Twenty years ago this month I started my CS degree. Most of what I learned there has expired. What hasn't is more interesting, and it's mostly not what the syllabus was about. Here are five thoughts.
1. Most of the content expired
In my database course, we spent two thirds of the semester optimizing schemas, because storage was expensive. Storage got cheap. Now boilerplate, syntax, and even a first pass at a schema, work that used to take hours, can be produced by a model in seconds. Most of the specific tools I learned are gone or changed beyond recognition, and twenty years ago I couldn't have described the job I have today. I doubt someone starting a CS degree now can describe the job they'll have in twenty years either.
That doesn't make the work trivial. It changes where the hard part is.
2. Reading and writing lasted, and matter more now
I studied CS alongside Amirim, the humanities excellence program at HUJI. The humanities side taught me to read closely, write clearly, and question a text rather than just absorb it. At least in my time, the CS side largely ignored those skills. Nobody taught us to read code or documentation critically, or to write a clear explanation of what we built and why.
Today they are the job. Writing a prompt that conveys what you actually want, or reading an agent's output closely enough to accept or reject it, draws on the same muscles. When the mechanics get easy, what remains is judgment, taste, and knowing which question to ask.
3. Give decisions time to cool down
In the second semester of my first year, I wanted out. The degree was too hands-on for me and I wanted more theory. I was ready to switch to economics and sociology. Prof. Dorit Aharonov gave me advice I've kept: I was already in the middle of the semester, so I should write down my decision, finish the semester, and come back to it.
I only did the writing-down part metaphorically, but I still try to follow the principle. Some decisions can't wait, but many can, and a decision made in the heat of the moment is often the mood talking. If I don't have to decide right now, I give myself time to cool off and see the question from a wider angle. By the end of that semester, the urge to leave had passed.
4. The people matter more than the material
Some of the friends I made in that program are still the people whose judgment I trust most, whether I'm weighing a career decision or parenting advice. A degree puts you in a room with people who can shape how you think for decades. That rarely appears on the syllabus.
5. A degree is worth defending, and updating
Would I study it again? Probably. I can't picture myself doing anything else, and it led me to work I love. Can someone get where they're going without a degree? Of course. A degree is a signal, and it has a cost. Whether you can do without it depends on other opportunities too - in Israel, for example, service in an elite tech unit can open doors.
But if a degree is worth it, it is for the things above: how to read, write and judge, and who you learn it alongside. I'd spend less time teaching mechanics in isolation and more time on those. The humanities side of my degree gave me a head start on them, almost by accident.
I've always loved that this profession never sits still. The last four years, and especially the last two, have forced me to rethink what is expensive, what is automatic, and what a junior engineer's day even looks like. That can be exhausting. It's also why I still want to do this work.