years
| instead of 4 if it had been designed for average student speed.
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