CS Degree Won’t Make You a Developer

I read this quote a while ago and it hasn't left my brain since:

“Computer science education cannot make anybody an expert programmer any more than studying brushes and pigment can make somebody an expert painter.”

Read it again. Slowly.

It’s the kind of quote you scroll past until one day it slaps you in the face because it’s talking about you. And in my case? It hit like a truck.

Because that’s exactly what happened.

When I stepped into this field, I genuinely believed the key to becoming a good developer was sitting in my syllabus. That if I paid attention in class, revised DBMS notes, understood the difference between primary and foreign keys, and could draw all the layers of the OSI model from memory… I’d be ready.

Ready for what?
No clue.

I just thought, “This is what toppers do. This is what they expect from me. This must be the right path.”

And then... reality kicked in.

The Plot Twist: My First Wake-Up Call

Six months in, I started seeing patterns. Not in code — in people.

The students who did nothing beyond class were often the ones struggling the most when actual tasks showed up — like building a form, fetching data, or deploying a simple website.

On the flip side, there were these random guys who barely attended lectures but could spin up a full-stack app in a weekend. They weren’t memorizing definitions. They were doing things.

Meanwhile, I was still stuck solving “reverse a linked list” on paper and wondering if this was really helping me get anywhere.

That’s when it clicked:
Knowing the definition of a tool is useless if you never actually use the damn thing.

You can explain how recursion works in theory — but can you use it to solve a real problem? That’s where most students get stuck. And I was no exception.

The College Illusion

There’s this illusion every student is fed (especially in Indian colleges):
Just get your degree, and companies will line up to hire you.

Let me tell you what I’ve actually seen.

Hundreds of students graduating.
Decent marks. Some with CGPAs they were proud of.
And yet… they either:

• end up with ₹10–12k/month contract jobs that last 6–12 months, or

• stay jobless for months, applying everywhere and getting ghosted.

I’m not saying this to scare you. I’m saying this because I’ve watched it happen, in front of my eyes, to people I knew personally.

And it made me realize something very important:
Degrees don’t make developers. Work does.

How I Actually Started Learning (Not in a Classroom)

The switch happened the moment I started building my own projects. Nothing fancy. Just random ideas. Sometimes they worked, sometimes they flopped. But I kept building.

• I joined open-source projects.

• I worked in teams — sometimes I was the lead, sometimes just a contributor.

• I spent hours debugging silly issues, reading docs, and staring at the terminal like it owed me money.

• I broke stuff and fixed it.

That’s where real learning happened.

Not in unit tests.
Not in viva questions.
Not in “write the advantages of arrays vs. linked lists.”

But in building stuff. Shipping it. Watching it break. And fixing it again — slightly better this time.

What College Actually Is (At Least For Me)

College is like an old software update. It fixes some bugs, adds a few features, but it's still not ready for production.

And honestly? That’s okay. It’s not supposed to be everything.

Here’s how I see it now:
College is your break from real learning.
Use it to explore, not to depend.

Go to class. Take your notes. Do your minimum. But after that, log in to GitHub, spin up your IDE, and start getting your hands dirty.

Because no one’s hiring you to write notes. They’re hiring you to solve problems. To build real things. To take vague product ideas and turn them into something that actually works.

And that version of you?
That version doesn’t come out of a syllabus.
That version is forged in real-world experience, bad commits, and failed deployments.

Final Thoughts (This Part’s For You)

If you’re someone sitting in your second or third year of CS thinking:

“Once I finish my degree, I’ll figure everything out.”

You won’t.
Unless you start now.

Don’t wait till you graduate to build. Don’t wait for a college project to be your first actual project. Don’t wait for permission. Just start.

And stop treating college as your entire education. It’s not. It’s just one chapter. The real stuff — the good stuff — happens outside the classroom.

So yeah. Study pigments if you want.
But if you really want to paint?

Pick up the damn brush.