Do I need to go to university? - <AUTHOR> http://colah.github.io/posts/2020-05-University/ <comment><USER3> I think this article misses out on what in my opinion is the biggest reason to go to college for a teen and it all has to do exploration. Simply put you don't know what you don't know and at 17-18 that can be a lot. College gives you an opportunity to explore who you are and what you care about in an environment largely free of external stress (yes I know there can be stress but it's generally a lot different than "I need to provide for my family"). A lot of people are super confident in what they think their life path is until they actually encounter the steps it takes to get there. Generally we do a pretty poor job of educating young people on what different careers actually look like and what it takes to get there. There are a million lawyer and doctor shows but it's a lot harder at 17 to know that you'd actually love to study library science, or be an economist.

At 17 I thought I wanted to be a sport journalist or shoot rockets into space. Turns out I had zero interest in the path to ESPN and am terrible at chemistry. Sure looking back I can totally see that computers made all the sense in the world but I didn't recognize that then. If I had bypassed college and just started working to get to one of those paths I saw for myself who knows where I'd be. This is not to say that college is the only place where you get this freedom to explore, but colleges, especially good ones certainly encourage you to explore other options.

I think ideally your last year of high school would be nothing but career exploration, but failing that I recommend most teenagers go to college even if they think they know what they want to do.

<comment><USER4> Your comment is much more than this, but: just wanted to add that in a lot of places (like India) the norm is being forced to pick your major before entering college, which unfortunately negates a lot of the self-discovery that happens in freshman year.

But besides the area of study / major I loved the college experience of being forced to be away from the sheltered environment of home (although college is sheltered and restrictive in it's own ways). Being able to recognize thought patterns and impulses that I always grew up with felt like being able to see new colours that I never knew existed.

Also being able to make friends - I don't take this for granted.When you are in an environment where you have 10x to 100x the number of people you went to high school with, it is much easier to find someone/ somoe group that you can gel with regardless of how many ever quirks you have. After all these years, my best friends are still the ones I made in college - not the ones before nor the ones that came after.

At the very least I'm grateful to my college education for making me less of an overconfident asshole who thought he knew it all, while at the same time boosting my confidence in other ways.

I understand that in many countries like the US, the exorbitant cost of uni education might make what I said look like nice-to-haves and luxuries but I'm happy for a change to be born in a place where I could afford to have this experience (while recognizing that many will not be privileged enough to experience even this :( )

<comment><USER5> _" being forced to pick your major before entering college, which unfortunately negates a lot of the self-discovery that happens in freshman year."_

I was generally a straight-A student leaving high school but lasted six months at university before quitting. I distinctly remember much of my career decision was based on a single sentence description of the engineering degree flavour. I had good entrance scores but wasn't interested in medicine or dentistry. The description mentioned computers and design which were two things I enjoyed, but in reality it was more about designing computers rather than with computers. Had great teachers and parents but don't recall being steered by any of them on my selection.

Not sure what the answer is, but I imagine it involves more flexibility in that process (rather than prerequisite courses that start to narrow in at age 15) and more guidance.

At one point, we were given a large book - an index of jobs, basically. We flipped through and laughed at "cheesemaker" and "crane chaser" but there was not much about areas of interest or one-on-one with counsellors. Is a high school teacher really going to be best positioned to coach their cohort (with varied interests) on what direction to take?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm a senior in high school and decided to. I started a startup and got invited for a YC interview(got rejected) and am onto another startup which is raising soon.

Despite how much success/failure/I learn I endure, college name matters... a lot. I snuck into Nuro's open house last year and found they exclusively invited Harvard/Stanford/MIT students (I can say this because I was a minor at the time of signing their NDAs)

College name matters, especially when you're starting out (which can impact where you evenetually end up... whether its working for a startup or working at a cool VC firm) In fact most of the time, the people who've said: "don't go to college" are the same people who go to Cornell, UPenn, and Stanford and probably don't realize how much of a network/presitgie gives them to get them where they are now.

<comment><USER7> >In fact most of the time, the people who've said: "don't go to college" are the same people who go to Cornell, UPenn, and Stanford and probably don't realize how much of a network/presitgie gives them to get them where they are now.

Can't emphasize this enough. College is still necessary for something like 95% of the planet's population. If you are not born into wealth or have well connected parents, a college degree is your only way to a better life. You may not learn anything in college but you need that fuckin' piece of paper just for the bureaucratic formalities. A very talented friend of mine was denied the US visa probably because of lack of a bachelor degree.

<comment><USER8> How can college be necessary for 95% of the population when somewhere south of 50% attend now?

I'm a significant proponent of college attendance for social and educational reasons, but even with that bias, I don't agree with "necessary for 95%".

<comment><USER9> Because their lives suck now, and college would have alleviated that. That they didn't (have the chance to ) go is part of the point I believe.

But yeah it was worded strangely.

<comment><USER8> College would have alleviated it for four years _during college_. I'm not convinced that the job market transforms quickly to absorb twice as many people in jobs we think of today as "college required".

I'm not sure what the correlation between income (or other life outcomes) is between "attended college" vs "would typically have chosen college but took another route" but I suspect it's a lot smaller than between that latter group and the "was never even considering college" group.

It's not clear for an individual who "should" attend college how important the decision to actually attend is. I seem to recall studies that suggested there was a much stronger correlation between _applying to Harvard_ than there was between that and _attending Harvard_.

<comment><USER8> This might be the paper I was recalling: [https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322](https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322)

As summarized by the Atlantic: "For most students, the salary boost from going to a super-selective school is "generally indistinguishable from zero" after adjusting for student characteristics, such as test scores. In other words, if Mike and Drew have the same SAT scores and apply to the same colleges, but Mike gets into Harvard and Drew doesn't, they can still expect to earn the same income throughout their careers. Despite Harvard's international fame and energetic alumni outreach, somebody like Mike would not experience an observable "Harvard effect." Dale and Krueger even found that the average SAT scores of all the schools a student applies to is a more powerful predictor of success than the school that student actually attends.

This finding suggests that the talents and ambitions of individual students are worth more than the resources and renown of elite schools. Or, less academically, the person you're becoming at 18 is a better predictor of your future success than the school you graduate from at 22. The takeaway here: Stress out about your habits and chill out about college."

To be fair, the Atlantic continues on to say that the effect is different for women (which they ascribe primarily to increased workforce participation rates).

<comment><USER10> Unless I completely misremember that article, the article says nothing about not going to college at all. I don't think I'd use that paper to conclude that highly talented individuals will have similiar income outcomes regardless if they go to university or not. The credentialing effect is likely very important

That being said- strongly consider going to a place that is willing to throw scholarship money or special programs at you. The financial aspect of that advice should be obvious, but buy in from the school into your education can mean better access and sponsorship from professors as well

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had in my teams people without any college degree or college dropouts, some gave up after one year and some close to graduation. They were good developers, the only difference I saw between college graduates and the other developers was that the college graduates were less flexible and tending to apply what they learned in college to the letter, even where it did not make sense. A few days ago I was talking to one of these people doing some informal code review, he found a very formally correct explanation for a constructor that had no value in that context, something like "it is a good practice to do it because in case X it can be used for y", where x and y were completely not applicable in that code.

As a recruiter I never looked too serious for credentials, knowing myself going through the college only for that piece of paper at the end, working full time and knowing a lot more from the job than what the other students learned. From my former class in college I think I am the only one practicing IT, the others too other directions, including one that was a quite successful music band leader.

<comment><USER12> I've had the opposite experience working with a mix of uni-attendees and not.

Compared to their university-attended coworkers, the straight-to-industry folk were far more likely to cargo cult design patterns, languages, and frameworks.

<comment><USER13> A bit orthogonal to the actual discussion at hand, but I've become a big proponent of cargo-culting in a pragmatic fashion. I definitely ensure that everything is done in the "Rails Way" for any Ruby on Rails code, despite not necessarily agreeing with what's considered the "Rails Way" by rubocop or general rails developer consensus. If I'm doing code review for my colleagues I'll force them to refactor their changes into idiomatic Rails code, even if it's perfectly functional code. I'm less strict on JS or other languages, purely because I lack the experience to say what's the "right" or "wrong" way.

If your codebase follows a well-recognised style and pattern, it becomes a lot easier for new hires or contractors to get on their feet and start productive work than if you have some kind of brilliant idiosyncratic codebase that takes 3 months for a new hire to get their head around (as was the case when I joined my current company).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This Thiel-influenced not-going-to-university thing has got quite tedious. It's as if people think the only thing worth learning is coding and entrepreneurship.

If all you want to learn is programming and to a lesser extent computer science then I guess you don't really need to. However if you want to learn science, medicine, law, mathematics or any other real subject then of course you should. Plus if you want to have fun meeting new friends, getting wasted, and meeting sexual/romantic partners.

<comment><USER15> It's that last sentence that covinces me that university is obsolete or at best misrepresented as an educational experience. Getting 100 grand into debt to have fun and have sex? Get wasted?

And jf I appear to be cherrypicking the second half of your post, it's because thr first half is cherry picking itself - I'll venture that fields where you Do need university stamp of approval such as medicine and law are becoming rarer and fewer compared to fields and professions where there are valid or better alternatives.

This is not to say education isn't needed and awesome, or even that structured, guided, formal education isn't needed and awesome. But north American universities (and I'm an alumni of a good one) have lost their way and are far from the most efficient or effective method these days.

<comment><USER14> > Getting 100 grand into debt to have fun and have sex? Get wasted?

Fair enough. I spoke from a European perspective where it is in many places not at all that sort of financial consideration.

> But north American universities (and I'm an alumni of a good one)

If that were so then would you not be an alumnus or an alumna?

Sorry.

<comment><USER15> Fair enough - It has admittedly been 25 years since Terra Terrae Terrae Terram Terra Terra rt has been instilled into my head -and I'm rescuing those neurons just as fast as I can! :-D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went to university. I did not receive any job training at university. It is not design for job training and I did not expect to receive job training.

I am not a job. I am not a career.

I learned two important things at university that I doubt I could have picked up otherwise.

1\. I learned how broad knowledge is. I learned about things I did not even know I did not know about. Some of these things I learned in classrooms. Most I learned outside of classrooms, either through interaction with my peers or by accident while researching something unrelated in the library. Sometimes by hacking on the school computers. In high school I learned that being smart is bad. In university I learned there are people who value thinking.

2\. I learned how to organize my time to complete tasks I had no personal interest in, how to force myself to work despite my dislike of team mates or organizers, and to finish by deadlines. I only wish I had learned these things before my 6th and 7th years in university, but alas.

You don't need to go to university. We will always need garbage collectors and street sweepers, and remember, anyone can write bad software. Vendors continue to try to make it easier to do so.

<comment><USER17> Wow. This is shamefully elitist. No, you did not need to go to university to learn those two things. There are plenty of people that have learned them from other life experiences. Also, some of the worst code I've ever had the pleasure of reading was written by people with graduate degrees.

I myself didn't graduate, because the allure of starting a company was too strong. Here I am 20 years later advising people with degrees. If you are dedicated enough and creative enough (in the hacker kind of way) you can become skilled in just about anything you want.

However without a degree there are doors that are closed to you. For example the UC system will not even consider you for an MBA if you don't have an undergraduate degree. Don't even bother applying. Other private institutions will consider you but you need to be absolutely exceptional to get in.

I use that just as one example. People with a degree (especially a good degree) can stroll into an opportunity that I have to work 10X harder to to get. That said, once I'm in I tend to outperform my peers simply because I'm used to a world set on "hard mode" at all times.

Another thing I'm lacking are the deep friendships and connections that people who have a degree seem to have. That, to me, is the biggest loss from skipping a degree. Despite significant effort I don't seem to be able to make that part up.

<comment><USER18> > Another thing I'm lacking are the deep friendships and connections that > people who have a degree seem to have. That, to me, is the biggest loss from > skipping a degree. Despite significant effort I don't seem to be able to > make that part up.

"The Second Gate: The Places That Have Not Known Love

There is another entrance to grief, a second gateway, different from the gate connected to losing someone or something that we love. This grief occurs in the places often untouched by love. These are profoundly tender places precisely because they have lived outside of kindness, compassion, warmth, or welcome. These are the places within us that have been wrapped in shame and banished to the farthest shores of our lives. We often hate these parts of ourselves, hold them in contempt, and refuse to allow them the light of day. We do not show these outcast brothers and sisters to anyone, and we thereby deny these parts of ourselves the healing salve of community.

These neglected pieces of soul live in utter despair. What we perceive as defective about ourselves, we also experience as loss. Whenever any portion of who we are is denied, we live in a condition of loss. The proper response to any loss is grief, but we cannot grieve for something that we feel is outside the circle of worth. That is our predicament—we chronically sense the presence of sorrow, but we are unable to truly grieve, because we feel in our body that this piece of who we are is unworthy of grief."

"The Fourth Gate: What We Expected and Did Not Receive

There is another gate to grief, one difficult to identify, yet it is very present in each of our lives. This threshold into sorrow calls forward the things that we may not even realize we have lost. I have written elsewhere about the expectations coded into our physical and psychic lives. When we are born, and as we pass through childhood, adolescence, and the stages of adulthood, we are designed to anticipate a certain quality of welcome, engagement, touch, and reflection. In short, we expect what our deep-time ancestors experienced as their birthright, namely, the container of the village. We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth and communal rituals of celebration, grief, and healing that keep us in connection with the sacred. As T. S. Eliot wrote in The Waste Land "Once upon a time, we knew the world from birth." This is our inheritance, our birthright, which has been lost and abandoned. The absence of these requirements haunts us, even if we can't give them a name, and we feel their loss as an ache, a vague sadness that settles over us like a fog. This lack is simultaneously one of the primary sources of our grief and one of the reasons we find it difficult to grieve. On some level, we are waiting for the village to appear so we can fully acknowledge our sorrows."

\- Francis Weller, The Wild Edge of Sorrow

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the freedom to pursue intellectual curiosity is a thing which universities offer almost unconditional unlike jobs. This is a perk that not a lot of jobs in the real world offers. Almost nowhere else in a person's life are you given such an opportunity to invest in ones interests.

But I'm biased towards going to uni, since I live in Denmark where I get paid monthly for going to university.

<comment><USER20> You are not paid to go the university in Denmark. You are awarded credits by the government, and it is up to you to do something sensible with those credits. Don't waste them on needless courses! Learn that which will yield you (and the Danish government) the greatest benefits throughout the rest of your life.

<comment><USER21> It reads a little like your are misunderstanding what is meant by "paid to go to university". Danish citizens receive a grant called "SU" (Statens uddannelsesstøtte), which basically is a payment from the government for being enrolled in education. It is meant to be spend on food, rent, living, books etc

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_loans_in_Denmark)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I went to mediocre uni here in the UK studying Web Development. The educational value was pretty much worthless. I learnt more in a year at my first job than three years of university. But being forced to move out and become independent was invaluable.

<comment><USER23> Some education isn't all that useful. I had a computer-something-related class in college where we were talking about how computers were getting faster.

Professor: If you think computers are fast now, it'll blow your mind that back in the 60s the NSA has computers running at 1000.

Me: 1000? You mean 1000 megahertz?

Professor: No, 1000.

Me: _facepalm_

I'm still paying off those student loans.

<comment><USER24> I got in an argument with a philosophy professor. He put a stick in water and said 'look... the stick is broken'. I said "no, the stick is not broken. it appears broken because the index of refraction is different in water than air, which causes light to bed". he didn't like that very much. It's still not clear to me what point he was trying to make (that human senses are limited?)

<comment><USER25> you were of course correct, but your professor was simply illustrating a point- of whether we can trust our senses, of how we truly "know" something. philosophy often brings up "commonsensical" questions such as these. he probably didn't reply to you because he was bored from hearing the same smart alecky response every year :)

<comment><USER24> If that was his point, there are far better ways to argue for it (specifically, Descartes' great deceiver). There was nothiing smart alecky about my response- just touching the stick, or pulling the stick back out, would verify that it was not broken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The anti-university sentiment on HN is absolutely alien to me. Not only did I get a lot out of my university education, but it was a totally transformative experience for me. It also enables me to do my job, and I've never seen anyone without a good education do it well.

Yes, I get that you can be a react developer without a university qualification.

This may come as news to some, but most fields bear no resemblance to writing JavaScript for a living.

<comment><USER27> I was going to make the snap judgment that HN happens to be popular among computer programmers, an occupation that is fairly unique in terms of providing lucrative indoor work without strictly needing college training. Many of the programmers of my generation (graduated high school in 1982) have little or no formal training in programming.

I don't know anybody who learned math or physics outside of a college classroom. Maybe there are some out there, but I haven't met them.

But it goes further. What strikes me is not only an anti-university sentiment, but also a strong _anti high school_ sentiment. I've been surprised by the number of comments from people who are obviously smart and diligent enough to be programmers, but for whom high school was a disaster. And it occurs to me that this does reveal that education is not serving everybody equally well.

So, even though I value my university education, I'm still interested in hearing how others have experienced it. However for students, my advice is that you have to find the thing that makes college worthwhile for you. If you go in with a cynical attitude, that it's just "signaling" or "networking," then you are likely to be blinding yourself to the other kinds of opportunities that it presents.

<comment><USER28> >I don't know anybody who learned math or physics outside of a college classroom.

I think the vast majority has technically learned maths and physics outside the college classroom. The teaching quality I'm getting at my university isn't the greatest (bar a few exceptions), and I find myself regularly going to Khan Academy or 3blue1brown to understand a concept better. This is learning outside the classroom!

In a lot of ways, I find universities to be assessment centres and certificate issuers. Not in all ways of course, certain aspects such as labs, coordination of group projects, someone to ask questions to get back to you instantly, are all things which cannot be replaced in any circumstance. But when it comes to the dry theoretical stuff, I'm not sure why I would go to a lecture if I know I can get a better quality of teaching somewhere else online.

Of course this is only true for a few subjects (maths and entry level physics/engineering). I unfortunately have to rely on the lectures provided for the more specialist modules I'm being assessed on (such as heat transfer and chemical engineering principles). This is mainly so that I can comply with the teacher's specific assessment criteria and the terminology/definitions/textbook/ordering they use. I may be able to find heat transfer explanations somewhere else online, and they probably would explain things better, but they wouldn't help much when it came time to use the terminology that the lecturer expects you to use during an assessment, or if you're expected to use the equation sheet that the teacher made for you and expects you to use.

<comment><USER29> I think part of your argument about learning from Khan Academy or 3blue1brown is highly predicated upon being in subjects that are widely known and studied, particularly introductory mathematics/physics/engineering. I personally cannot speak for physicists, but I imagine it is similar as follows.

One of the most valuable parts of a Engineering/Mathematics Degree (Both at the BS and the MS levels) is that of the upper division elective courses for specialization. At research universities, these classes often contain lots of information/techniques that can't be found in a textbook, let alone in a youtube video. At best, there might be a very cursory blog post, or a collection of research papers that you really aren't ready to explore on your own. Often, these classes result in final projects which can be expanded into research papers or portfolio projects with the professor teaching the class, both of which are valuable learning opportunities for the student and effective signaling mechanisms post-graduation.

These classes are where the real technical value of a college education is found.

In addition, there a quite a few classes which are offered if not required for such Engineering/Mathematics students which are pretty difficult to approach on your own and surmise in a short period of time. For examples, I point towards Analysis 1/2/Complex, PDEs, Dynamics, and Probabilistic Robotics.

I personally got a lot from my undergrad, I (and this may only apply to me) strictly would not have succeeded in learning all the topics I did if my only motivation was my personal learning in my free time, particularly in the short time horizon I did. The pressure cooker ( _cough_ engineering school) I went through was very formative, built a number of professional/personal connections, and taught me almost all the personal and professional skills I have.

This is just my 2 cents though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I am 18 year old, I'm already working as a developer, and they have offered me a very nice full time job offer. I have been thinking about whether or not to go to university for most of the past year.

In the end, I did choose to go to university. I will be working part-time to pay about 90% of it (including housing) which means I'll have practically no debt. The main reason for me to go, was that I don't want to de a developer for the rest of my life. I think that having a degree will make a eventual career switch a lot easier.

<comment><USER6> Shopfiy intern?

<comment><USER30> I'm not a Shopify intern. I work at a relatively small company, which is not internationally known. We are mainly a white label ISP, but also have both managed and unmanaged servers for companies and government entities which can not or will not use public cloud providers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I had a conversation with my dad about the purpose of university when I wasn't really learning anything I couldn't learn myself, and I was saddled with courses I have long since forgotten. He told me that yes, times have changed and you can learn a lot more online now than you ever could in school. But he also said that a university degree proves you can commit to something for an extended period of time, and endure its highs and lows. He told me it builds character and helps teach you how to socialize with people.

Nowadays in a hiring position, I don't care too much about the degree, but I do look more for commitment to something. The interview is an indicator of socialization as well and the deciding factor of wanting to work with someone.

</comment><comment><USER32> Stanford double dropout (undergrad + grad) reporting in - one piece of anecdata:

Middle class Taiwanese family of white collar parents. Went to undergrad, dabbled in a few side projects and dropped out to work at a game company, a startup as an employee, and my own startup, in that order.

Learnings: found out I knew very little, and the branding/network/advice I could get from school would save me from reinventing the wheel over and over as a unvetted/newbie entrepreneur. This is hugely important and people don't assign enough value to it. For things where you need someone to hire you: you need to convince them somehow, and getting that piece of paper helps cover their butt and makes their life easier. I went back to school to have a bit of optionality.

Graduated and was planning on doing grad school. Spent first quarter basically playing D&D and League and barely scraped by academically, spent a few weekends hanging out with fellow Burners at a theme camp and collaborated on a few projects. I dropped out (for good this time) and pursued them -- all of them failed in the next 2 years, but what was useful was that I learned who were the good cofounder/advisors and how this kinda opaque process worked. Hit both a good startup as an advisor/early employee, then cofounded a cashflow business that I then bought out and proceeded to run for a decade.

Learnings: Knowledge and network are filled with plenty of opportunity costs -- and there's ways to make it both as a generalist and a specialist... ideally you can optimize for the intersect of what you want and what the world wants, and that ends up being the hard part. My own path was largely unplanned and opportunistic -- by hanging around an area of opportunity long enough and being ready I was able to access enough things to mildly succeed (didn't hit the stock jackpot, but I have a reasonable business).

Back to the question: the article answers it in the first few paragraphs - <USER2> depends on the person but is usually the "harder way". I only took the path because I had the priviledge/luxury to chase what I wanted, despite the vague expected value.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have a degree in Theoretical Physics. During my second year I started to realise that I don't want to stay in academia, and at the same time I started to do a lot programming. I finished my Bachelors and got a job as a backend dev.

The way I see it, altough I learned a lot in uni, it's basically a "VIP" token to get yourself a job. And that's sad. Lots of companies will hire physics and math grads _just because_. They think they have "problem solving skills" \- let me tell you - there are a tonne of STEM grads that do not have these skills (putting it politely) but get hired anyway.

<comment><USER34> Some universities teach formula plugging, and some teach fundamentals. I've worked with the graduates of both, and the former can't solve any problem that doesn't have a book answer, and they'll misapply that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Telling people they don't "need" to go to university is an act of personal sabotage. The person giving you that advice is either an idiot, or wants to keep you in your place for other reasons.

This is an urgent view.

The post-hoc justifications of people who either didn't go, or people who did go but want to believe their other accomplishments are more defining - are not valuable to someone who has the means and opportunity to make the investment. The more arbitrary and meaningless having a degree seems, the more important it is to actually get one, because without one, you are subject to the even more arbitrary and meaningless barriers that it will otherwise unlock. You don't know them because you don't get to them until 10y+ after you graduate. A "degree," is in effect the degree of trajectory for the compounding rate of the value of your experience to others, where you don't see the effects until much later.

Look at the rate of occurrence of non-degreed people above a certain level of financial success, property ownership, executive management, assets, and opportunity, and then compare them to the very long tail of the hundreds-of- millions other non-degreed people you are in a labour market with. The distribution of that curve looks a lot like lottery winners. Given outcomes are exponentially distributed, should you make an investment, or just play the lottery? Get a degree, or always work for people who have one when you don't.

People who think education is mainly about skills and training don't understand what education is. Suffice it to say that a degree is a strategic investment. If you don't know what that means, I recommend investing in your education.

<comment><USER36> I don't disagree that degrees and college education are important, but I don't think pointing to wealthy people is good evidence. Many of the wealthiest billionaires dropped out of school, didn't even go, or didn't consider it important. There are also many wealthy via inheritance. So, looking at the wealthy is not the demographic cohort that reveals the value of higher education.

The reasons to attend college are more than moneymaking. Social networking, maturation, shared experience, opportunities to expand your knowledge beyond online tutorials, college offers many interesting experiences that going straight to work will not.

<comment><USER37> > Many of the wealthiest billionaires dropped out of school

It's of course a very nice story that they "dropped out of school", but the truth is more nuanced than that. For example Bill Gates and Elon Musk had school as a backup plan in case their business would fail.

So it's not that they dropped out of school to pursue their business, they suspended their school for their business, and still had it as a backup plan. Very different! If their business wouldn't have worked, they would continue their school (which at that point was already an investment, 3 years for Bill Gates if I remember correctly).

<comment><USER38> Agree completely, but just wanted to point out that Elon Musk has an ivy league bachelor's degree. What he dropped out of was his Ph.D. program, which is more akin to quitting a job than "dropping out of school".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can't speak for other professions but as a dev I've got no regrets in getting a CS degree. There's nothing you'll learn there that you couldn't maybe teach yourself but that's exactly the point. Unless you're a gifted autodidact you'll face considerable difficulty and will likely end up skipping through the important stuff coming away with a very flawed understanding indeed.

<comment><USER40> What's the important stuff? Where do I check my understanding?

<comment><USER41> I don't have a CS degree (or any degree for that matter), but I did review a CS degree program requirement and class materials. They do cover important stuffs. It's just that it doesn't take 4 years to learn them.

Required classes for a CS curriculum I reviewed were: discrete math, data structure, algorithm, computer architecture, programming language, operating system.

<comment><USER42> Error analysis is important stuff and there's no easily accessible description of it, mostly because it's not a small stuff as opposed to some algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's clearly possible to do pretty well without a university degree, and I think there's a few slam-dunk cases where you shouldn't get a degree:

1) You don't actually want to do the work to finish a degree, 2) your only options are to get an extremely mediocre degree, or 3) you will have to go into savage debt to get a degree.

Then there are the exceptional folks who could do well anywhere (who, presumably, would also be the high-flyers if they _went_ to a university).

For everyone else, getting a decent degree should almost be a no-brainer. It will be useful. HR will like it, pretty much forever. The "lost years" of work experience will rapidly converge to insignificance (a point that seems lost on the folks who think that it's only university degrees become less significant as you get older).

You can do a range of subjects - some of them, shock horror, not narrowly vocational (a lot of the discussion here seems to imply that the sum total of what we should learn after high school somehow begins and ends with "programming and computer science"). Further, you can do these subjects at a much higher level and with greater intensity than the whole "hey, I read a couple books on Philosophy or did the first level of Duolingo in Spanish" or some such.

It should be a pleasant time where you get to try some new activities, meet a lot of people - maybe including a life partner, but maybe just good friends and some "early-adult romantic" relationships (which IMO are likely to greatly increase your chance of learning what you really want and how to get along in the real grown-up world).

The whole tertiary sector is pretty messed up right now (even pre COVID), so buyer beware. Don't do a crappy degree.

<comment> non-entity Honestly 2 and 3 are the reason I probably wont go back outside of CS (and even then, a lot of what I've seen is mediocre at best) most of the online degrees I've seen are absolute garbage. And I make too much money to he able to afford full time in-person school, but not enough to self fund a bachelors degree at what it would cost me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I think it depends a lot on where you are in the world. In my country where access to education is paid for by the government, and the state pays you $850 a month to study for 5 years once reach educations beyond "High School", work places kind of expect you to have a degree. You can't even really be a sales person at a supermarket if you haven't spent a few years getting a degree, or are under the age of 18 (less pay). Crafty professions takes you through a mix of bookish education and apprenticeship for 4 years, but they too lead to a degree.

Programming is one of the few fields, that isn't packing boxes of frozen fish, where a career without a degree is possible here, and even on that field time is running out for people without degrees because so many young people have been getting them for the past decade.

But that is my country, here you'd be absolutely crazy (or perhaps challenged in some way) to not finish an education.

<comment><USER45> Scandinavia I assume?

I'm from there and I never finished my degree. The reason was that I took some time off to travel, found a job during this time and I simply have not been back since. Almost a decade now.

Only recently have I looked into finishing it off through online courses but even then it is hard to motivate myself, not once have I been asked for it. I even ask recruiters and they also say I don't need it to be hired (at least: Singapore, UK, Thailand, Sweden) and I'm talking about major companies. I can't speak for countries other than where I am employed but here I am not underpaid due to lack of degree.

I did go through 3 years of university and I do agree that the experience itself is useful (even though it might seem otherwise at times).

(Edit: to be clear I'm working in software development)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Lots of anecdotes here. So I will add mine.

I did a 2 year technical diploma program and went to work as an electronics technician. I was good, got promoted fast, started fixing a lot of mistakes the degreed engineers were making. I got pretty far without a degree but eventually hit a ceiling because credentialism was strong at the company. So I went back to college, a good private college, paid for by my employer. It was _hard_ , because I was working longer and longer hours since I was good and they counted on me, while taking classes part time. The classes I took taught very little and did nothing for me _except_ that finally getting my degree I could break through the credentials ceiling.

So...if you are going to work for a company that values credentials then you need the degree and I think it is better to go straight from high school to college instead of doing it the hard way like I did.

<comment><USER47> You were also lucky to have an understanding employer who was happy to invest on your growth. A lot of people can't get approval to do a one-week, job- relevant, practical training course, let alone sponsor years of higher education.

<comment><USER46> Very true. I had several bosses who really fought for me, both for promotions to positions that a non-degreed person never held, and for approval of educational reimbursement. Although regarding the latter, it was a defense contractor and they get reimbursed by the government for those costs. So there were really no cases where someone pursuing a relevant degree would be turned down for reimbursement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> _There 's also a weird flip side to all these downsides. Once you establish yourself as competent there is this kind of threshold effect where not having a university degree can suddenly start causing people to actually take you more seriously. This kind of countersignalling effect seems to be common when you do non-traditional things._

I'm not sure this is a real thing unless you're, say, Richard Branson. I also can't really imagine many circumstances in which you're doing something non- traditional and you can't just pretend you don't have a degree by neglecting to mention it... and if you've already reached a level of "significance" in a non-traditional thing where someone might actually check, well, you've probably already done better than most.

</comment><comment><USER49> Man, props for this post and the subsequent discussions. It's eye-opening to read through everything. As a current university student, the COVID situation is awful. We're paying full tuition ($15k/year) for recorded Zoom lectures. I'm seriously considering taking a gap year. I wanted to complete research during my 4th year, but it's hard to get close to professors over sporadic interactions.

</comment><comment><USER50> For context, the author Chris Olah is a researcher at Open AI, who I think is one of the most clear and thoughtful writers in the space. He has a lot of articles on understanding ML models, and pioneers new methods of visualizations and interactivity to improve understandability of these models. If you're interested in the field I would highly recommend reading some of his articles on his blog or on distill.pub, a publication that he helped found with the express purpose of improving clarity of ML research.

<comment><USER6> Not to mention he got the Thiel Fellowship. That right there would make a good majority of undergrads drop out (I would at least). Thiel Fellowship is basically security in the valley because of the network it gives.

<comment><USER51> Isn't the whole point of the Thiel Fellowship to pay kids to drop out? Thiel is trying to prove some point about academia, but, as you say, it stacks the deck because the fellowship includes a lot of the connections and foot-in-the- door help that its recipients would otherwise get in university.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> You should have some experiences that move you out (even if temporarily) from the bubble you live in. University is a easy choice for that. If you have more experiences you will also have more ways to think about the world and more ways to deal with life and it's problems. My university experience in terms of learning could have been a lot better, but the experience as a whole and all the people I would not have met otherwise are still very valuable more than a decade after it ended.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm taking the degree apprenticeship route (19 yo). From a purely educational point of view, there wasn't much University could teach me that I wasn't prepared to learn on my own, so making money and shipping real stuff is far more valuable for me. Of course, this highly depends on the individual.

There is also downsides, like the fact it is a job at the end of the day, and that comes with politics as well as technical challenges.

I'd again make the decision (over University) in a heartbeat.

</comment><comment><USER54> I did a coding bootcamp in Austin TX at the age of 18, instead of going to college, and got a job right after at a startup making $40k USD/year, which became $50k USD/year in a few months after getting a raise, and then after working there for a year I switched jobs to a top tech company many of you know, and by 21 I was making $75k USD/year

I got a lot of socializing at both companies, got to hang out with guys my own age and guys older than me, got to have some fun (maybe not as much as my peers in university), got to grow up, etc.

I think university back in the day used to mean a lot more, and I would have enjoyed it, but now it's so watered down cause everyone goes, and political / cultural movements have made the university programs require much more effort and much less thought

Just my 2 cents

Edit: also, to add to this, at the same time I also learned a lot of stuff completely outside of the domain of software through books on my own. philosophy books, history books, sociology books, etc. etc. I really liked that I was able to carefully select the authors and books and topics to the ones that grabbed my eye.

edit 2: oh ya! i also got a lot of fun socializing at the bootcamp too.

</comment><comment><USER55> If you have the option to go and you want to advance on your career, then there's almost zero reasons to not go.

Yes, there are some exceptions but in most places and for most people a degree is what matters, not how many commits you do have in your side projects in github.

<comment> barry-cotter > If you have the option to go and you want to advance on your career, then > there's almost zero reasons to not go.

The entire point of the article was that if you have something better to do than university and good reason to believe you can actually do it you might at least consider it. Also, three to four years of foregone earnings are a powerful reason not to go to university if you're already capable of earning a living in your chosen field. That is very far from zero reasons, especially when you consider the professional development you can fit into those years if that's something you value.

> Yes, there are some exceptions but in most places and for most people a > degree is what matters, not how many commits you do have in your side > projects in github.

When you're 40 no one but bureaucrats is going to give a crap what university you went to, compared to your actual accomplishments. If all you've got is side projects on GitHub no one will care whether you went to Oxford or University of Southern Florida or dropped out of high school. _Actual accomplishments_

<comment><USER43> Even at age 48, I see people getting on the inside track because they have degrees from name brand universities, including myself (I have a PhD from CMU). A degree from a good place signals (rightly or wrongly) that you were academically strong enough to get in and to finish.

As for career development - 3-4 years of career development "forgone" isn't really that much relative to the sum total of an entire career. One could just as easily say that when you're 40, no-one but bureaucrats is going to give a crap whether you have 19-20 years of experience or 23.

There are always exceptions - the whole "dropped out of university to found X or invent Y" thing - but 95% of people's _actual accomplishments_ (as you so excitedly put it) are going to be a bunch of 'turned up, did pretty good' lines on a resume. All other things being equal, I'll hire the person who passed university-level calculus at a good school, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't regret going to university in the slightest in regards to my job as a software developer. I don't regret the $30k it cost me. Some days I do question if I should've become an electrician instead, but that was never an option for me growing up, it was more or less expected that I went to university.

University was so much more than learning how to program a computer so that I could get a job, I knew how to that that before I started. Almost none of what I learned at university I've ended up using in my career. But it was good to scratch that intellectual itch, I enjoyed learning what I learned, which is why I chose software development as a career, even if it isn't knowledge I use in everyday life. It was also an opportunity for me to move to a new city and become an independent adult and grow as a person, while meeting and socialising with people I would've never met had I stayed in my home town or even moved to a different city to attend a coding bootcamp.

<comment><USER56> Why electrician? My father is a licensed (but not union) electrician and I used to work as his assistant when I was a teenager. The job was pretty boring, mostly driving to job sites, running cables, wiring them up, etc. It never struck me as an intellectually stimulating job. He had a book with a bunch of formulas in it (called Ugly's, iirc) that I would read while driving to sites sometimes, but it was plug-and-chug algebra.

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't want to be an on-call electrician, driving out and fixing ovens and light switches. Most of my tradie mates try to avoid those kinds of jobs too, ideally a job doing fit out on a large commercial worksite is what you want, office buildings and that kind of thing, even better if it's a union worksite.

I've always enjoyed construction work though (electrical and other), sure it's not intellectually stimulating, but it's rewarding. Sometimes I actually regret having such an intellectually demanding day job, after 8 hours of work often I'm too mentally drained to do what I want in the evening. There's also a certain sense of satisfaction from seeing your physical finished work that you just don't get as a software developer.

Working as an industrial electrician would be more my kind of thing, performing maintenance on machinery, programming PLCs, that kind of thing. Repairing equipment requires a lot of the same mental processes as debugging code, I enjoy doing both. It's a good cross between physical and mental work. The money is very reasonable, up to $50 an hour.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> There are four areas in which to benefit from going to university:

The academic side: the opportunity to study in depth a subject you love or that will be useful to you, from (hopefully) great academics of the field.

The social side: meet people who might become your friends for life, or your future spouse. Have a rich and intense social life before career and family take over.

The networking side: meet people, whether students or academics, who will be useful to you in your future career.

The extra-curricular side: student journalism, debating, politics, music, drama, sports etc. Follow your hobby like never before. It might even become your career instead of your major.

Obviously the four are not disconnected. But you can probably only go all in on one or two.

But then the cost. You need to decide whether it is worth it for what you will get out of it (that being some combination of the four areas above).

</comment><comment><USER58> I have no regrets of not going to university. I've never been asked about my education and during the time I was an employee I've always been paid the same as people with a degree and similiar work experience. So in my personal experience a degree would have been a complete waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER38> I personally don't really give too much weight to education credentials when I'm screening resumes. However, I'd recommend that everyone looking to be a developer go to university:

A) it's a great time to get a broad education, learn from experts in many fields

B) it will most likely affect your compensation throughout your life. Yes, you can find jobs without it. But if you limit yourself to jobs that don't care about a college degree, you will find your options limited. I may not care, but I know that the CEO of my company does, and that will likely affect your bonus and/or salary.

Yes, there are some people whose technical skills are so good that it's obvious to the world. But most people don't fall in that bucket. Whether it's true or not, a college degree will make people _think_ you are better.

</comment><comment><USER59> What's missing from the conversation is the nature of the university. It makes this piece uniquely applicable to, say, the top 100 universities in the world. Let me throw in an African perspective, a hand grenade depending on who you ask.

I'd argue that in the current economy where global mobility should be an intentional goal of any education, they (most African universities) pay negative dividends in both power in their name and quality of education. I'd rather spend my tuition on online courses offered by MIT and Stanford. So, should I go to the university? In order to be able to answer, we should ask, which university. The answer is a definite yes for the top 100, maybe until the 1000th, and a no after that: there are non-university institutions that can give you the higher quality signal you need.

<comment><USER60> As someone who has interviewed applicants in Africa, I would double down on this. There are certain universities that may signal quality (e.g. University of Cape Town), but a lot of universities seem to have graduates that do well in spite of them.

I have lost track of the number of candidates I interviewed (and voted to hire!) who couldn't answer questions about their completed coursework, but could give in depth rundowns of the inner workings of something like embedded system software because of their extra curricular work.

After a while, I could notice trends from universities that were actually teaching their students incorrect information, providing the negative dividends you were talking about.

It's sad and frustrating. In an African context I think you're spot on that self taught candidates have often used their time more effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Dropping out of college was the hardest and best decision I ever made. It literally never came up that I didn't have a degree and i started my career without debt. But have a plan and don't drop out until you are making money from something else.

</comment><comment><USER62> I just graduated (this summer). Previously I wasn't sold on university and did a year long internship with IBM in the UK. They offered me a full time 'degree-apprenticeship' in cyber security or consulting, but I instead left and studied literature at a UK University instead.

I often think the biggest difference between a graduate and non graduate is three years. As an 18 year old there is no way I would have been able to withstand the culture for another three years at IBM without it significantly affecting me (positively or negatively), but at 21 I feel much more mature and ready for a career. In many cases, does University just function as a waiting room in which young people can mature?

<comment><USER63> Yes. And meet people outside of the tech bubble.

Do you really want to be engulfed by a male-dominated IBM/Google monoculture for 4 formative years?

<comment><USER64> >a male-dominated IBM/Google monoculture

I don't see why "male-dominated" should be a problem. Statistically, I would even probably have more shared interests with them.

<comment><USER65> _> I don't see why "male-dominated" should be a problem._

If you feel you need a few more skill-points in talking to women in order to find a girlfriend or wife. College is a much easier and more forgiving environment to learn that sort of thing.

Of course, that's not a concern for everyone. Some people know all they need to know already, or aren't looking for a hetero relationship!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> I'm in my mid 20s, dropped out of college 3-4 years ago and have managed to get an average paying development job. I would go back to college and get my degree but there are two things that hold me back.

1) Dealing with college admissions is literally one of the most frustrating things I have ever done. The IRS has given me less run around than most college admissions I talk to.

2) Money. It all comes down to money. I'm having a very hard time justifying the cost at the end of the day.

With that being said, if someone comes up to me and ask me if they should go to college my answer is absolutely.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'm in the UK. 24 years old. Programmer. Did A-levels but not Uni.

It's never been very hard to find jobs, and my pay is above average for the UK (it's £60k).

Programming is pretty easy to teach yourself and it's a super employable field right now. Programmers are in so high a demand no one seems to mind if you don't have any qualifications.

Would things have been better if I'd gone to university instead? Who knows? But it's super possible to be a programmer without going.

</comment><comment><USER68> I think apart of what has been already said, it depends on the kind of person you are. I see people with and without a degree in CS that thrive and some that do the opposite. Personally, I have been working as a software developer for the last five years. And during that time I have had a couple of phases were I suffered from some kind of imposter syndrome. I have a master degree in International Business and hence lacked some fundamental CS skills (e.g. Algos, Compilers, Operating Systems). So during the last few years I worked my ass off to learn all this stuff, because every time I read something about software engineering and it mentioned any of these things I felt less value because I knew I don't have a CS degree. I also felt intimidated by some of these topics. So, I sat down and learnt all the stuff I thought I needed to know in order to feel better. Now, after going through this period of studying in order to get rid of this stupid imposter syndrome, I feel kind of burnt out. It's funny, because I finally have the self-confidence I was looking for during the last five years, yet I kind of lost the creativity and motivation that I need in order to enjoy what I'm doing.

So, I can only recommend to find out what kind of person you are. But tbh, even though I got a degree that is unrelated to CS, I'm glad I went to university. I would had been a very different person without that experience. And in the end of the day, you will have to work for a veeeery long time (well, at least that is the reality for the most of us). So, what are 3-5 years spent doing something that gives you the opportunity to experience stuff you won't be able to find at work (well, except for the sunk cost, but I reject to think about education in this way)?

</comment><comment><USER69> Depends on the profession. Generally if the goal is to be a qualified medical / legal professional, it is required to get a university degree from either medical school / law school respectively. Researcher? Maybe, Maybe not. But I won't be surprised if many research positions will ask for a degree.

Software Developer? Not really. FAANMG SWE Job? I won't risk it if I'm not famous with 10K other people applying.

</comment><comment><USER70> Lots of great resources here, but as mentioned in the essay signaling based on external validation is still crucial. (OP seems to have won a Thiel Fellowship, I'd assume that has a stronger signaling value than your typical college degree.) As much as I hate it, the world runs on limited resources and people and organizations have no choice but to rely on some sort of signaling scheme as a filtering mechanism.

<comment><USER41> I agree, but the signal can be pretty small. I contributed to Firefox and it was good enough to be hired by web browser company without a degree. After that, work experience was good enough for pretty much anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Disagree with the overall "do I have anything more compelling to do" notion.

You can have a perfectly good and valid life as a human on earth without having set foot in a university. When you decide to attend a university, you always do so at the expense or other perfectly valid things.

I think everyone should go if they can, and simultaneously I think three- and four- year degrees are too long for most people. We need to establish a program to get degrees in shorter installments, say 1.5 years each.

In other words, tech companies should seriously start considering hiring people with Associate's Degrees (or equivalent) where applicable, to turn this degree into a real viable option. I can take anyone with a brain from zero to working coder in 1.5 years of full-time study, including the maths.

I can't speak for other fields, but for tech I'm pretty confident this will be great.

Anyone should be able to sacrifice a year and a half and a reasonable tuition to be able to get the college experience. I think we can make it much more accessible.

</comment><comment><USER72> I always read these threads and have very mixed thoughts on this argument of being for or against Universities. I believe the pros of spending four years at a college outweigh a lot of the bad (loans, bad professors, etc) but only if you know what you want to do when you're done.

A lot of people go to Universities hoping to find themselves and never do.

</comment><comment><USER73> As someone who is 27 yo and dropped out of school when already having a job offshore(oil) lined up, I certainly can agree with a lot of this.

I had been doing software development for 4 years and I figured I'd rather work with that than automation and electronics. I had a side project(game) that was earning some money.

Note that this was in Norway so I could have (and still can) go to university for free.

My girlfriend ended up getting a masters degree in software development and is currently working in a consultant firm. She's currently tanking another masters degree in entrepreneurship, mostly for fun.

I've always doubted my skills, but after helping her out every now and then I've realized that 10+ years of experience really can't be matched by going to school.

On the other hand I've also learned that university is a great way to kick off your learning. Some things they're learning are things I often ended up with too, on my own, with trial and error. At least I really understand why some things are what they are because of it.

I started very young and was quite successful with my first project. People has spent thousands of years(combined) actively using my first project.

But even though I have done well, I still feel like I'm taken less serious than those with a full education, cause I've just created a strange game.

I'm considering going to university now just to get cheaper insurance and the degree, but I don't expect I'd learn a lot of new things. But I do enjoy fiddling with stuff, so it might be fun.

Do I regret it? Not really. Am I worried? Slightly, if it all falls down then I need to get a normal job or come up with something else.

Would I recommend it? If you're really driven and are already seeing signs of success, sure, give it a shot.

</comment><comment><USER74> The author mention the visa question and I think that bears repeating, if you plan to live abroad, having a degree (preferably a master) will make getting a visa in any country much easier.

I'd however recommend going to a country where education is close to free to get a degree, even if it involves losing a year learning the local language...

</comment><comment><USER75> I tell all my younger friends to go to varsity and to take as many theory heavy courses as possible.

Obviously, YMMV, but I find absorbing any theory-heavy knowledge alongside my day job extremely hard, whereas I can very easily more practical skills as a I work.

</comment><comment><USER76> > Instead of asking "Is university good?", ask "Do I have something more > compelling to do?"

Unfortunately, the problem is harder. How to weight the possibility to reach the state of the art, and participate in moving that state of the art, against rather tangible possibilities or short- or middle-term gains in practical projects? The first option may lead to better long-term wins overall.

It's a hard choice for teenagers, who aren't always able to even formulate the problem.

I'd err on the side of getting education in all cases, while avoiding making somebody particularly rich in the process, as that's an indication of flaws in what I'm getting.

</comment><comment><USER77> anecdata, of course.

The company I work for is currently hiring. As the hiring manager I have repeatedly said I don't give a damn about college education (myself not having come from a CS background in college) and repeatedly the CTO has shot me down and told me that we need to hire someone with an undergrad CS background.

So here is my pithy statement: There are two paths - you can either have a CS degree. Or you can know someone and get the job that way (which is, how I - and others on the team who don't have CS degrees - got the job). Sometimes even if someone on the inside is rooting for you.

</comment><comment><USER78> For me, a lot of the value in university was the experience of living independent, being thrown into a relatively unknown place with new responsibilities, and figuring out how to cope with it all. I would say that was far more valuable than the coursework itself. I went to undergrad at the typical age (18) and had the opportunity to solely focus on that. I think a lot of this question depends on your age and what you want to do. Adults going back to college won't get this experience, and if you can self-study enough to prove you have what it takes, there are definitely diminishing returns in going to university.

</comment><comment><USER79> I was born in post-communist country to the familly of blue collar workers, where nobody around me didn't even finished high school (fun fact, those more distant family members who actually had university degree or even hold profesorship position spent many years mining for uranus in political prison and then decades sweeping streets).

Anyway, I already had fulltime position working as software developer since the age of 17 (it was a bit of necessity, but I also like it very much) and after finishing my highschool diploma I decided to not apply and continue working.

I went to study CS at the age of 23, while still working fulltime. Being a bit older and more experienced, but also time constrained changed my perspective a bit. I was in there just to get knowledge that I decided are relevant for me, there was close to zero time to be spent on social time or taking some filler classes that might be interesting.

I spent three years in university, taking all the classes that sound interesting to me in areas of math, compilers, machine learning and computational logic. At that point I depleted the pool for both bachelor and masters classes and for the rest of the time I would have to go through fillers and decided to quit without graduating.

I am glad about both of my choices: both having break between high school and university and quiting early. I feel like spending time in university is very valuable for both professional and personal growth and everybody should probably took it if they can afford it, but I don't think that this is your only valid choice.

It should be ok to spend few years wandering around to find what you want to do with your life instead of spending rest of your life paying for debt you acquired just because you can't see any other viable path.

</comment><comment><USER80> Unfortunately we are in the only profession where you have to see this question every other day, you'll never even think about this if you plan to become a Doctor an architect or civil engineer, but welcome to tech

</comment><comment><USER81> A huge amount of your future networking is done at uni. Also... you are more likely to marry somone you find at uni than most other institutions.

That being said, a PhD is probably only required if you wish to go into teaching.

</comment><comment><USER82> For the CV - yes. For the job - depends on the uni; many are 80% java which is pointless if you already have tech skills. Having might also save you from dwelling on "what if i had?".

</comment><comment><USER83> 30 year old here, I'm considering a new degree in computer science to add to my chem Engineering degree. I have 12 years casual programming experience.

My work experience has been design Engineering, which is a low 6 figure job. I also live in an area with an old industry that's getting Engineers outsourced.

I'm considering a comp sci degree so I can get into embedded, or electrical engineering, AI, or pretty much any 180k/yr job. I'm okay with taking a pay cut for a few years.

<comment><USER47> I don't think you need a degree for that sort of career shift. Just get a short training course and start building stuff and applying for jobs.

University degrees are, fundamentally, a mark of status and patience: "this guy had enough money and willpower to sit through years of drudgery, so it's safe to hire him to do the same for us". After a few years nobody cares what the degree was actually about, particularly in IT where everything gets redone every few years.

<comment><USER83> I have projects that people consider impressive already. Here is what I've been told from various managers-

>Only hire computer scientists

>I don't have relevant work experience (which means taking a 60k/yr web dev job to begin my career?)

>My projects are good, but I need to contribute to open source projects.

The reason for the degree is to get access to high quality programming jobs rather than 60k/yr web dev. Not to mention, I imagine I'll learn everything about security and algorithms which I'm sure are weaknesses.

<comment><USER47> You can fix two of those with some solid effort in a high-profile FOSS project for a few months.

As for the first, you don't want to be in an environment that values credentials so strictly, imho - it poisons the air. There is always a chance they would then say "we only hire CS _from Stanford /MIT_" \- sometimes stuff like this is just a polite way of saying "we don't think you can cut it".

 _> I imagine I'll learn everything about security and algorithms_

Algos yeah, plenty - and I agree it's where universities really make a difference (I'm weak there too, and part of the reason for dropping out, and more recently changing career, was that I'm not really interested in that part of the job).

Security... eh. It really depends on the program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> It depends on the country.

In France yes. We are still very much into Ivy League (Grandes Écoles) schools, they really look good on a CV in a large company.

Sure, some startup may not care but it depends where you want to work. Look at the CVs of large French companies boards and you will see a lot of the same schools.

In Germany having a higher education title is great or important. Your PhD counts.

</comment><comment><USER85> If your own answer to your own question isn't absolutely YES then take a gap year or years. Join the Navy. See the world. When you're done with that you'll be much much more ready than if you indifferently do what you suppose you're supposed to do.

But yes, you do need to go to university, a good one. And you need to graduate.

<comment><USER47> Can't upvote this enough. I wish I had taken a gap year back then, and I will insist that my kids do it. More than a decade of schooling inevitably takes a toll, and optimizing for highschool success can mislead one's choice for university.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> I had a discussion about this years ago and I remember a good question being thrown into it: 'what happens if you don't do it?',as opposed to 'what happens if you do it?'. For an average person, in a lot of countries, not having a degree equals to crappy jobs for the rest of their lives. Average person+ degree= slightly better prospects and maybe some easier office job.if a person is very intelligent, motivated,and is a bit streetwise,so to speak, they'd succeeded irrespectively. The main problem is that when you 18-20 years old, the perspective on the world is kind of limited,unless you grew up in a rich family doing all sorts of businesses ventures and they show you some aspects of it. Personally, growing up in small town,where pretty much nobody was doing some very interesting things,it was an eye opener when I moved to London and because of the work and the city itself, I did realise how much money there's in the world, that people are ready to pay stupid money for the most absurd things and so on. It opens your eyes in terms of what other people do and what's possible,gives you all sorts of ideas and etc.

</comment><comment><USER87> From reading the title, I though this had something to do with golang being used in university classes. Is there a point to the custom of capitalizing most words in headings in English? It doesn't seem to improve legibility and you can normally tell it is a heading from the size and weight of the font.

<comment><USER88> I'm guessing that Title Case in English is a logical extension of the European norm of capitalizing proper nouns; a title is the proper noun used to identify a written work.

<comment><USER89> This doesn't seem like a European norm to me, maybe it is done in German but I don't see it in English or French publications.

<comment><USER88> I was making a comparison between European proper nouns (like Jacques and Hans) and English title case. I was speculating why the English title case practice arose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> The worst part is when you hear people bring up the fact that "Gates and Jobs dropped out of college!"

<comment><USER91> One could argue that this is an argument in favor of university. You can always drop out when you find a better opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> Great article. I'm sure that there are plenty of people here who went to university and also run a successful company. If any of you see this comment:

If you could change the way the university tech you, what you would do?

<comment><USER40> I would abandon the whole "cram for N years and get a degree, then never again" scheme.

Imo education should be a lifelong thing: available at any time, part time or full time, on-demand; for example, new requirements come up at a job and you need new skills? grab a course. want to enter a new subfield? grab a few relevant courses. got interested in something new all of a sudden? grab a course and see if the interest doesn't wane. laid off? consider taking the chance to study full time for a few months and pick up some new skills or plug holes in prior knowledge.

It should be based more on voluntary interest ("I want to learn this thing!") or actual concrete need ("business is looking for someone with skill X and person Y looks like a good fit but they need to study a bit") and less on the idea that you sit through courses and exams and demos in exchange for points that eventually buy you a piece of paper..

University (or, rather, education in general) should be with us through the entire life.

There are open universities that sort of go in this direction, but the last time I looked at them, it felt like they're still rather structured around getting a degree and all the bs that goes with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> In case you are thinking twice about getting a degree due to education costs, please take note that many European public universities offer free education even for foreigners.

</comment><comment><USER94> "Educational credentials are badges that admit one to the elite class. Expect elites to struggle mightily to justify the current system." - Naval Ravikant

</comment><comment><USER95> The most interesting work being done today is occurring at the interface between the academy and the public. It is not the same as it was 50 years ago to learn within universities for they are merely corporate machines fueling capitalism. Any critique of that order is unwelcome ( I know I have a graduate degree with a thesis attacking 'western thought' and the centralizing of the human. But you don't have to listen to me. Just read/watch Achille Mbembe.

</comment><comment><USER96> University seems to just be about self-edification, but it is sometimes not about that at all, and always about a whole lot more. It is clear there are too many people going to University. It has become a status symbol, driven partly by the baby boomers who just seem to like the idea of their kids going to University, and who are wealthy enough that their kids (of which I am one) are happy to swan about getting educated for 3 - 8 years. My father's experience was very different. He was actively criticised in his family for wanting to go to University, and had to get up at 4am to haul fruit crates to pay his way. His brother who went and got a job straight out of school was considered the smart one. Nevermind that the brother later went to University and became a lecturer, which comes to my next point.

When I was in University, I didn't really appreciate that it is mainly about cachet. Yes there are great experiences, you meet great people, you can be inspired, it opens your mind, you can do great work, but the thing that gets people in the door, and the thing that Universities are primarily selling, is cachet. It's interesting seeing how Covid19 interacts with this. Lots of people must be worried that their university cachet will be tainted by pandemic restrictions if they are the in the 'class of 2020'. This could be one reason for the massive number of students deferring.

So if the cachet matters to you (and your future employers), yes you should defintiely go to University, there is no substitute. There are also some jobs you can't do, or even really comprehend, unless you go to University (medicine, dentistry, civil/mechanical/electrical/aerospace/chemical/environmental engineering). In one sense these degrees are worth paying for up to a point, because it actually takes a lot of effort, facilities and equipment to offer them.

</comment><comment><USER97> No.

</comment><comment><USER98> Yes, you do.

<comment><USER99> 1) Yes, you do. 2) No, you don't. 3) Depends.

2&3: I knew a guy, his father had sheep, plenty of them. He never bothered with Uni. He has been studying/training on seminars regarding agriculture, animal care, etc. He is set for life. He will never sit on a university theatre and keep notes. He does use technology (I remember how he was shocked when he discovered YouTube videos that exploded his mind and knowledge).

He picks up the phone and speaks to vets, he talks to agriculture specialists, he watches seminars, he gets better. He stays on top/ahead of things. He never spent 1 (pick your own currency) on University, housing, (Uni) books.

He stays in touch with his peers both in his country and abroad (he was taught English early on and how he sees the value of that investment).

I see him though being a guest lecturer in a Uni, to speak as a professional on this/his industry, speak on his part of the supply chain, what he would expect of "Education" to provide for him (his industry) in the future, what he would like to see people do for the promotion and progress of his industry. But pay for classes? Never.

So.. 2 & 3 :)

Edit: typos

<comment><USER100> Statistically, people with master earn more and it's easier to get a job (other options are: you get aquihired, have a shit of money; your parents have lot of great connections etc.)

<comment> barry-cotter This is conflating the selection and treatment effects. The difference in earnings between people who would be admitted to a Master's programme if they applied and those who actually apply and graduate is going to be far smaller than the difference between a random Bachelor's holder and a random Master's holder.

<comment><USER99> I got the "everyday millionaire" book, by Chris Hogan (part of the Dave Ramsey 'gang')(haven't started reading it yet). From comments I've read in Reddit about that book, it seems like the vast majority of millionaires mentioned are lawyers/doctors, and you can't become neither without going to Uni.

They guy I was referring to in my post above, started with a certain wealth (even if that wealth is in a form of a 200-sheep-herd), a certain skillset (assisting his father in the business while growing up, having a 'knowledge base' right there in his home, having connections, having the equipment). What has gotten him to a few thousand animals since, is hard work and "invest in knowledge as you go". He didn't start from scratch.

The benefit with his line of business, is that the wealth/skills-handover was happening since he was 10 (experience, skills, knowledge). If one is to become a doctor, the mental training may start early on, but the actual knowledge is coming much later, and at a greater cost ($)(especially in the USA).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> I know incredibly smart and wise people without a degree, and I also know incredibly dumb people with a degree. A degree is not a guarantee for intelligence and wisdom, but it is most often a guarantee for vanity covering shortcomings.

Almost all knowledge (and more) can be learned for free on the internet nowadays. I'ts only for a specific category of professions where a degree is mandatory. I never expect a great professional to have a degree, because the real defining quality cannot be learned at a university. You cannot express what you are not. You cannot become an Einstein by doing 5 years of university, but they love to make you believe that shit.

I am not against higher education at all, but the term 'degree' is pretty worthless if you want to measure mastery.

</comment><comment><USER102> If you want to be an entrepreneur no you don't if you don't want to be an entrepreneur yes you do.

Either you are an employer or an employee, make your choice.</comment>


Mononoki – A Font for Programming and Code Review - <AUTHOR> https://madmalik.github.io/mononoki/ <comment><USER2> I've added it to the programming font comparison at [http://s9w.io/font_compare/](http://s9w.io/font_compare/)

<comment><USER3> This is cool. Do you take request to add font to your site? If so, could you also add one of my favorite font Nanum Gothic to sw9w.io?([http://dev.naver.com/projects/nanumfont/download/](http://dev.naver.com/projects/nanumfont/download/)). Although it is relatively unknown, I haven't found any programming font I like except this one.

<comment><USER4> ArchLinux users kan find Nanum Gothic in AUR:

[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf- nanumgothic_coding/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf- nanumgothic_coding/)

[https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf- nanum/](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ttf-nanum/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> From someting I prepared long ago, easily confused glyphs, depending on the typeface (if you aren't sure what one of the characters is ... perhaps try a different typeface?):

         * b69B80Oo
         * 1Il|
         * ij
         * 5S
         * 9gq
         * co
         * rn m
         * cl d
         * vv w
         * .,
         * :;
         * `'
         * ''"
         * ' and (curved/smart/curly single quotes)
         * " and (curved/smart/curly double quotes)
         * ~-
         * )]}
         * u and (mu)
         * v and (nu)
         * Capital vs. lowercase letters.
            wW
            xX
            zZ
            vV
            uU
            cC
            sS

Note that many of the above are easier to distinguish because they are next to each other and you are conciously examining them. You need to read your code and know a character is a colon and not a semicolon without even thinking about it.

<comment><USER6> ha thanks :D used to decide on fonts based on 0Oo 1Il| only

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like this source code pro fork with ligatures (at times more irritating than useful, but sexy):

[https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig](https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig)

edit: switched to Fira Code Light (now that there is a light version)

[https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode](https://github.com/tonsky/FiraCode)

</comment><comment><USER8> A sample would be nice. Look at this one that another commenter here linked to: [https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig](https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig). Samples! You immediately know what it's about.

I don't think a ttf font can't compete with a handmade raster one like Terminus. Maybe on high dpi displays?

</comment><comment><USER9> _Monospace - This is an universal requirement for source code typography. It 's not just an historic artifact from the olden days of terminals, but an useful convention to allow two dimensional structuring and highlighting differences on the character level._

Well, since there are people that swear by using variable space fonts for programming, it's not necessarily a universal requirement. I agree it is a very useful convention though, and prefer monospace fonts for terminals and programming myself.

<comment><USER10> I'm waiting for the editor with a layout engine that doesn't assume monospace -- the tooling is a bigger problem than anything else for variable-width fonts.

<comment><USER9> Slightly related, I've been thinking for a while how an editor that tracked indentation and made each indentation/scope a different background shade and/or slightly smaller font might be interesting to play with. Does anyone know of a system that uses this?

<comment><USER11> There's a package for emacs to do that: [http://www.foldr.org/~michaelw/emacs/color- box.png](http://www.foldr.org/~michaelw/emacs/color-box.png)

[http://foldr.org/~michaelw/emacs/](http://foldr.org/~michaelw/emacs/)

<comment><USER9> Thanks! Now I wonder what it looks like if you keep dropping the font a point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel like this is a bit heretical, but I feel like fonts in practice are something that you just kinda get used to after a day of use.

The only time you're really aware of them is when you look at two fonts side by side. So the trick for me has been to use the same font everywhere in my system. For me that's been Noto/Noto-Mono. They're trying to eventually cover all of Unicode and I personally (after a bit of adjustment) really like the long and skinny. It also has really nice Asian characters natively so it doesn't ever look goofy

</comment><comment><USER13> Does anyone else find most programming fonts to be overly heavyweight? I end up sticking with Courier New because of its light, thin lines, even though it's not a perfect font.

Are there any other monospace fonts with light weights?

<comment><USER14> (going offtopic) Seems everyone has a different taste. I prefer medium-weight fonts, Courier is way too light for me. Do you work on a Mac BTW? I think there might be some massive rendering difference between Macs and other OSes. You can tell by reading people's blogs. Some authors use super narrow, gray- on-white font, which is generally unreadable on Windows, but I think it may look just fine on macbooks.

Personally, depending on editor (each editor has slightly different rendering, spacing, interline etc.), I'm using DejaVu Sans Mono or Lucida Console.

I dislike Consolas, because it's too blurry for me; so much that I generally immediately delete it from my OS installation, in order for it to not show up when I'm reading coding blogs.

<comment><USER15> Indeed, rendering makes a huge difference between OS'es. Personally, I find the Mac (and iOS, those are equal I think) rendering quite nice, the Windows rendering reasonable, and the Linux rendering (at least in gnome, don't know about other wm's?) just ugly, but that's just my opinion. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice looking font with flare to it :) Maybe I've been using Source Code Pro and Consolas for too long.

A few things caught my eye:

\- '(' and ')' do not align vertically

\- '(' looks odd next to '0'

\- 'e' and 'c' look too similar at smaller pt

</comment><comment><USER17> One day I'll come across a monospace font that will look & feel as good as the Bloomberg Terminal font.

<comment><USER18> Interesting - had to look that up.

Here's a Quora post about it: [https://www.quora.com/What-font-is-used-in- Bloomberg-Termina...](https://www.quora.com/What-font-is-used-in-Bloomberg- Terminal) . It's designed by Matthew Carter, the designer of Georgia and Verdana, he's an expert on screen-readable fonts.

The interesting thing is that one part of the optimization for finance was all those special fraction glyphs. I have never seen such weird fractions in actual use, I would have thought people use normal decimal numbers everywhere.

<comment><USER17> When I worked at Bloomberg, the origins of that font weren't a mystery. I used it on my company-issued Mac and loved it. Whatever they paid for it, the price was definitely worth it.

I don't suppose I'll ever find a suitable replacement, which also means that I jump at every opportunity to try out a new monospace font. I currently have 7 in my .Xdefaults, and these are just the ones I kinda-sorta liked and hadn't deleted.

<comment><USER18> Which is kind of the opposite experience many people have who work at a company that has its 'company font' which they are supposed to use, but nobody likes to, because it's just print-optimized for design etc, but not screen- optimized for normal work use, and thus makes it a pain to edit documents.

<comment><USER17> It's one of those rare situations when programmers can benefit from the development of a product meant to please an entirely orthogonal audience: uber-picky finance professionals who stare at screens all day. Life is fascinating, isn't it?

<comment><USER18> Absolutely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is quite nice, and I really appreciate the proper differentiation of similar characters. It still gets a bit blurry at low point sizes, though. If you're after a font that is pixel-crisp at small sizes (and don't mind if it doesn't size up all that well), check out Proggy bitmap fonts: [http://upperbounds.net/](http://upperbounds.net/)

</comment><comment><USER20> My favorite font for Sublime.

<comment><USER21> You are referring to the color scheme, not the font. The default font for your Sublime Text is probably either Monospace, Consolas, or Menlo Regular.

Yes, this will confuse a lot of people who enjoy the default color scheme of Sublime. This is something completely different.

<comment><USER20> I use the Dawn x Github color scheme[0] and the Mononoki font.

[0] [https://github.com/AlexanderEkdahl/github-sublime- theme](https://github.com/AlexanderEkdahl/github-sublime-theme)

<comment><USER21> I apologize - I did not notice the slight variance in spelling and made a hasty assumption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm not a fan of 0 (zero) having rounded sides and O having straight sides, I think it should be the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER23> The @ character in this font looks odd; the center loop is filled in, so it looks like something from Thai script. But no other glyph (in the ASCII range of the font) has this feature, so it is glaringly inconsistent.

I used this for a day, then ditched it. Back to a Courier derivative for me. There is a reason we have fonts with serifs: they provide visual clues to the eyes. Sans-serif is slick, but less readable. We might compare this to taking the high frequencies out of audio. The sound is "smooth", but lacks clarity.

Mononoki _looks_ great in screen-shots; I might consider it again when I'm having some golden piece of source code printed 40 inches wide and framed for hanging on a wall. So long as that code doesn't contain @ symbols.

<comment><USER23> I spent a bunch of time searching for good monospaced fonts as a result of this submission.

Luxi Mono stood out as very decent.

I settled on a font called Consolas.

I use it not only in Vim, PuTTY and Cygwin console windows on Windows, but ... in Gnome Terminal on Ubuntu.

Thank you, Microsoft!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Pretty nice. Since the line in the 0 is so shallow, it looks a lot like the θ. I prefer dotted 0 because it's a character that frequently repeated as in "100000" and the slants all together there makes it feel skewed and uncomfortable.

</comment><comment><USER25> This looks awful on a Mac at size <= 12, super fuzzy compared to Menlo

</comment><comment><USER26> This typeface is excellent, and it might replace Envy Code R for me. I've liked working with Envy, but it is nonfree and I don't have permission to distribute it with new glyphs. This is a bummer since I wanted more complete Hellenic and a full set of Cyrillic characters including Ukrainian extras, and was willing to draw the glyphs. This complete turnoff may be one of the main reasons I switch to Mononoki. Mononoki also looks far better on higher resolution displays, something I'm investing in right now.

</comment><comment><USER27> My eyes are burning. Gimmie the old 3270 terminal typeface anyday!

<comment><USER28> [https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font](https://github.com/rbanffy/3270font)

In case you didn't already know that this exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Cool, but what I really need to know is if two characters next to each other make a square, such that I can have CJK characters in the same line and not muck up the formatting.

<comment><USER23> I just got this to work in Windows with gvim. While the mononoki font doesn't have any Kanji in it, in Vim you can separately configure a font for the "wide" characters. I have:

      :set guifont=mononoki:h11:cANSI
      :set guifontwide=MS_Mincho:h11:cANSI

With this, East Asian characters show up fine. They don't look good next to the mononoki but the spacing is good. MS_Gothic looks a bit better, since it has the simplified, blocky kanji strokes.

Basically this mixture of two fonts, one for one-space-characters and another for the Unicode two-spacers, is up to your editor to get right.

I tried increasing the size of the guifontwide. No matter what size I pick, the alignment is correct; for excessively large sizes of the wide font relative to the regular one, the kanji just start to get jammed together. Basically you have to increase their sizes together to avoid the cramping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> You'll have to pry Terminus out of my cold dead hands!

Seriously though, I appreciate people making fonts! Variety is great and sometimes just changing fonts for a while is refreshing.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not that it matters, but I wonder where the name came from. It sounds Japanese (although the first part is obviously inspired by 'monospace'), but 'mononoki' isn't a Japanese word. There are many ways it could be interpreted as a combination of two words, though, or it could be a corruption of 'mononoke' (a spirit).

<comment><USER32> It could be three words: mono no ki. Mono (as 物) is generally "thing," which doesn't really work, but we can assume it's being used as simply mono (in loan form, モノ), short for "monospace," here. No (の) is a particle indicating possession, and "ki" (as 気) is "spirit" or "essence" (with different kanji it could be quite a few other things; Japanese has a lot of homophones).

So I suppose we could translate the name to "the essence of monospace," if we were so inclined, and transliterate it back to Japanese as モノの気.

<comment><USER33> Creator here. It just sounded nice and there is no deeper meaning. But your interpretation is great and might as well adopt it :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Congrats to the creator, at a glance this looks nice and readable. If I ever tire of Iosevka I'll give it a try (that's a big if though; Iosevka has the advantage of being both beautiful and narrow, so I can keep multiple panes open comfortably).

</comment><comment><USER35> It looks so similar to Monaco [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco_(typeface)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco_\(typeface\))]

</comment><comment><USER36> It's pretty nice but almost looks stringy to me.

I'm extremely used to Dejavu Sans Mono for both terminal and code usage. Every time I try to switch to something else I wind up going back.

</comment><comment><USER37> Powerline support? Kind of a dealbreaker.

<comment><USER38> I agree, but you can patch the font yourself

[https://github.com/powerline/fontpatcher](https://github.com/powerline/fontpatcher)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It looks like Ubuntu Mono with some tweaks. Is there an easy way to compare font X vs font Y?

</comment><comment><USER40> Bonus points for the fizzbuzz reference on the homepage. You now have my attention.

</comment><comment><USER41> This looks cool. But how does it help with formatting and code review?

</comment><comment><USER42> on mac non-antialised version looks to be the case with mild jaggies. not that pleasant. if there is a solution i'd like to hear it, font otherwise looks good.

</comment><comment><USER43> Pretty font but looks like shit in Visual Studio 2015. I blame VS though as it only seems to render Consolas well which has pissed me off a lot since the switch to their WPF-based editor in VS2010. Sigh.

</comment><comment><USER44> Cool, I like it! Thanks, Matthew!

</comment><comment><USER45> [http://www.fontspace.com/philing/braille- normal](http://www.fontspace.com/philing/braille-normal)</comment>