A part of me feels like I should have written Hackers and Fighters:
This essay was prompted by a post oncomp.lang.lispby Joe Marshall.
Some of the people in this group have, or are pursuing, advanced degrees in computer science. Some have bachelor’s degrees. Some have degrees in related fields. Some have degrees in completely unrelated fields. Some have dropped out before getting a degree. Some are autodidacts.Is there a correlation between studying computer science and knowing about computers? Do people gain anything by pursuing an advanced degree in computer science, or would they be as well served by saving the money, buying a PC, and teaching themselves? There is a romantic ideal of the untutored hacker that program circles around MIT grad students. Is that absurd or commonplace?
This reminds me of another debate which takes place in martial arts — about martial arts students and street fighters. Geoff Thompson touched on this in his excellent and extremely funny book Watch My Back. Geoff is a trained martial artist, a karateka, a grappler and the victor in over 200 street fights as a bouncer. In his book he compares two styles of fighter — the school-trained martial artist and the untutored but hardened street fighter.
The street fighter fights in a ring with no rules and no boundaries. The school-trained martial artist trains for a circumscribed contest with known parameters. What Geoff says is roughly this: the street fighter, if transplanted to the tournament ring, will often fare poorly. Contrariwise the trained martial artist in no-holds fighting will generally be taken out by a good street fighter unless his level of skill is very high and he has trained for combat situations. However, the combination of the two, the street fighter who has also formally trained in the dojo, will surpass either.
This is also true for programmers.