
Show HN: I interviewed the maker of the privacy-first Google Analytics rival - Pete-Codes
https://www.nocsdegree.com/how-this-developer-is-competing-with-google-without-a-cs-degree/
======
bykhun
When I saw a title, I thought that was a story of a learn-js-in-10-minutes,
haha.

I have a degree in CS, but the more I read, the more I could relate. I believe
the good formal education is very valuable for a software developer, but it's
true that most things I learned were from internet and self-education on
examples.

The degree is a great thing to have, but when you're native speaker in
Javascript, it's even better.

Still, these things are not replaceable: I believe both are important.

Now, I'd like to be a party-breaker for a minute and counter-argument the idea
that the degree is redundant in place of a developer experience: it gives you
structure and a framework for a problem-solving. I am able to mock-up and
prototype quickly, and to build systems because I have received formal 6-year
education in maths, physics and CS. I haven't had a Javascript classes. I
learned it on examples, starting from HTML forms in 2007. But the things I'm
able to do now in React would be impossible without the background in GTR,
quantum physics and calculus.

Yes, you would be a great developer without a degree. But you would be even
greater one with it.

------
Pete-Codes
Always been interested in the technical background of developers who make
things I use, like Simple Analytics in this case. So it was fun to talk to
Adriaan about how he learned to code without a degree.

