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Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

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Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#171

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

bdangubic wrote: post #170
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So exactly how do you solve it? Don’t let any multi national companies hire from outside of the US? Are you going to also ban “national” companies from setting up overseas departments?

we can start with 37,574 national companies which will take care of tens / hundreds of thousands of jobs and expand out. don’t be a “can’t be done” person looking for excuses, be a solution guy - it will serve you well in life. this is an actual real problem that needs a solution - be a part of that solution

And you are going to tell all of them they can’t hire cheaper developers but the multi nationals can? You do realize that it puts them at a competitive disadvantage?

Are you going to also tell them they are not allowed to expand overseas?

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#172

Post by bdangubic »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #171
bdangubic wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we can start with 37,574 national companies which will take care of tens / hundreds of thousands of jobs and expand out. don’t be a “can’t be done” person looking for excuses, be a solution guy - it will serve you well in life. this is an actual real problem that needs a solution - be a part of that solution

And you are going to tell all of them they can’t hire cheaper developers but the multi nationals can? You do realize that it puts them at a competitive disadvantage? Are you going to also tell them they are not allowed to expand overseas?

you are completely missing the point…

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#173

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

bdangubic wrote: post #172
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you are going to tell all of them they can’t hire cheaper developers but the multi nationals can? You do realize that it puts them at a competitive disadvantage? Are you going to also tell them they are not allowed to expand overseas?

you are completely missing the point…

No you are making completely illogical proposals without thinking about the very obvious knock on effects or how illogical it really is.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#174

Post by [deleted] »

iso1631 wrote: post #59
jazz9k wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was in college in the early 2000s, it was the same. Most professors were at least a decade behind current technology.

In the UK I did comp-sci from 2000, did a couple of extra modules. One was from engineering and covered communication theory -- nyquist etc. Another from was the English Department of all places and covered XML and data. Very little coverage of tcp/ip in any of the courses. Language of choice in CompSci was Java at the time, which was reasonable as OOP was the rage. Some compsci lecturers were very much of the opinio…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#175

Post by badc0ffee »

kmoser wrote: post #134
alistairSH wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but are C++ or Java really that outdated. AFAIK that’s what most schools teach. Maybe with some JavaScript as well. It’s not lime they’re teaching Fortran or COBOL. And with the advent of AI coding, I’d hope they can spend more time on system design, as that’s where I’ve found new grads are generally lacking.

The irony is that if they taught COBOL today, those grads could likely get a good job working on legacy code.

I took a COBOL course during undergrad in 1998. Glad I was exposed to it, but I never did anything with it.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#176

Post by rationalist »

maniacwhat wrote: post #104
ghthor wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are you not learning from reading all the code produced by Claude? Is auditing a new codebase or onboarding to a new project any different from creating a new codebase w/ Claude? Reading code and understanding it is a very important skill and now might be the most important skill.

Imo reading code is very different to writing it. It's analogous to reading a textbook and skipping the exercises. The exercises make you think and realize the gaps in your knowledge that you did "read" at the time but didn't fully appreciate.

> reading code is very different to writing it

As I was reading this exchange, I was wondering the same thing, why isn't a person learning the code from reading the code that was produced. I guess people learn differently when it comes to code.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#177

Post by samneisewander »

gchallen wrote: post #63

I teach computing at the University of Illinois. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about how to adapt my own courses and our degree programs. I'm actually at a workshop about incorporating AI into computing education, so this was a timely post to find this morning. We don't have a coherent message yet. Currently there's a significant mismatch between what we're teaching and the reality of the computing profession o…

Hi. Current CS undergrad here. I find this claim highly disagreeable: > You learn something about resource allocation from banging out malloc by hand, but not as much as you could if you properly leveraged coding agents.

I think you are underestimating the effectiveness of "reinventing the wheel" to become an effective engineer through the act of building and discovery. Consider common undergrad CS projects: building a compiler, building a file system, building a text editor, or writing an implementation of malloc. Undergrads find these tasks grueling and conceptually challenging, and learn to improve their understanding of computing concepts and software design patterns by struggling to implement these things by hand. If you explain the concepts to an ugrad and then hand them Claude Code to use for the implementation, you are defanging an otherwise significant obstacle that would have stimulated growth.

Undergrads learn by struggling. My friends and I like to say, bombastically, that the only way to teach an undergrad is to torture them.

I would much prefer to learn programming the classical way, and let my employer empower me with LLM technology once I have demonstrated proficiency in software engineering.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#179

Post by Bombthecat »

bradley13 wrote: post #13

"The professors use AI themselves and expect their students to use it, but do not have a gauge for what kinds of problems make for an appropriately difficult assignment in the modern era." I'm a prof, recently retired but still teaching part-time. This is exactly the problem. AI is here, people use it, so it would be stupid (plus impossible) not to let students use it. However, you want your students to still learn s…

Everyone is just hoping, that in five years, when new seniors are needed, that eastern people are seniors by then and cheaper or that ai can replace them.

Re: Ask HN: What is it like being in a CS major program these days?

#180

Post by Bombthecat »

arvid-lind wrote: post #124
rachel-ftw wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude has a teacher mode where it will ask you questions. I’m picking up game dev in my spare time. I’m not letting Claude write any of the code. We talk through the next task, I take a run at it, then when I’m stuck I got back and talk through where the problems are. It’s slower than just letting Claude do it, obviously. Plus you do need to be a bit disciplined - Claude will gladly do it for you when you start gett…

I've been using Claude Code since last summer and had no idea about the learning mode. Between the old features i've missed and all the new features to learn weekly, if not daily, I'm starting to accept I'll never catch up.

You could use the learning mode for that!

Badabum tas :)

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