Computer Science Education • Hacker News Board

Re: Computer Science Education

#161

Post by cdmcmahon » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:22 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #90

hdctambien wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. As it stands right now, it is intimidating for a girl to sign up for her first computer science class knowing that it will be full of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier ag…

> I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins. Clearly not my sense of justice. > In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. Everybody can use the internet to learn coding. But at least to me it seems that mostly boys (with few exc…

> So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins.

You are not inoculated from the past sins of gender discrimination. So simply because you did not discriminate does not mean you did not benefit from past discrimination. While this fact should not be used to hold you accountable, it should be used to pursue policies that offset that advantage.

A company offering a program for girls is not punishing boys. It's giving girls a boost that was given to boys of previous generations.

Simply giving equal opportunity after decades (longer, really) of inequality is not truly equal. As an analogy, imagine if a government gave extremely preferential treatment to one company over another for an extended period of time (lower taxes, looser regulation, etc.) and all of the sudden started treating the two companies the same. Would you expect them to have an equal chance of success? Surely the accumulated benefits of the one company would still provide a significant advantage that would have to be remedied before the companies have an equal chance of success.

Edit: I realize I assumed you are male, which your comment does not state. Mea culpa. Read this comment as directed at any male who opposes policies that promote gender equality in STEM education.

Re: Computer Science Education

#162

Post by cr0sh » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

bruceb wrote: post #22

We replicated a CS degree path which you can fill with free MOOCs: https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree Admittedly we have left our course list dormant for a while but we will be pushing an update in a few weeks.

I'm a big proponent of MOOCs, having participated in a few, and currently taking the Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree (the others I took also revolved around ML).

That said, the thing that bugs me about them is how they may be perceived by a potential employer?

Granted, anyone can put on their resume/cv that they went to school x/y/z and gained a BA or MA; most employers probably don't even look at it. But a few probably do investigate further; and there is always the chance that a new employer might look into your stated background and find that, "No, you didn't graduate from XYZ, and oh, btw, you're fired."

Having that piece of documentation from an accredited school means something. Furthermore, if you have a certificate or something from another place that isn't recognized, it might be looked upon as a "diploma mill" certificate, not worth the paper it is printed on, so to speak.

This is why I support companies like Udacity and Coursera, because they might lend an air of legitimacy to their certificates (much like the various Microsoft and Cisco certs), to help prove to potential employers that you are the "real deal". That's not to say that Course Buffet can't do the same (and honestly, there's a lot still needed to be done to communicate to employers that these MOOC offering do have merit) - but right now, outside of having an extensive project portfolio and some other measures of demonstrating to the employer, there isn't many ways to convey to them that "Yes, I have a level of knowledge equivalent to a BA in CompSci."

Ultimately, as always and regardless of your degree (or not), it all comes down to how you sell yourself to the employer. Still - if it comes down to two people who have convinced the employer to consider them for hiring, it might just come down to who has the "actual" degree - the guy with a known institution on that piece of paper, or the guy with a random PDF certificate (or 20) from random online sites?

This is an unfortunate bias in our educational and employment system, and it is going to be a difficult one for MOOCs to overcome - but I do hope it happens, because frankly, college education, despite its certain advantages, is very expensive (and some would say overpriced). Not to mention its structure and student-body makeup, being naturally skewed toward a younger student population, tends to turn away an older population who may want to seek a degree in their later years, but don't want to feel out of place.

MOOCs can fill that role, but there are a lot of prejudices and assumptions that need to be overcome in the meantime to get employers to understand their value.

Re: Computer Science Education

#163

Post by digler999 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:28 PM UTC

GrantSolar wrote: post #32

dotancohen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this rather insightful post is downvoted. The site specifically targets these groups by name. Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys?

>Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Because the gender ratio in STEM fields skews heavily towards men. >What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys? I can't imagine there would be anything that was 'inappropriate', though there may be some boys less excited about making a dress l…

> some boys less excited about making a dress light up

you're using gender stereotypes ("girls like dresses", and implied its corollary, "boys like machines") in an argument against gender exclusion.

Re: Computer Science Education

#164

Post by ElysianEagle » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:29 PM UTC

BorgHunter wrote: post #74

lineindc wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computer science is like a self-devaluating industry. We have tons of websites dedicated to teaching our trade, most of them for free. We actively encourage everybody to learn to code, and tell them how easy it is, and how it makes you a better person. We say schools should teach everybody how to code. Do you imagine medics, attorneys, engineers, etc doing the same things about their own professions/skills? "Yes I'm…

What I'm getting from your post is: When you teach other people, you devalue your own knowledge. Knowledge should be hoarded, guarded jealously, and others discouraged from learning the things you know. Because if knowledge is shared, that knowledge becomes less valuable, and so you are less valuable, and so can earn less money. Is this a fair statement of your views, or am I misinterpreting you?

I didn't interpret his post the same way as you did. I think he was suggesting that we, as programmers, tend to act in ways that are not necessarily conducive to maintaining our own job security. We often advocate (strongly even) for importing labor, making CS education and tools cheap/free etc. all of which while certainly making knowledge more accessible also increases the supply of coders.

And it's true, you definitely don't see doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. acting in the same way. I'm not suggesting a grand conspiracy on their part, but the certifications (difficult to obtain), years of schooling etc do have the effect (intended or not) of limiting competition.

It's hard to argue for better wages and treatment from employers on one hand, while simultaneously propagating the view that "anyone can do this". Well, if anyone can, then why should you get paid $150k/yr or more?

Re: Computer Science Education

#165

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #141

dwaltrip wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you feel about Spanish language programming courses? What about affordable housing? How do you define discrimination? I think there isn't a clear line, and we have to use our evolving best judgment depending on the context. How else can we attempt to more quickly resolve unfortunate and unfair dynamics the past has brought us? Lastly, I think it's a mistake to assume all discrimination is zero sum. We will all…

> How do you define discrimination? Using any other criterion than ability for e.g. staffing jobs/university places/... In this sense every forced quota on gender/skin color/race/... is discrimination. Women only programs are, too (as "men only", "white only" or "black only"). EDIT: > How do you feel about Spanish language programming courses? Living in Germany I openly don't understand what you want to imply with th…

[deleted]

Re: Computer Science Education

#166

Post by cardiffguy » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:36 PM UTC

mcguire wrote: post #129

cardiffguy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if I'd qualify. I have dyslexia and dyspraxia but always feel like "learning difficulties" put you in the camp of "not disabled enough". I managed to get a first class degree in compsci and recieved the standard disability grant from the uni.

You got a disability grant? Would that be considered reverse discrimination?

In the UK it's fairly standard to get financial support in terms of technology to help with the disability

Re: Computer Science Education

#167

Post by digler999 » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

reader5000 wrote: post #134

pliptvo wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well that's just discriminating against nerds This is exactly the problem. You've assumed that 'nerds' -- people who are skilled and passionate about tech things -- are male. It's that kind of assumption which enforces a massive mental barrier for women to be able to consider themselves legitimately passionate and skilled about tech, and also for men to recognise them as such too. Until the association of nerds wit…

"Stereotypes" come from patterns in empirical reality. They are not created and administered by some Evil White Male committee as you seem to think. Women are in no way discriminated against in tech, nor have they ever been. Passionate and skilled women in tech certainly exist, they are just relatively rare. Withholding resources from boys because of their gender actually is discrimination, and should not be encourag…

> Passionate and skilled women in tech certainly exist, they are just relatively rare.

exactly. I dont agree with you that women have "never been" discriminated against, but I do agree that vocational fields are not homogeneously populated (and that is not the result of discrimination).

* I dont see very many women police officers

* (this was mentioned on HN last week) not very many oil-rig workers are women

* I dont see many heterosexual men working as hair dressers or bridal shop/wedding planners/fashion designers/makeup artists ("this is clearly a glass door organized by the Gay Male Establishment to prevent heterosexual men from breaking into this field. Such abuse of privilege" /s).

* I don't see many women working as bouncers at night clubs

* I don't see many women working as commercial pilots.

But you know, for all the "I don't see"'s , when I do see one that defies the norm, I dont think much of it. They're people just like anyone else, free to pursue whatever they want. But it's not automatically discrimination when groups of people gravitate to certain fields.

Re: Computer Science Education

#168

Post by lorenzhs » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:37 PM UTC

wolfgke wrote: post #155

lorenzhs wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you on about? I'm a PhD student at one of the top German universities for CompSci. There are around 10% women in our bachelor's and master's programmes. The department is actively trying to get more women interested in studying computer science, because it very much is a boys' club. The problem isn't about access to courses. It's that existing programmes don't appeal to women, and it's dumb to ignore half of…

> What are you on about? The laws for women quota: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13551798 Otherwise: Nobody forces women to study a non-STEM subject - they decide it themselves. So doing promotional programs for women has the implicit implication "women are too stupid to get on their own what they should study (while men are smart enough to find this out on their own)" - something I would never ever claim.

No, nobody's claiming that. If that's your takeaway from outreach programmes, maybe you should talk to women about their experiences in computer science.

The reason for outreach programmes is that what's currently offered seems to appeal to men but not nearly as much to women, and that we should fix that. There's nothing patronising about admitting a problem and attempting to alleviate it. Some attempts might be misguided or based on incorrect assumptions, but that shouldn't discredit the entire endeavour.

(Since we're talking about computer science education, I'll disregard the entirely unrelated comment about quotas in businesses.)

Re: Computer Science Education

#169

Post by hackermailman » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:40 PM UTC

0xFFC wrote: post #116

hackermailman wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also this list of MOOCs https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/4rimxf/he... What I do is find a university and look at their course public page where often in the calendar/schedule you can find lecture notes, slides and sometimes the lectures. If you find the lectures immediately grab them with some browser plugin to archive because they tend to disappear. TU/e in NL has a lot of open english taug…

Wow, you are fucking awesome. I dont know how to thank you. I do the same. I downloaded your link and will look at TU more carefully from now on. P.S. It is always this way, every time I find a new lectures, I get way too excited.

Carnagie Mellon has some open too http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~213/schedule.html (Lectures) https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a...

That book you can get the global 3rd version from Abe Books for $20something since you aren't in Can/USA

There's other courses in there, like this awesome math/compsci course https://scs.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Sessions/List.a... (click on the RSS(Subscribe) logo in the upper right, can download them). They also have some fully open courses like this db course with lectures on youtube http://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2016/

Re: Computer Science Education

#170

Post by ArloL » Thu, Feb 02, 2017, 5:41 PM UTC

defnfoo wrote: post #118

NotSammyHagar wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was past 40 when I was hired at Google, worked there for almost 10 years, knew many other older devs. I disagree that they were discriminatory. At least in my experience, that was not an issue.

The experience of those filing the law suit differs from yours. You may have known some older devs, but the numbers are very clear: the average age of a google employee is 29. The US national average is 42. Google itself is not very diverse by most metrics. Maybe they should practice what they preach? http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/

My first gut feeling was that the average age of developers has to be lower. My reasoning was that since the number of computer science degrees is increasing and the average age of graduates is low there should be a lower average age of developers.

But this data suggests otherwise https://datausa.io/profile/cip/110701/#workforce_age

And this as well https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d12/tables/dt12_349.asp Assuming that the average age is 25 for Bachelor's, 27 for Master's and 32 for a PhD I get an average age of 47.

Am I missing something?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1walTvrZrdTELPjrI9HmQ...