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Why do so few people major in computer science?

danwang.co

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Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#241

Post by kgwgk »

romanovcode wrote: post #59
david-cako wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Top level, My statement is unclear, but the "udacity/anyone can be a computer whiz!" "koding with karlie" vibe that is pushed is very different than anything else in the world. Software is unique in that it IS something that anyone with the minimum amount of the right talents can learn to do well on their own -- that's just the nature of the internet and how software is distributed/documented. It ISN'T, however, some…

> Why is this type of attitude normal in software? I think people greatly underestimate what software developers actually do. To most of non-computer related folk we are just monkeys who bash keystrokes. I'm not saying we do some rocket science, however in this profession a lot of online research is required to even do a simple things, and to most of people it is annoying to do so they give up. I'm full-stack develop…

> in this profession a lot of online research is required to even do a simple things

Or you could look at the documentation. People did simple and complex things with computers for decades before google existed.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#243

Post by slededit »

smichel17 wrote: post #147
twblalock wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The number of grads for difficult degrees and the quality of grads seems to be another story. This is why I never believed the "There is no STEM shortage" stories. They were mostly based on the assumption that all STEM grads were qualified to work in STEM. That's not true in any field where you can complete a degree with a C or D average. I find it unfortunate that some of the larger software companies filter out a…

> This is why I never believed the "There is no STEM shortage" stories. They were mostly based on the assumption that all STEM grads were qualified to work in STEM. That's not true in any field where you can complete a degree with a C or D average. This is true IFF we assume that gpa accurately reflects qualification to work in industry.

There is a difference between getting a C or D average because you don't care about school, and getting that because you can't do any better. Unfortunately the two are hard to separate, and even if the grad didn't care about school - it doesn't mean they will care about work.

I was in the boat of not caring about school (although I did get a B) and it worked out - but anyone following that path should understand its an up hill climb.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#244

Post by home_boi »

cynusx wrote: post #184

The whole idea that people pick their education based on rational assumptions when they are 18, know essentially nothing and are coming straight out of an environment where perceived status is all that matters on the playgrounds is ridiculous. The choice of what to study is not a rational decision but a social decision. People follow their friends, guys go study what the hottest girls he knows are going to study, par…

> but you don't have to be a genius to get a CS degree

But most people don't know that.

They don't know that you can make $160,000 total comp right out of undergrad by going to a mediocre school where other students are not bright, failing every test but getting B's and C's from a generous curve (because of your competition) and studying Leetcode for a month.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#246

Post by walshemj »

Id disagree that CS or IT in General is "high" status even in the USA.

Just because a few 17/18 years olds think iphones are "kewel" does not mean that CS /IT / STEM jobs ae high status.

Take the UK no techie/stem leader gets the really high honours CMG KCMG, GCMG or as yes minester put it.

Bernard: “Of course, in the service, CMG stands for Call Me God. And KCMG for Kindly Call Me God.” Hacker: “What about GCMG?” Bernard: “God Calls Me God.”

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#247

Post by walshemj »

watwut wrote: post #173
lordnacho wrote: post #107

The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, and coding doesn't come into it, you will hit a coding wall early on. In fact, every exercise in CS has this problem. You add a new thing (eg inheritance), and it breaks. B…

> The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. I would say that this basically screams "badly taught programming". Missing semicolon does not take down work, it just needs to be put back in and ide should help you. "Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, a…

novice programmers should not be starting a CS degree

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#248

Post by theparanoid »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #53
_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #2

Image.

After talking to dozens of women and men, girls and boys trying to convince them to go into computer science, the reason they told me is the (wrong) image they have of programing: sitting alone for 8h a day in front of a computer. Looks like the those who voted me down had more success in getting more people into CS.

Seems they had a pretty good idea of the field. 90% of the time is spent staring at a computer screen.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#249

Post by eternalban »

lordnacho wrote: post #107

The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, and coding doesn't come into it, you will hit a coding wall early on. In fact, every exercise in CS has this problem. You add a new thing (eg inheritance), and it breaks. B…

> One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down

That is not true. You do not put your "whole tower" back together again when you move cursor and type the missing [';'].

[edit]

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#250

Post by violinist »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #175
cbcoutinho wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This probably just reinforces his point - engineering undergrad is basically just applied math and physics, whereas the real meat of the major is usually reserved for whatever faculty you're in. Instead of having just 'Engineering', we have Civil, Electrical, Aerospace, etc. We should probably think of Computer Science in the same way. Instead of just vanilla CS, we could split a CS BA/BS into just as many specific c…

Trouble is, any good practicing programmer should know about all that and more (e.g. networking and UX). Of course people will have specialties, but they should have decent knowledge across the board. But they don't have to learn it all in school. The way for CS to cut itself down to a manageable size is to concentrate on the traditional "hard core". Compilers, operating systems, plus some newer (i.e. from-the-1970s)…

It's interesting to read someone else thinking that - I am about to graduate with my CS / Engineering degree, and I've tried to take classes which benefit from university instruction. The courses I've chosen and found most valuable have essentially been the ones you named: compilers (we wrote a compiler for a C subset), operating systems (we wrote a simple operating system with multiple processes), networks (implemented the TCP stack in userspace), and algorithms.
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