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Most of our CS students suck at CS

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Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#3
post #2

I'm getting tired of this suck-up ego parade about "how everyone sucks (except 'us')."

What I find most frustrating is that people don't talk about the importance of application-level creativity. It's all about implementation.

The secret is that implementation is not interesting nor rewarding -- whether it's done in Java or C or whatever. It only becomes interesting when you are innovating at the application level.

And so, CS as a whole is a depressing field. Most jobs are unrewarding since you are told what to implement.

It's sort of like being asked to translate a novel from one language to another or to improve its grammar. I would rather write my own novel.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#4
Interesting about the mention of a relationship between building Legos and CS. The correlation between the two has been a theory of mine for a while. At least I have not yet found a hacker who enjoys building legos (or did as a child) that sucks at or doesnt enjoy building software. I have a feeling the mindsets required for both are strongly correlated.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#5
As much as I'd like to say I could do low-level CS, I'm honestly not that good at algorithms. Quick sort? I'm good at problem solving, which is what I think matters.

Before I knew better, I used to laugh at those people who found careers doing boring stuff with corporate applications (databases, etc.). The best part of my job is creating something from scratch - a blank screen of an IDE (when not fixing issues). And if we have excess energy after the workday/or on the weekend, we can always exert our creativity on open-source or personal projects. I love software development for the development aspect. How cool is it to say (or not say) to your friends that you could build a cool web startup (the tech is not that hard, except with exceptions)?

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#6

Interesting about the mention of a relationship between building Legos and CS. The correlation between the two has been a theory of mine for a while. At least I have not yet found a hacker who enjoys building legos (or did as a child) that sucks at or doesnt enjoy building software. I have a feeling the mindsets required for both are strongly correlated.

When I was a wee lad, I didn't know what software was, but I had a huge box of legos and an imagination. My parents would buy me the playsets, and I'd build them to get ideas about how "masters" built things and would proceed to immediately take them apart and build new things with the pieces and the knowledge. This also happens to be what good hackers do. Hackers are always reading code, reading about code and learning what the "masters" do. Then they piece together all that they learned and create something new. It's the same exact process, and that is why your theory is correct.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#7

As much as I'd like to say I could do low-level CS, I'm honestly not that good at algorithms. Quick sort? I'm good at problem solving, which is what I think matters. Before I knew better, I used to laugh at those people who found careers doing boring stuff with corporate applications (databases, etc.). The best part of my job is creating something from scratch - a blank screen of an IDE (when not fixing issues). And…

As much as I'd like to say I could do low-level CS, I'm honestly not that good at algorithms. Quick sort? I'm good at problem solving, which is what I think matters.

What's the difference between algorithms and problem solving?

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#8
post #7

As much as I'd like to say I could do low-level CS, I'm honestly not that good at algorithms. Quick sort? I'm good at problem solving, which is what I think matters. Before I knew better, I used to laugh at those people who found careers doing boring stuff with corporate applications (databases, etc.). The best part of my job is creating something from scratch - a blank screen of an IDE (when not fixing issues). And…

As much as I'd like to say I could do low-level CS, I'm honestly not that good at algorithms. Quick sort? I'm good at problem solving, which is what I think matters. What's the difference between algorithms and problem solving?

It's a particularly difficult subset of problem solving.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#9
post #6

Interesting about the mention of a relationship between building Legos and CS. The correlation between the two has been a theory of mine for a while. At least I have not yet found a hacker who enjoys building legos (or did as a child) that sucks at or doesnt enjoy building software. I have a feeling the mindsets required for both are strongly correlated.

When I was a wee lad, I didn't know what software was, but I had a huge box of legos and an imagination. My parents would buy me the playsets, and I'd build them to get ideas about how "masters" built things and would proceed to immediately take them apart and build new things with the pieces and the knowledge. This also happens to be what good hackers do. Hackers are always reading code, reading about code and learn…

I never had enough legos to built anything creatively substantial. It was like writing a program in ASM with only ADD, JUMP, and LOAD.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#10
post #3
post #2

I'm getting tired of this suck-up ego parade about "how everyone sucks (except 'us')."

What I find most frustrating is that people don't talk about the importance of application-level creativity. It's all about implementation. The secret is that implementation is not interesting nor rewarding -- whether it's done in Java or C or whatever. It only becomes interesting when you are innovating at the application level. And so, CS as a whole is a depressing field. Most jobs are unrewarding since you are tol…

"implementation is not interesting nor rewarding"

I disagree, and I don't think I could write code for a living otherwise, 9-5 or startup.

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