My name is Richie, a computer science student at Oregon State University and a soon-to-be graduate student. Each week I will share my thoughts on computer science, technology, and society in this space. Let me tell you a bit about how I got here.

Despite what one may think, not everyone who works in tech is a “coder”, let alone has a computer science degree. More and more, even the coders themselves are foregoing the traditional academic route, entering the industry after stints in coding boot camps or purely as self-taught programmers. Whatever the case, and whatever the role one finds themself in, there’s a whole lot of luck, determination, and raw grit involved. Jobs abound for all kinds of folks to jump in headlong and fill Silicon Valley’s seemingly insatiable demand for developers. So why did I run headlong toward the academic computer science path?

Technology is an enduring presence in my own life, and an endless source of fascination. Yet, I could never shake the uneasy feeling that stemmed from not quite ever having a grasp of how it all worked. Tech journalists and bloggers often paraphrase Arthur C. Clark’s remark about any sufficiently advanced technology being indistinguishable from magic. I guess it never sat right with me that I found myself immersed in a world totally inundated with magic.

For most of my upbringing, my horizons weren’t wide enough to understand that there was something I could do about it, that the inner workings of all the tech around me were not inscrutable mysteries of the universe but conceived of and built by people no different from myself. Despite heading off to undergrad (the first time around) at a school renowned for research in the computer sciences, it didn’t even occur to me that “computer scientist” was something that someone could be (and computer science a thing that I could study) until well after I had gotten there. I had (and still have) many interests, and perhaps the pulling existential dread of being a passive agent in the story of technological advancement was not yet heavy in mind. So, I contented myself in the humanities and social sciences all the while continuing to engage with and consume technology as I’d always done.

I have worked in tech for over six years, but as you can see now, not as one of those vaunted “technical team members”, self-taught or otherwise. My career started in “technology consulting” and later, “technical project management”, after realizing that companies offering stable incomes (of the sort one could use to pay off student loans) had little appetite or enthusiasm for the kinds of rigorous academic treatises on globalization or empirical research methods I had cultivated in my ivory tower. I knew that I had the kind of critical thinking and ability to motivate others that would make for strong leadership in a high performing team, but as a young, non-technical person amongst experienced, technical people working on software I found myself constantly having to convince and prove my value to others all the while catching-up in the knowledge game.

So, when the pandemic hit in March 2020 and the world felt so… disrupted – to borrow a favorite phrase of the Silicon Valley tech elite – I decided I’d had enough and started my formal academic computer science journey through Oregon State’s post-baccalaureate program. I knew after the first term it was exactly what I needed to do, and honestly should have done several years sooner. By 2021 I would quit my job entirely and set my sights on grad school.

So why do all this when everyone is getting a web developer job with no formal education at all?

Funnily enough, a computer science degree is neither necessary nor sufficient for most software engineering roles out there. The same can be said of most coding boot camps. The reason is that, while the academic computer science education trains one to think like a computer scientist, the tactical knowledge of whatever in-vogue framework companies are hiring for in a given year shift and evolve too quickly to be of any utility to a degree program. Likewise, a 3-month coding boot camp will be able to churn out a battle-ready React warrior quickly, but even this person will soon find themselves hitting a wall should they aspire beyond the expectations of a Front-End Web Developer.

I believe society at-large needs to embrace computer science as a fundamental, integrated component of education at all levels, starting in elementary school. We live in a society utterly dependent on computational technologies and with very little emphasis on computational thinking among its members. This isn’t in opposition to a liberal arts education but in complement to it. Just imagine what creative projects a high school course that taught history and culture through Shakespeare’s Hamlet alongside Natural Language Processing in Python could get up to.

I’m heading to graduate school for my Master in Computer Science this fall. I believe that equipped with a deep expertise in the field I can help bridge the gap in understanding for others that I felt myself all these years. Stay tuned here if you want to come along for the ride.