Master's in CS
There's a lot of opinions on whether to get a Master's in CS. Such as Oz's, author of the [[Teach Yourself CS]] curriculum. His article, The case against CS master's, says that it's not worth doing a Master's program especially for self-learners in. He then goes on to promote his "Computer Science Intensive" program as an alternative.
Despite the slight bias, Oz strikes a couple points which revolve around the "cash cow" that is academia. Computer Science is a very "in" degree to have and it makes sense for institutions to have CS programs, no matter the quality. These programs, especially online ones, seem to be an afterthought. You have professors/institutions:
- more focused on research
- giving little feedback
- providing recordings of lectures
- relying on third-party tools to proctor, invoke discussions, etc.
This might be very soul sucking if you're used to a more hands-on environment such as myself who went to a Undergrad-only Small Liberal Arts University with an average class size of 20. My program at said University was more generalized than I would've liked but I learned how to learn CS concepts which is a great skill to have. I believe there was a "Quality vs. Quantity" aspect when it came to the courses in my program.
A common thing I see is that credentials don't really matter once you gain industry experience, and become less of a deciding factor when working in the industry. However, I occasionally see job applications requiring a graduate degree (Master's or PhD) in fields that seem neat to work in such as [[Intro to Compilers]].
Now that I want to get into systems programming, I need to dedicate more time to learning more low-level topics such as [[Intro to Operating Systems]] which was covered at a surface-level in the "Computer Systems" course at my university.
I'm somewhat confident that I can learn these low-level topics on my own, and going the self-taught approach is more adaptable to the ups-and-downs of life.