Go To University, Not For CS

I agree with this article about CS to some extent but I don't fully agree.

I already knew how to program in Java (poorly) before going to university to study a double degree in Commerce and Software Engineering (which is just CS + 1 more year).

So you have someone who's a proto-programmer - learning programming but not quite getting there yet.

I don't go to any of the few places like 'MIT'. We have `learned` python, C, Java and c++, so far. (I put the learned in quasiquotes because my classmates tend to completely forget the language after the course finishes.)

Sure, some courses like Project Management is completely useless, but I do study courses about machine learning, and how to design algorithms.

I'm now in third year and I feel that going to university to learn software engineering has made me a much better programmer than I would have been without it. Stuff like Object Oriented Design and unit testing, I wouldn't have gone and learned it myself... It would take a university to teach me that.

Funny... I was just having a discussion with my lecturer the other day... He was complaining the university's courses were too `theory` and didn't help students get jobs... especially compared to competing universities. I was telling him the point of university isn't to get students jobs but to teach them how to think. If students wanted a place to teach them so they can get jobs they'd just go to technical colleges. I think he was convinced... hopefully.

What about my commerce degree? Well its mostly boring but occasionally something really interesting comes up... like e-business and economics. I've only done commerce because my dad made me to.

The article makes me think though, maybe I should've gone for a Commerce/Science degree majoring in Mathematics instead. Or a Commerce/Engineering majoring in Electrical engineering...

I doubt this is actually what happened, but I can picture Zed finishing a post suggesting that students take some time to learn about culture while at university.

Then he decided that he wasn't going to piss off and fire up his usual quota with just that so he added an opening and closing attacking a CS education. I'm in pretty decisive disagreement with him on what he says about CS here, but there's a valuable point in here.

CS students, and engineers in general, are a little too dismissive of the liberal arts. There are some genuine reasons for this, but Zed is right in that it's supreme arrogance to think we have nothing to learn from thousands of years of human achievement in the arts. Ultimately, culture is how humanity expresses itself with the time and energy we've bought for it by making life easier with technological progress. Taking some time to understand the human condition through culture before we transform it would be a good thing.

Plus, on a personal level, meeting people who aren't fellow engineers is generally a good thing. Guys, there are a lot more girls outside of CS than there are therein... Hell, girls, that goes for you too if you just want to talk to another girl for once.

> Chances are you'll end up going to some crappy Java school ... > This is what Universities do ... they train people to think ...

So your average university can't teach me to code, but it can impart to me the wisdom of the ages. Not my experience.

At least at a state university, most kids are there to party and walk out with a credential that (they hope) gets them an agreeable, good paying job. That is the culture that the university has to share, at least by default.

Yes, you can get more out of university than that, and some do. But the idea that your horizons will be broadened and you will acquire culture and Learn How To Think just because you had to pay a pile of money get in the doors . . . no, I'm afraid not.

I wonder, how many universities and colleges can you attend and not be able to learn "the wisdom of the ages". All it takes is a few dedicated professors who are dying to be able to teach someone, anyone, who, in my case (this was MIT in the mid-80s), could identify the French Revolution. After that seminar session my professor said he would have retired if no one could have answered the question ... then again, history is my humanities specialty. Hmmm, I still study about as much history as I do CS and software engineering.

I've observed this directly or indirectly at 2nd and 3rd tier schools as well (and MIT's humanities departments aren't by and large first tier as far as I know).

>Universities are the last place where people actually attempt to expand human knowledge through research and are willing to teach you their subject. It's the one place where you can go study something entirely and totally useless like Art History or History and Philosophy of Science and nobody is going to ask you why.

And then immediately thereafter:

>Except for a few places like MIT, Computer Science is a pointless discipline with no culture.

While I agree with some of the points made in the article (do go to college, because you'll be a better person for it, regardless.) This is where the article completely loses cohesion.

The way I see it, there are two ways you can teach computer science, and in both it is useful to you as a programmer, provided you apply yourself.

1. You are taking software engineering, learning to code. It may not broaden your horizons, but you spend four years looking at code and writing code in a structured environment, you're going to get better at coding.

2. It is a hopelessly abstract mathematical endeavor that has nothing to do with programming. If that's the case, it's just like philosophy of science. Despite its apparent inanity, simply the act of dissecting the how and why of computing will affect you as a person, enhancing the way you look at the world.