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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?

#21

Post by jazz9k »

titanomachy wrote: post #15
jkbwdr wrote: post #9

currently in cs masters program at ivy: i think it's like thinking that pure math study evaporated when we made the calculator, or that we suddenly shouldn't have bothered with Riemann sums because of the FTC. ai to coding is much the same in the sense of moving to a layer of higher abstraction. i don't think cs curriculums have to change drastically to accommodate this; however, the onus on not getting it wrong incr…

I have no reason to believe that you aren't motivated mostly by curiosity and interest, but the mass of CS undergrads are primarily driven by economic incentives.

The ones I knew that were only driven by money all dropped out or changed majors.

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

#22

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

Novosell wrote: post #6

I've been doing programming and sys admin as a hobby for a long time and only recently started my bachelors in compsci, and I'm sad to have waited so long as almost everything has been infested with ai to some degree.

Why are people downvoting this? The reason why I had decided compsci or stem was also that being completely honest, I couldn't imagine myself not having the hobby of using linux and tinkering with scripts and everything. So I really get what you are talking about and I think that we are in similar states although I haven't started my bachelors and I might be much younger than you.

Linux/Terminal truly feels like opening another dimension of thinking, its too luring sometimes.

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

#23

Post by fergie »

jtbetz22 wrote: post #4

I am not in a CS program myself, but I guest lecture for CS students at CMU about 2x/year, and I'm in a regular happy hour that includes CS professors from other high-tier CS schools. Two points of anecdata from that experience: - The students believe that the path to a role in big tech has evaporated. They do not see Google, Meta, Amazon, etc, recruiting on campus. Jane Street and Two Sigma are sucking up all the ta…

> They do not see Google, Meta, Amazon, etc, recruiting on campus

Really? As in FAANG has stopped recruiting graduates?

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

#24

Post by Xelbair »

jazz9k wrote: post #20
jtbetz22 wrote: post #4

I am not in a CS program myself, but I guest lecture for CS students at CMU about 2x/year, and I'm in a regular happy hour that includes CS professors from other high-tier CS schools. Two points of anecdata from that experience: - The students believe that the path to a role in big tech has evaporated. They do not see Google, Meta, Amazon, etc, recruiting on campus. Jane Street and Two Sigma are sucking up all the ta…

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

I wish it was decade for me, in early 2010s they were still teaching 90s approach to handling complex projects(upfront design, with custom DSL for each project and fully modelled by BA without any contact with actual users, with domain experts being siloed away - and all of that connected to codegen tools for xml from the 90s)

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

#25

Post by someguyiguess »

jtbetz22 wrote: post #4

I am not in a CS program myself, but I guest lecture for CS students at CMU about 2x/year, and I'm in a regular happy hour that includes CS professors from other high-tier CS schools. Two points of anecdata from that experience: - The students believe that the path to a role in big tech has evaporated. They do not see Google, Meta, Amazon, etc, recruiting on campus. Jane Street and Two Sigma are sucking up all the ta…

To be fair, college CS programs have always been decades behind in my experience. Maybe schools like Stanford and MIT are different but the majority of CS programs are not teaching tech that is actually used in the business world.

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

#26

Post by titanomachy »

jazz9k wrote: post #21
titanomachy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no reason to believe that you aren't motivated mostly by curiosity and interest, but the mass of CS undergrads are primarily driven by economic incentives.

The ones I knew that were only driven by money all dropped out or changed majors.

What did they change to? Pre-med?

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

#27

Post by Kelteseth »

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…

Not just that. As a 31 year old developer even I feel like acquiring new skills is now harder than ever. Having Claude come up with good solutions to problems feels fast, but I don't learn anything by doing so. Like it took me weeks to understand what good and what bad CMake code looks like. This made me the Cmake guy at work. The learning curve delayed the port from qmake to CMake quite a bit, but I learned a new skill.

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

#28

Post by Falimonda »

Get them to learn the fundamentals and understand them deeply just like they should/might have in the past.

They can do so at an accelerated rate using AI on verifiable subject matter. Use something like SRS + copilot + nano (related: https://srs.voxos.ai) to really internalize concepts.

Go deep on a project while using AI. To what extreme can they take a program before AI can't offer a working solution? Professors should explore and guide their students to this boundary.

Obligatory reference to "The illustrated guide to a Ph.D." - https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

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

#29

Post by karmakurtisaani »

fergie wrote: post #23
jtbetz22 wrote: post #4

I am not in a CS program myself, but I guest lecture for CS students at CMU about 2x/year, and I'm in a regular happy hour that includes CS professors from other high-tier CS schools. Two points of anecdata from that experience: - The students believe that the path to a role in big tech has evaporated. They do not see Google, Meta, Amazon, etc, recruiting on campus. Jane Street and Two Sigma are sucking up all the ta…

> They do not see Google, Meta, Amazon, etc, recruiting on campus Really? As in FAANG has stopped recruiting graduates?

They still probably do, but mainly in India.

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

#30

Post by xavortm »

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…

To me it seems that the path to seniority would shift. It is difficult to answer because we're looking at it from the lens of 'fundamental knowledge'. Instead, to me it seems that now this is less of a requirement compared to 'systems-level thinking'. A very simple example could be the language syntax vs the program structure/parts working together. And with this, a junior developer would still lack this experience and I don't think AI tools would be a problem in developing it.

All I say though is from the perspective of self-taught dev, not a CS student. The current level of LLMs is still far from being a proper replacement to fundamental skills in complex software in my eyes. But it's only in it's worst version it will be from now on.

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