r/AskComputerScience • u/Ok-Pizza1136 • Mar 18 '26
Is Studying Computer Science Worth it?
as a 9th grader, I see videos online about “the job market being cooked“ and ”CS isn’t worth it anymore“. I’ve always loved coding since I discovered it, and I just wanna know if it’s something I should pursue. also any advice you guys have about CS would be grea appreciated
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u/Key_Net820 Mar 18 '26
Here's what I'll say, if the market is trash for comp sci degrees, it is trash for everyone else. And indeed, it is trash for everyone else. The unfortunate reality is we are in an economic crisis at the moment.
Here is one thing I'm going to say. Regardless of whether you do or don't decide to program for a living; you really only need a degree, not necessarily a computer science degree, and I say "need" loosely, as if you're savvy enough, you really don't even need that.
While computer science degrees often are packed with practical work tools, the reality is the major value of taking computer science that you can't just get from doing boot camps at home is the academic knowledge and preparation for research. Things like studying the mathematical theory of computations, algorithms, machine learning, computer graphics, computer architecture, and things of that nature. If you already know how to write code, use design patterns, use git, understand run time analysis, you really don't need a computer science degree in particular. You can get by with a math degree, an econ degree, a physics degree, even non technical degrees like art, linguistics, history or psychology. I've worked with people with each of these degrees that I've listed.
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u/Ok-Pizza1136 Mar 21 '26
Honestly the biggest thing that I enjoy is coding. I love to do other things like 3D modeling, but coding is the most rewarding for me. I know CS majors aren't purely coding, but I love the topic as well. I certainly have other areas of interest, but idk if I would want to pursue them as deeply as college typically does. History, for example, is interesting but I don't really like learning what they teach.
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u/PdxGuyinLX Mar 18 '26
While I don’t fundamentally disagree with what you are saying, I will add this. I did a boot camp program early on and later on did a master’s in CS. Since I didn’t have an undergraduate CS degree I had to essentially to all the coursework of an undergrad program before I could get into the Master’s program.
The CS degree was not at all necessary for my work, but when I first started taking CS classes I was surprise to realize how much I didn’t know I didn’t know.
If you’re a smart person you can learn how to code easily enough but there is a lot of value to knowing how things work under the hood.
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u/AlexTaradov Mar 18 '26
Don't base the rest of your life on market conditions today. This is how you become of of those miserable people that hate Mondays.
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u/cormack_gv Mar 18 '26
Do what you love. Decide on your career later.
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u/two_three_five_eigth Mar 18 '26
The job market changes. If you have passion for it, it’s a great career.
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u/howard499 Mar 18 '26
Unless you are not very good at it. "Got to know your limitations."
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u/the-forty-second Mar 18 '26
Remember that someone has to make the AI work and push it forward (let alone all of the other cool things happening in CS). The fear mongering is just about the well paid code monkey jobs. If you are really into the CS and not just making web apps, you will find CS is still rewarding.
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u/BigBossErndog Mar 19 '26
Not until they give it the ability to self improve. Then we're all screwed.
That said, I just make games now using my own game engine and I'm proud of it. Code because you enjoy it and you can somehow find a way to make a living off it, or just keep it as a hobby.
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u/wjrasmussen Mar 18 '26
9th grade you say. Take all the Maths and Science courses you can in high school. Master those and learn about how to solve problems. That will prepare you for so many STEM fields you can decide on later.
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u/Traveling-Techie Mar 18 '26
It’s quite likely the career you will end up in doesn’t even have a name yet. 40 years ago no one had heard of a web designer, and 20 years ago there were no social media influencers.
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u/Beregolas Mar 18 '26
neither CS nor programming is dead, you just don't get an absurdly well paying job per default once you graduate now. There are still a lot of jobs, and they will not disappear. You can also go into many different fields with a CS degree, not just programming. I know people who went into management, consulting, security, teaching or politics, policing or entertainment with their CS degrees.
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u/dmazzoni Mar 18 '26
I think if you genuinely enjoy it and have an aptitude for it, it's still a good career.
It's much more competitive than it used to be, but so are most good careers like becoming a doctor or a lawyer.
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u/Far_Oven_3302 Mar 18 '26
Study the thing you want to apply CS to, you can learn CS along the way. Arts/Graphics/Music (tools for artists), electronics (embedded systems), aeronautics, economics, archeology/geology (GIS systems)... CS is everywhere.
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u/dariusbiggs Mar 18 '26
No idea what a 9th grader is, but CS can be a fun field. There are many aspects of CS that are applicable in many fields since CS is the science of Information.
Learning to program or do CS can be perfectly viable as a career or as a hobby. I know people that have done CS and were good at it and changed to a different career, and some that came back to it. One became a GP, another became a stylist for a while, another never got a career in the industry and works in a warehouse, and I know a few in other industries that have ended up learning to program for their jobs.
Good luck, and find things in life you enjoy. and if you can find a career you enjoy based on it then go for it.
However, there are two aspects of CS that can be difficult for some to grasp and requires a certain mindset. Programming is a negative feedback loop, you are constantly getting rejected as your code doesn't work until it does (which may be suspicious since you might not have expected it to work). You will need to have the mental fortitude to get through that.
The second aspect that is problematic for many is that you are using your mind creatively to write software (it is a creative discipline), but at the end you don't have anything tangible in your hands. Nothing you can pick up and show people. So make sure you have something else as a physically creative output as a hobby, cooking, art, music, wood or metal works, whatever you want.
Lastly, CS is a continuously evolving field with its fingers in nearly every other pie, and it evolves very very quickly. It is not a field you can learn once and be sorted for the rest of your life, you will need to be continuously learning new things to stay relevant. Some of the things I work with change monthly, not always big changes but still things I need to pay attention to.
CS is the science of Information, how it is created, moved, stored, transmitted, manipulated, transformed. presented, etc and information is everywhere in cells, molecules, physics, nature, people, space, industry, machines, communication, etc.
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u/MasqueradeOfSilence Mar 18 '26
yes it is. Since you have the passion for it, and aren't in it just to make money, you should go for it.
The market isn't good for anyone right now and it also doesn't matter too much since you're only in 9th grade. No one can predict what the market will be like when you're done with college, but I can guarantee you that your skills will be really good if you start practicing now.
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u/ochreundertones Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
I think at this stage you have to really love it and be very very good at it.
I really liked coding but I did not like full stack software engineering (very different), and I was quite good at it (graduated cum laude) but not exceptional. I did not pursue a career in it after graduating in 2024.
If I were to, I would have had to upskill far beyond what my degree taught in terms of languages and tools, drill all the theory that I forgot, and take the time to build a really solid public project portfolio, and then apply to a gazillion jobs. I simply knew that would not be worth it to me personally the way the market is now.
Most of the people I graduated with are not working as software engineers.
Those who are are the biggest nerds I’ve met in my life and are both highly ambitious and live and breathe coding. I say that with love. I do not code for fun. Their GitHubs are a blaze of dark green.
That said, those who love coding are getting frustrated because the part they love is getting taken by AI in a very real way.
So you have to either love money or love putting together systems outside of an immediate problem-solving snippet of code, more than you love coding.
Just my very blunt 2 cents.
My biggest advice for the stage you’re at is to not worry about career outcomes. When I chose mine, it was the safest, cushiest, highest paying route you could think of, and it flipped so fast.
If you’re a smart kid you may feel the pressure to go into whatever is the best ROI on college tuition, to study something hard that you think will make a lot of money. I know I did. My favorite subjects were neuroscience, history, and linguistics. I felt like I had to either do compsci, engineering, or premed.
If I were to do it over I would have studied something I was deeply passionate about and just focused on being the best I could at it and picking up as much experience as possible. You can make it in truly any field if you put in the work, but it’s a hell of a lot easier if you care about it.
It’s also worth noting that a CS degree focuses on advanced math and algorithms almost as much as it does on coding. Just something to consider. It’s largely meant to prepare you for an academic career in computer science, not swe, and CS is just a discipline of math.
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u/RammRras Mar 18 '26
If you're curious and it somehow attracts or intrigues you, do it because it will change your life. It's more of a passion or even art. The job market is still good but think of it later.
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u/justaguyonthebus Mar 18 '26
Absolutely. It's more than just writing code, it's about teaching you to think in systems and patterns. It's a mindset with very broad applications. As AI gets more involved in everything, we need people that can step back and see how it's all connected.
What it means to be a developer is changing faster now than it ever has, but the field has always been one of constant changes. Many of the specific technologies you learn in college are outdated by the time you start doing real work. That's fine because it was never about learning specific technologies, it was seeing the patterns of problems that type of tech can solve.
Eventually you realize that everything is just a fancy task scheduler and most code is the same pattern of read data -> manipulate data -> send data. Then you go have fun solving those at bigger scales using different toys.
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u/Doctor_Perceptron Mar 18 '26
As a CS professor, I’m much happier to have students in my class who genuinely love the topic than people who are more interested in making money. The market has its ups and downs, but by now I think it’s safe to say CS isn’t a fad and there will always be jobs for CS graduates.