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Go To University, Not For CS

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Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#21

Post by robryan »

While I agree that your not always learning useful things in a CS degree for someone to have left high school and said they already know everything the CS degree and industry will teach them would be very very surprising.

Personally I have little interest in the alternate university path he is suggesting, I would probably eventually get sick of it and quit. That's not to say I don't find a broad range of subject interesting, just that I'd rather pick up that other stuff online in small chunks when it interests me and spend the 4 years I have of study to focus on something that really interests me like CS.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#22

Post by hga »

wheels wrote: post #12

It was a great post right up until the part where he started talking about computer science. It left me with the feeling that either Zed did not study computer science, and is just talking out of his ass, or went through a very bad computer science program and has generalized that all of them must be that bad. How arrogant can you be? There's nothing for you to learn from 100 years of algorithms, complexity theory, l…

The termination with extreme prejudice of 6.001 suggests that some people mostly agree (http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-fr...).

Certainly there's an ever increasing role for people pasting together big libraries and frameworks without a deep understanding of what goes on behind the curtains....

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#23

Post by brent »

hga wrote: post #5

tl;dr: Don't major in it unless you're attending one of Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, CMU or MIT. OK, that's in part my spin---he only mentions MIT---but it's also my considered recommendation post-the dot.com crash. If you plan on/desire to stay programming, I think you really need to be severe about approaching this, seeing as how the normal career of a programmer is over by age 35-40; beating that is going to take a lo…

I cannot let comments like this stand. I have seen little difference between students from the top few schools and the rest. If you are only doing an undergrad I see little reason to hold these top 4 on such a pedestal. Any school in the top 20 or even probably 40 are more than a java school at the undergraduate level. The differences are marginal. However, if you plan to go to graduate school I would certainly try to attend one of the top 4 schools.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#24

Post by robryan »

acangiano wrote: post #20

> Another way to explain the shallowness of Computer Science > is that it's the only discipline that eschews paradox. > Even mathematics has reams of unanswered questions and > potential paradox in its core philosophy. In Computer > Science, there's none. It's assumed that all of it is > pretty much solved and your job as an undergraduate is > to just learn to get a job in this totally solved area > of expertise. Zed…

It's not like software engineering doesn't have unsolved problems either, like why is it still so hard to produce bug free software, why programmer productivity has only gone up a small amount despite 30 years of language advances and why most software still has to be mostly custom. The dream from the earlier days of software engineering where we were eventually meant to have components that could easily be mixed and matched to create whatever we want hasn't eventuated.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#25

Post by devon_r_t »

Emore wrote: post #8

I must thoroughly disagree. First off, I agree on the importance of culture. But equating a CS degree with coding is just plain wrong; Dijkstra has a nice quote on this. CS is and should be applied mathematics, and what more timeless topic is there than math? Secondly, there are some serious doubts whether university teaches you to think independently. As a counter argument, read "The Disadvantage of an Elite Educati…

Where did you get your CS degree? Or more importantly, which institutions do you know of that actually teach CS as applied mathematics and aren't just "Java Schools?" I went to roughly a school with what was and still is an incredibly mediocre CS department and, as far as I can tell, this is the case more times than it isn't. I spent time working on a Pure Mathematics degree but eventually switched to CS and I still consider it to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life.

I agree with Zed to an extent, but only because so many CS programs focus on the wrong things and are little more than trade programs. For most young people I meet I strongly recommend they steer clear of CS unless they're going to a school with a proven program.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#26

Post by moolave »

One good friend of mine best said it, (although university may not be the only place to get all your programming skills honed) it is one of the best places to meet future connections in business or just on a collaboration of a tech project.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#27

Post by forlucy »

I'm probably wasting my time posting here.

He's completely wrong about CS as a subject of study in general but very right about the problems with CS as a formal academic subject of study. Academia is a religion of sorts. It's primary goal is the replication of the academic system itself, control over a generation who desire an education whereas actual education of people is merely a secondary objective. Just one quote from Chomsky among many regarding education : "A lot of the educational system is designed for that, if you think about it, it's designed for obedience and passivity."

Education is Ignorance, Noam Chomsky - http://www.chomsky.info/books/warfare02.htm

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#28

Post by hga »

brent wrote: post #23
hga wrote: post #5

tl;dr: Don't major in it unless you're attending one of Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, CMU or MIT. OK, that's in part my spin---he only mentions MIT---but it's also my considered recommendation post-the dot.com crash. If you plan on/desire to stay programming, I think you really need to be severe about approaching this, seeing as how the normal career of a programmer is over by age 35-40; beating that is going to take a lo…

I cannot let comments like this stand. I have seen little difference between students from the top few schools and the rest. If you are only doing an undergrad I see little reason to hold these top 4 on such a pedestal. Any school in the top 20 or even probably 40 are more than a java school at the undergraduate level. The differences are marginal. However, if you plan to go to graduate school I would certainly try t…

Perhaps ... but that's not been my experience.

A previous HN discussion where there was not merely no agreement but no strong opinions on what school ranked as #5 suggested to me that there's really something to this.

At the very least they deserve their pedestal. On the question of whether it's not worth going to a school that ranks below them, I'm not so sure.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#29

Post by jrockway »

acangiano wrote: post #20

> Another way to explain the shallowness of Computer Science > is that it's the only discipline that eschews paradox. > Even mathematics has reams of unanswered questions and > potential paradox in its core philosophy. In Computer > Science, there's none. It's assumed that all of it is > pretty much solved and your job as an undergraduate is > to just learn to get a job in this totally solved area > of expertise. Zed…

Yeah, I'm not sure I agree with him at all. I would say that the human race knows approximately nothing about building software. Yeah, we can do it, but we're not very good at it. If bridges and buildings were software, we would have all died in collapsing buildings and the human race would be extinct.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#30

Post by hga »

devon_r_t wrote: post #25
Emore wrote: post #8

I must thoroughly disagree. First off, I agree on the importance of culture. But equating a CS degree with coding is just plain wrong; Dijkstra has a nice quote on this. CS is and should be applied mathematics, and what more timeless topic is there than math? Secondly, there are some serious doubts whether university teaches you to think independently. As a counter argument, read "The Disadvantage of an Elite Educati…

Where did you get your CS degree? Or more importantly, which institutions do you know of that actually teach CS as applied mathematics and aren't just "Java Schools?" I went to roughly a school with what was and still is an incredibly mediocre CS department and, as far as I can tell, this is the case more times than it isn't. I spent time working on a Pure Mathematics degree but eventually switched to CS and I still…

Did your CS program require a discrete mathematics course?
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