People just knock on my desk when they need to talk to me at my cubicle and I immediately pull off my headphones and give them my full attention. Pretty good system that works and everybody around here understands.

Have you ever tried? It may seem overwhelming, but there are 5 things that will be the same no matter what parts you use: Motherboard, CPU, RAM, Power Supply, Hard Drive (+ graphics card if you're building for gaming).

Make an app for a mobile device that serves as a dash cam. If there's a sudden brake (accelerometer reading), it saves the last 10 seconds to the memory card.

What kind of program do you want to make? Even if somebody already has a similar one, you can learn a lot when pursuing your own projects just to prove it to yourself.

No need, just don't make it so easy to do the wrong thing. With food stealing roomates, I learned how to cook. Frozen pizzas or anything you can toss in the microwave you can say goodbye to. Anything that required preparation and cooking, they didn't touch. The plan worked, no need for passive aggressive notes. …

With roomates, I had to resort to learning how to cook. Anything that required preparation, they didn't eat. I had a huge freezer packed to the gills (no frozen pizzas though, that's too easy). The other stuff like milk and eggs I put in a small fridge under my desk in my room. The worst culprit was muslim, so I…

Too bad he didn't hack the theif's bank on his phone through the web cam.

So because somebody's better at you than something, it discourages you? You never had a chance in the first place if that's how you approach the problem. How many other facets in life do you take this brutal approach to? Push yourself and go, of all the years I've been going (I hate going but love the results) I've…

I would be more worried about my LCD screens getting damaged than the pc. Those are far more fragile than the steel cage for a case.

I find alcohol usually helps. Dose yourself accordingly without getting sloppy. Once your frontal lobe is turned off, introversion gets disabled too.

A thousand monkeys on laptops will make Google? :P

If they can collect money from it, then why not. Less resources they have to spend to teach you while they take your money.

Yeah, those Analysis of Algorithms and Complexity courses were my biggest pain in the 4ss that came after the 2 years. They teach you to write efficient code though - useful for making games, and financial trading algorithms.

My employer didn't ask to see my degree - they'll figure it out if I never delivered what I am trained to do.

I didn't take Computer Science to hang around virgin males all day (there were very few girls) because I hate money.

I agree - I don't think I've used any complexity analysis in the business world. Financial employers do want the most-efficient code so they can compete with faster trades. This would also apply to scientific research.

The only thing they'll teach you is complexity analysis - so you can write the most-efficient programs, with some sort of specialization (Games, Crypto\Security, Mobile, Business, Research).

Drinking with fellow students in other disciplines is the best way to make the well-rounded individual. I had few friends in my program, everybody else was in Literature, Engineering, Law, Languages, etc... There was only a handful of times I ever saw fellow students at the bar. I'm sure you've had the same…

I can do my job Telecommuting, but show up to the office everyday for "tradition". In the company I work for, I can remote desktop into our servers throughout the world to deploy my work.

You've never sat in a Computer Science program before. It's a sausage party of virgins - there's no hope making them "well-rounded" individuals. That's what drinking at the campus bars is for. I got more out of that than sitting in a 400 person class for Sociology 1 AND taking music, Economics was interesting, but…