Go To University, Not For CS • Hacker News Board

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#131

Post by megaman821 » Mon, May 31, 2010, 2:56 PM UTC

coned88 wrote: post #110

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…

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…

This pretty much matches my university experience. I went to a public university which ranks in the top ten for computer science programs. It appears there is a large divide in the quality of computer science education.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#132

Post by arethuza » Mon, May 31, 2010, 3:00 PM UTC

ErrantX wrote: post #113

coned88 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That sounds exactly like the sort of degree I mean. It's not all that common though, in my experience, to find a CS degree with that sort of curriculum. Do you just cross me off the list because I have a CS degree. That's silly :) You may have noted from my post that I do hire CS majors. but do they understand the inner workings of a computer? Do they understand complexity, even the basic data structures. Yes, usuall…

So what on earth do they teach in CS courses these days? That course sounds similar to the one I did in the 80s in the UK - especially the bit about not really getting that much instruction on languages, you were expected to be able to largely pick that kind of stuff up by yourself.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#133

Post by ErrantX » Mon, May 31, 2010, 3:02 PM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #132

ErrantX wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds exactly like the sort of degree I mean. It's not all that common though, in my experience, to find a CS degree with that sort of curriculum. Do you just cross me off the list because I have a CS degree. That's silly :) You may have noted from my post that I do hire CS majors. but do they understand the inner workings of a computer? Do they understand complexity, even the basic data structures. Yes, usuall…

So what on earth do they teach in CS courses these days? That course sounds similar to the one I did in the 80s in the UK - especially the bit about not really getting that much instruction on languages, you were expected to be able to largely pick that kind of stuff up by yourself.

A lot of them tend to be just "java schools" plus a load of pure CS.

> you were expected to be able to largely pick that kind of stuff up by yourself.

I think the main problem lies here; because a lot of people are possibly too lazy to do this...

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#134

Post by hga » Mon, May 31, 2010, 3:03 PM UTC

benatkin wrote: post #95

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…

What if all but about a dozen with a great reputations (MIT and others, as he said) and about a dozen hidden gems have the problems Zed describes? Or do you have a solid argument against it? Also, the dozen hidden gems don't do the people asking Zed for help any good, because they're hidden. They're great for the people that happen to be going to them, but if an outsider thinks one might be a hidden gem, it's not a g…

And you know, it doesn't take much to teach context and (domain specific) culture while the professor is teaching the basic course. Look at these quotes from my favorite chemistry professor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_S._Kemp#Quotes

Ummm, well, OK, except for the first one they aren't so great, but let me relate this tremendously useful and memorable anecdote he told us in first term organic chemistry:

There was a company manufacturing a molecule and at some point their yield randomly started going to hell, an impurity wasn't getting removed. They just about went crazy trying to figure out what changed until they set up 24x7 cameras, reviewed the footage and found out that a night watchman was relieving himself into the vat.

But here's the neat part: it was only when he did that that they got pure product and the cause of their new problem was his semi-retirement and not working as many nights as he had been.

Their real problem, of course, what that they didn't truly understand their process, they didn't realize they needed to e.g. include some urea or whatever to complex with the impurity and help it get washed out.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#135

Post by hga » Mon, May 31, 2010, 3:14 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #112

scorpion032 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wrong. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b1pkKR-Acc (If you don't want to watch the video, read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France_Flight_296 )

Given that the flight recorders were tampered with I can't see how you can be so sure it was caused by software.

Frankly, anyone flying at a low speed and very low altitude (which I define here as few hundred feet) with jet engines at idle needs to have their head examined. Whatever the software did or didn't do, the pilots knew all of these details and that with their craft's low energy level and the engines spooled down they had little or no margin for error, their's or the new (less than one and half years since first flight) fly-by-wire software.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#136

Post by hga » Mon, May 31, 2010, 3:36 PM UTC

enjo wrote: post #114

devon_r_t wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I attended the University of Central Arkansas (Go Purple Bears!) starting in 1998. This is obviously not a top-tier school by any stretch. I felt like it was an excellent program. We spent all of a semester on C/C++. My program was heavy on the math (Calculus, Differential Equations, Linear Algebra, Statistics, and a few others I can't bring to mind). We studied algorithms, number systems, analysis, and all sorts of…

You're lucky (you attended a school which is a variation of one of those "hidden gems" benatkin talked about). ABET only requires:

"One year of science and mathematics:

1. Mathematics: At least one half year that must include discrete mathematics. The additional mathematics might consist of courses in areas such as calculus, linear algebra, numerical methods, probability, statistics, number theory, geometry, or symbolic logic."

(http://www.abet.org/Linked%20Documents-UPDATE/Criteria%20and...)

MIT requires differential equations or linear algebra and no statistics (although I think they used to before the '80s) and of course discrete mathematics which is one of the things I'm sure you're not bringing to mind. (MIT does demand a relative high level of mathematical sophistication, every undergraduate must take or place out of single and multivariable calculus in their freshman year (where it is taught at speed), and SICP/6.001 and 6.01 both use math freely (in 6.01 at least as initially taught you have to use differential equations right off and they don't assume you've previously thoroughly learned them).

I've worked very closely with a UVa Applied Mathematics graduate who was taught C++ (but not C, I taught him the new/malloc distinction :-) back in the early-mid 90s. He's not as good a programmer as I am, but he's very solid and most importantly understands what he's doing and the implications of it. Our designs don't fail because we e.g. didn't realize or think correctly about scaling issues.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#137

Post by gwern » Mon, May 31, 2010, 3:52 PM UTC

archgoon wrote: post #80

gwern wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a quick nitpick - I've known people to be not particularly impressed by the Halting Problem. The real result, if you want to wow someone, is Rice's theorem ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rice%27s_theorem ): 'Not only can you not decide halting - you can't decide anything else either.'

Really? They're impressed by Rice's theorem but not the Halting Problem? I find that surprising, I would expect someone unimpressed with the Halting Problem would simply view Rice's theorem as an obvious consequence of the Halting Problem.

If you aren't impressed by the Halting Problem, you probably aren't so sophisticated and able that Rice's theorem is an obvious extension of the Halting Problem.

Intuitively, I can convince myself that Rice's theorem is true ('just write a program that runs itself and halts or doesn't halt on whether it has that property'), but I can't really follow the math and I only think of that because I've already heard of a number of results that use similar translations/compilations from one sort of program to another.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#138

Post by hga » Mon, May 31, 2010, 4:13 PM UTC

pedrokost wrote: post #119

I will go to University for Computing. I am one of the apparently few people who love studying - not the act of studying,but the reason to study. Any interaction with people increases my ability to think and speak. This is a quote from somwhere: "The rate of cultural and economic progress depends on the rate at which ideas are having sex." Educational facilities (even if they limit your creativity)increase the rate a…

Ah, but when you take your first serious history course you'll study historiography and ideally your professor will introduce you to Thucydides whatever the course is about. And that's very relevant to "analyzing the facts", especially since not all "facts" are created equal.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#139

Post by tsally » Mon, May 31, 2010, 4:23 PM UTC

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…

Computer Science in the US is very similar. Just replace the advanced low-level courses with algorithms and data structures (we still do computer architecture and assembly).

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#140

Post by acgourley » Mon, May 31, 2010, 4:31 PM UTC

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…

UC Davis has both Computer Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering, in addition to its Computer Science degree.

They are points along a gradient of a mixture of CS classes and digital circuits classes.

However, at no point do the CS classes move from theoretical to practical, all the CS classes you end up are the traditional type. So at Davis you're still not getting a "industry programmer" type of CS education, you're just getting academic CS + circuits :)

Your situation sounds similar, with the additional of the two software PM and process classes you mention. Although I'm curious if you think they were helpful, is that a teachable subject?