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Go To University, Not For CS

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Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#101

Post by strlen »

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…

> .. went through a very bad computer science program and has generalized that all of them must be that bad.

I had the same feeling. I attended a program at a school which (at least at the time) wasn't extremely selective (the school as a whole admitted 60% of applicants and was extremely generous with financial aid) and highly industry connected (located in Silicon Valley with alumni all over the local technology companies).

Nonetheless, the first language students learned was C, followed by Haskell. Compilers, discrete math, operating systems, EE courses were all required. Upper division courses would expose students to other languages (Scheme, C++, Java) and I only remember one undergraduate class requiring a single Java based lab assignment. Graduate courses either required C (I focused in systems and networking) or were language agnostic.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#102

Post by lsc »

nostrademons wrote: post #74
nzmsv wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently saw a posting at Altera which said they required a full transcript for anyone with less than 8 years of work experience. Needless to say, I did not apply.

Job postings (and HR reps) often lie. Google claimed they needed a full transcript for anyone with less than 5 years of experience, I said "Sure, but it'll take 2 weeks to arrive, and my other offer is getting antsy", and they promptly forgot about it. It's usually better to apply anyway and let folks reject you if they really don't like what they see, rather than taking job postings literally. They're really just gu…

> It's usually better to apply anyway and let folks reject you if they really don't like what they see, rather than taking job postings literally. They're really just guidelines.

this is key. It has been probably 13 years since I've had a job that didn't require a college degree in a related field.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#103

Post by dustingetz »

jrockway wrote: post #31
dustingetz wrote: post #14

i agree, culture is important. but, how much money is it worth? is it worth 20k? 50k? 200k? on the flip side, not all of us are brilliant alpha programmers with entrepreneur-class egos. the labor-class parents of one of my best friends are incredibly proud of his BigCo software job, and BigCos don't hire without a degree. The cynic in me wants to call a [software] degree an average person's investment.

What BigCos don't hire without degrees? I know people at Google and Microsoft without a degree. I work for a giant corporation, without a degree.

fwiw, google and microsoft are in the top 10 BigCos for software people. Lets focus on 11-1000.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#104

Post by ComputerGuru »

ErrantX wrote: post #94
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…

Well, I agree with his first part; and here is why. I've employed a goodly few programmers - invariably the least good are CS majors, the best are usually engineers or physicists. The reason is that CS is a theoretical degree, and far too many people do it assuming they will become a "programmer of value", rather than a potentially important CS researcher. I've had applicants bore be with details of compiler theory t…

What we need is an intermediary; an Engineering degree that hands you some basics of CS and a whole lot of critical thinking. The whole aim of a degree like that is to point you in the right direction and let your interests develop into a career.

You may not have it in the states, but the rest of the world does. I graduated a five-year (160 credit hour) curriculum in "Computer Engineering" which is a bundle of low-level courses (circuts, electronics, assembly, microelectronics, digital integrated circuits), programming courses (c++, c#, object oriented software development), software lifecycle courses (software engineering, project management), math, pure engineering courses (statics, electromechanical systems), and more. It's recognized as an engineering degree by the Engineers Guild, and has given me, above all, the "Engineering Sense" that I apply daily in my development work.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#105

Post by ErrantX »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #104
ErrantX wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I agree with his first part; and here is why. I've employed a goodly few programmers - invariably the least good are CS majors, the best are usually engineers or physicists. The reason is that CS is a theoretical degree, and far too many people do it assuming they will become a "programmer of value", rather than a potentially important CS researcher. I've had applicants bore be with details of compiler theory t…

What we need is an intermediary; an Engineering degree that hands you some basics of CS and a whole lot of critical thinking. The whole aim of a degree like that is to point you in the right direction and let your interests develop into a career. You may not have it in the states, but the rest of the world does. I graduated a five-year (160 credit hour) curriculum in "Computer Engineering" which is a bundle of low-le…

I'm in the uk :-) What you mention is perfect - and Ive seen a few of these courses in the last cople of years. We definitely need more - and they should be pitched as a solid alternative to pure cs.

You are right; this is one area the eu is doing better in.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#106

Post by scorpion032 »

jrockway wrote: post #29
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.

Software is built the way to collapse _because_ it's not like brides and people don't lose lives if it collapses.

A little bit of Darwin, on why things are the way they are.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#107

Post by ilcesco »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #104
ErrantX wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I agree with his first part; and here is why. I've employed a goodly few programmers - invariably the least good are CS majors, the best are usually engineers or physicists. The reason is that CS is a theoretical degree, and far too many people do it assuming they will become a "programmer of value", rather than a potentially important CS researcher. I've had applicants bore be with details of compiler theory t…

What we need is an intermediary; an Engineering degree that hands you some basics of CS and a whole lot of critical thinking. The whole aim of a degree like that is to point you in the right direction and let your interests develop into a career. You may not have it in the states, but the rest of the world does. I graduated a five-year (160 credit hour) curriculum in "Computer Engineering" which is a bundle of low-le…

It makes sense, I've studied 'IT engineering' here in Italy, and we can also get the best of both worlds. The sad thing is that as an engineer you'll be always labeled as a technical person, and somehow not competent when it comes to crucial functional decisions, especially when you end up working for a big corporate, where business analysts are more likely to be former MBAs..

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#108

Post by Confusion »

archgoon wrote: post #100
Confusion wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's counterintuitive, than the most basic physics already teaches you that many things are counterintuive. The 3-body problem does not have an analytical solution. We can't even properly simulate the solar system a couple of thousands of years ahead. Nearly everything in physics is numerical approximation, despite what theory would lead you to believe. After that, the halting problem is far from surprising.

There's a significant difference between "Nobody can solve this problem, despite it having a well defined answer, regardless of the power of the computer and the time given to solve it, no matter how clever you are" and "I can only get an approximation to the solution, but the error will always be well defined, so I can get arbitrarily accurate solutions, say within a nanometer given a few billion years or so."

Although you can't solve the general halting problem, there are many halting problems that can be, and are, solved in practice. To me, that's the same thing as a numerical approximation to something that doesn't have an analytical solution.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#109

Post by drtse4 »

ilcesco wrote: post #107
ComputerGuru wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is an intermediary; an Engineering degree that hands you some basics of CS and a whole lot of critical thinking. The whole aim of a degree like that is to point you in the right direction and let your interests develop into a career. You may not have it in the states, but the rest of the world does. I graduated a five-year (160 credit hour) curriculum in "Computer Engineering" which is a bundle of low-le…

It makes sense, I've studied 'IT engineering' here in Italy, and we can also get the best of both worlds. The sad thing is that as an engineer you'll be always labeled as a technical person, and somehow not competent when it comes to crucial functional decisions, especially when you end up working for a big corporate, where business analysts are more likely to be former MBAs..

Another italian here, and other than confirming what cesco said i can also add that one of the two CS-oriented degree available in italy also contains the dreaded "Philosophy of Science" referred in the linked post :)

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#110

Post by coned88 »

ErrantX wrote: post #94
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…

Well, I agree with his first part; and here is why. I've employed a goodly few programmers - invariably the least good are CS majors, the best are usually engineers or physicists. The reason is that CS is a theoretical degree, and far too many people do it assuming they will become a "programmer of value", rather than a potentially important CS researcher. I've had applicants bore be with details of compiler theory t…

I'm really not sure what you mean. I have a CS degree from a ~50th ranked US University. It is not considered a math degree, but instead a CS degree from an engineering department. My education was engineering focused. My degree says I am a graduate from the Engineering school. I can write assembly, program a fpga, write OO programs, OS drivers and System calls. Shoot, I even wrote My own file system. I learned java and C++, in the first 2 weeks of 2 classes, and that was all the programming instruction given. Though I had good experience in MIPS Assembly, Java, C, C++, Scheme, Lisp, ML, Haskell,Prolog, C+ and Fortress.

I designed my own soda machine, calculator and even designed/created a real world solution which companies were interested in, though I cant mention because it would be me not anonymous.

I was not a computer engineer, I was a CS student. My school also had computer engineering, but I was not really interested in the EE stuff.

I took all of the Math that engineers take, and I took the Engineering Chemistry and Engineering Physics.

Due to my CS dept being a subset of the engineering dept, the goals were the same. Everything was problem solving. Every class had its set of rigorous problems, which students had to succeed at or they simply would not pass.

I learned Algorithms, internal Operating systems, Complexity, Computation, fundamentals of Programming languages, distributed systems, organization, Computer Architecture, VSLI/HDL, etc. Im sure you get the point.

I personally think I bring a good bit to the table, as do the other few graduates that survived the curriculum.

You very well may find a more well rounded candidate than myself from the non traditionally educated pool, but they will be few. If you lump all CS graduates in the same pool, you are doing yourself a disservice. While yeah, somebody from a Java school may suck. What do you say to a candidate like myself, who really can bring what you need to the table. Do you just cross me off the list because I have a CS degree. If so, I think its you who may need to recalibrate.

Sure pure engineers and physicists may be good programmers, but do they understand the inner workings of a computer? Do they understand complexity, even the basic data structures. I assume you want efficiency?

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