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Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

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Re: Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

#21

Post by jsankey »

A large missing element is managing change - and how this relates to maintaining a successful project. I see this as one of the fundamental challenges of developing software in the real world. It's something you can largely ignore during a degree, where it is unlikely that a project lasts more than a few months. The best way to learn what challenges you'll face in the real world is to take on a long-term project. You'll make assumptions and mistakes early on which you can learn a lot from.

It would also be great to observe or join an existing project -- a project that has been around for some time but still maintains a strong momentum -- and learn from the way it works. That is, short cut some of the process by observing others that have overcome some of the challenges.

This should also teach you that there is so much still to learn about successful software projects that you'll be doing it your whole career :).

Re: Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

#22

Post by abeppu »

jgg wrote: post #3

A nice start would be actually teaching Computer Science . Computer Science is a branch of mathematics, with both theoretical and applied aspects. This does not mean that learning Java syntax constitutes as "applied". I think it should be expected that CS students pick up languages on their own in order to complete and understand theory-based assignments. Anything else is probably just pandering to people who shouldn…

I totally agree that CS should be about CS and not software engineering -- with the caveat that more schools should have actual software engineering programs for those that "shouldn't major in CS". Currently, CS tends to be the preferred major for people who really want to become software engineers, which is as silly as pushing people who want to be mechanical engineers or civil engineers to instead get degrees in physics, or only giving a biology education to would-be doctors and veterinarians.

Re: Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

#23

Post by wisty »

StudyAnimal wrote: post #11
patio11 wrote: post #5

I think my CS degree was very valuable (regular expressions! hash tables! discrete math! cache cache cache!), although I'd encourage absolutely everybody to pick up two degrees as long as you're there. You might as well get a jump start on domain knowledge. Weaknesses of a CS degree: 1) At the point of graduating college, it is likely that your experience working with teams in a production-like environment will be mi…

I think they are all strengths of a CS degree. We have our whole lives working in the real world to pick up those things that the University environment can only really introduce us to. I don't want to waste my CS education on just getting a simulation of what the rest of my life will be like, I want to learn CS especially the things that might be harder to learn via experience in industry.

They could do a 6 month course in "Industry practice", where the students learn unit testing, source control, web apps, GUI even loops, design patterns, documentation in industry, and so on.

I'd certainly agree that unis are more competitive at teaching theory (algorithms, math, AI, data-mining, simulations, etc) than practice. When they try to teach industry practice, it's in danger of turning into those nightmare OO courses - all pretension and no idea

oooo, a John isa student (a subclass of person); and Mr Smith isa lecturer (which is a subclass of academic, which is a subclass of person), and our tutor is an example of multiple inheritance!

Re: Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

#24

Post by cema »

hammerdr wrote: post #12
arihant wrote: post #4

Women. It hurts.

Why would this be down voted? Diversity is essential when trying to find solutions to problems and there is a huge lack of diversity in our industry when it comes to women in computing.

Diversity is helpful, not necessarily essential.

Not just diversity of gender (or, say, race). Also diversity of life experiences, ideologies, etc. One of the best things about having studied in an American university for me was the number of international students actively participating in school life, together with and just like American students. Such a contrast with a Soviet university where I had studied before that and where all international students were isolated in their own academic groups, we had almost no interaction with them.

Re: Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

#27

Post by hammerdr »

cema wrote: post #24
hammerdr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would this be down voted? Diversity is essential when trying to find solutions to problems and there is a huge lack of diversity in our industry when it comes to women in computing.

Diversity is helpful, not necessarily essential. Not just diversity of gender (or, say, race). Also diversity of life experiences, ideologies, etc. One of the best things about having studied in an American university for me was the number of international students actively participating in school life, together with and just like American students. Such a contrast with a Soviet university where I had studied before…

We may disagree on the degree to the 'helpfulness' of diversity; essential may have been too strong of a word. I think that diversity is 'essential' in that we cannot solve problems as well as we could without it.

I agree with you that diversity of experience is the key ingredient of diversity. Superficial diversity can actually be harmful. However, I would argue that men and women have the most disparate experiences between the most common classifications of people.

Re: Ask HN: What's missing in a CS degree?

#28

Post by barmstrong »

USER INTERFACE DESIGN

Most cs students graduate without experience making products that normal (non cs) people can use. That's a shame, especially when you consider that some killer products (iPod, Basecamp) have largely been successful due to user interfaces.

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