No, they don't breed the capacity for abstract thought in college. But they do teach it. That the typical student could learn as much in a short bootcamp as someone learns in a CS program over four years is wishful thinking.
Of course, it may well be that much of what you learn in all that extra time in a CS department is not that important to the typical working programmer. And many people pick up a knack for abstract thought somewhere other than a CS program.
I'm sure it's also true that a CS education often fails in instilling the deep knowledge of the topic that it is designed to. Lots of students are just not that bright, or don't do the work. And sure, selection bias surely has some effect. But it doesn't change the basic fact that you can learn more stuff in four years than you can in three months.
The fact that you consider yourself to be superior to most of the CS grads you've met is just the worst kind of anecdotal evidence. (Did you also do a lot better than the bootcamp grads you worked alongside? How do you know you aren't just more competent than the average student in either program? How do you know that the CS grads you've worked with are representative.) Meanwhile, the very post you're commenting on presents real data to suggest that, whole bootcamp students are just as good as CS students for most practical purposes, they typically lag far behind on knowledge/understanding of algorithms and data structures.
I really don't mean any of this as an insult. I have no doubt that you really are more talented than most CS grads. And in your case (and perhaps in many other cases!) perhaps it really was a smart move to save your money and skip college. But you've given the rest of us very little reason to think that your experience generalizes.
And by the way...
> Four years of school + the associated debt creates a big incentive to believe that you got a square deal out of college.
You could say the same thing about not going to college.
Of course, it may well be that much of what you learn in all that extra time in a CS department is not that important to the typical working programmer. And many people pick up a knack for abstract thought somewhere other than a CS program.
I'm sure it's also true that a CS education often fails in instilling the deep knowledge of the topic that it is designed to. Lots of students are just not that bright, or don't do the work. And sure, selection bias surely has some effect. But it doesn't change the basic fact that you can learn more stuff in four years than you can in three months.
The fact that you consider yourself to be superior to most of the CS grads you've met is just the worst kind of anecdotal evidence. (Did you also do a lot better than the bootcamp grads you worked alongside? How do you know you aren't just more competent than the average student in either program? How do you know that the CS grads you've worked with are representative.) Meanwhile, the very post you're commenting on presents real data to suggest that, whole bootcamp students are just as good as CS students for most practical purposes, they typically lag far behind on knowledge/understanding of algorithms and data structures.
I really don't mean any of this as an insult. I have no doubt that you really are more talented than most CS grads. And in your case (and perhaps in many other cases!) perhaps it really was a smart move to save your money and skip college. But you've given the rest of us very little reason to think that your experience generalizes.
And by the way...
> Four years of school + the associated debt creates a big incentive to believe that you got a square deal out of college.
You could say the same thing about not going to college.
(I myself do not have a CS degree.)