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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

#11

Post by nihilocrat »

motoko wrote: post #2

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

I think they're barking up the wrong tree. Knowing a vast amount of theoretical CS knowledge might make you good at implementing the fastest possible algorithm, but more and more that sort of programming is only seen in applications where those sorts of optimizations pay off the most (video games, embedded programming, and core systems software come to mind). I think their use of the term "Software Engineer" is therefore inaccurate, they should really be saying "Computer Scientist" because I'm sure there are plenty of good programmers who have gotten good through hands-on experience writing code vs. reading books and attending lectures about theory. I'm not trying to say theory is useless in the real world, I am trying to say that theory is not a prerequisite in the real world.

But yes, I'm also completely tired of elitism. I think it's brought about by the perception that programmers have to constantly compete to be #1, and by extension, to be really worthwhile at all, and while this mentality helps motivate some people, I only see it leading to feelings of inadequacy and complaining about newbies to make oneself feel competent.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#12

Post by jey »

Most CS students don't care about CS, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Our society shouldn't look down on trade schools so much. There's too much of an importance placed on the prestige of graduating from a university, making everyone feel pressured to go to a university. These kids are wasting their time (and their parents' money) if they don't care about the material and are never going to use the material anyway. They're just there to get the rubber stamp from the university to impress their family, friends, and employers.

This emphasis on the college degree as a sign of prestige has a toxic side effect: the people who do care about the material get a diluted version of the material to better serve the university's goal of graduating as many people as possible.

I want to see more schools in the style of Digipen. Digipen offers a rigorous degree in "Real Time Interactive Simulation" -- in other words, Game Programming. They really do learn to code, and they really do learn the relevant mathematics for 3D graphics, physics simulation, etc. They probably don't sit through irrelevant courses on the theory of computation or programming language theory. Why aren't there similar programs for programming in general? You should be able to go to a trade school or university and get a solid and comprehensive degree in programming. And society should respect you for it.

Sidenote: I do think that it's possible to do this without devolving into a technology-specific curriculum. You can (and should) still teach at a conceptual level, with individual languages and APIs considered implementation details. I'm not advocating creating a degree in ".NET Programming" or "Ruby on Rails Programming" that'll be obsolete in 2 years.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#13

Post by procrastitron »

abossy wrote: post #9
apgwoz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think it's more like having to fit your program within a 512 byte sector.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#14

Post by jey »

abossy wrote: post #9
apgwoz wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Add a jump-if-zero instruction and that might actually be Turing complete (assuming your ADD instruction will eventually overflow).

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#15

Post by Xichekolas »

amichail wrote: post #8
andreyf wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

... an algorithm is a series of steps to solve a problem. If he is good at problem solving, he should have no problem with algorithms.

Now, I think a lot of people are bad at remembering every algorithm they are taught in a class. Unless you use it a few times, it's not likely you will be able to implement it off the top of your head, but that is what the internet and all those useful CS books are for.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#16

Post by SamReidHughes »

jey wrote: post #12

Most CS students don't care about CS, and there's nothing wrong with that. Our society shouldn't look down on trade schools so much. There's too much of an importance placed on the prestige of graduating from a university, making everyone feel pressured to go to a university. These kids are wasting their time (and their parents' money) if they don't care about the material and are never going to use the material anyw…

To veer on a tangent -- my previous roommate went to Digipen, and he didn't find it rigorous at all. He felt it was dumbed down in the technical aspects. Has that changed in the past few years?

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#17

Post by procrastitron »

jey wrote: post #14
abossy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Add a jump-if-zero instruction and that might actually be Turing complete (assuming your ADD instruction will eventually overflow).

Actually, if the JUMP instruction allows an indirect address, then it is already Turing-complete. I know X86 treats indirect jumps as a separate instruction, but it's not hard to imagine an assembly language where the two use the same instruction.

EDIT: Nope, we forgot there is no STORE instruction. Thus, no way whatsoever of writing output.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#18

Post by jey »

procrastitron wrote: post #17
jey wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add a jump-if-zero instruction and that might actually be Turing complete (assuming your ADD instruction will eventually overflow).

Actually, if the JUMP instruction allows an indirect address, then it is already Turing-complete. I know X86 treats indirect jumps as a separate instruction, but it's not hard to imagine an assembly language where the two use the same instruction. EDIT: Nope, we forgot there is no STORE instruction. Thus, no way whatsoever of writing output.

Oops, good point about the indirect JUMP instruction.

Maybe we don't need a STORE. The ADD instruction could operate directly on memory operands. Then I guess we can ditch LOAD too.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#19

Post by jey »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #16
jey wrote: post #12

Most CS students don't care about CS, and there's nothing wrong with that. Our society shouldn't look down on trade schools so much. There's too much of an importance placed on the prestige of graduating from a university, making everyone feel pressured to go to a university. These kids are wasting their time (and their parents' money) if they don't care about the material and are never going to use the material anyw…

To veer on a tangent -- my previous roommate went to Digipen, and he didn't find it rigorous at all. He felt it was dumbed down in the technical aspects. Has that changed in the past few years?

I don't know, I'm just going off of hearsay and the projects I've seen come out of Digipen. It's definitely less rigorous than a university program, and they're obviously exploiting the "I want to make video games!" motivation of a lot of kids. But I do think that the general model is pretty good, even if Digipen isn't an ideal example of its implementation.

Re: Most of our CS students suck at CS

#20

Post by choward93 »

I know this is amateur question, but I am taking my intro to programming class this quarter, and we are learning with Python(and pseudo-code, if that counts) am I doomed to being a crappy programmer? I was notorious for being a Lego addict when i was a kid, and i am taking the classes because i need a formal education on programming, so i would like to think I am not part of this group, but am I getting off on the wrong foot?
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