Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why do so few people major in computer science?

danwang.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 627 posts

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

#431

Post by dagw »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #430
alistairSH wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poppycock. I studied CS at UVA in the late-90s and had no previous programming experience. I was an experienced computer user, which wasn't a given in the 90s, but I hadn't done any programming. There wasn't anything in the curriculum that required previous experience. Linux wasn't required for entry-level courses. At the time, they were taught using C++ and a Borland IDE on Windows. Similarly, source control wasn't…

FWIW I started my CS degree in 2001. My first CS class assumed I knew how to navigate a *nix system (I forget which one). I was also expected to already know at least one programming or scripting language of my choice that could be used on the school's servers. That included but was not necessarily limited to: Perl, Java, C/C++. Oh, and I also needed to know Matlab.

My university, around the same time, offered a 2 week, 0 credit, intro to Unix course that everybody who hadn't worked with *nix systems before where expected to take. All courses then assumed that everybody knew everything taught in that course.

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

#432

Post by kbart »

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…

I don't agree with that. Just an anecdote, but programming was always the easy part for me. Boring, abstract and arcane concepts, algorithms (that you probably will never have to program by hand outside of university anyway) was the reason I've chosen engineering instead. Also, downplaying difficulty of the other disciplines only shows the lack of knowledge in them.

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

#433

Post by nathan_f77 »

dagw wrote: post #412
erikbye wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That just sounds like the professor didn't teach them about Java classpath before telling them to use a CLI; or this kid didn't read the course materials.

Sure, but if you have been playing around with environment variables in your OS since you where 8 years old the problem becomes a lot easier to troubleshoot, compared to someone who has never heard of environment variables.

Even after decades of experience, this stuff can still be extremely frustrating. I remember my first experience trying out Go, fighting with the GOPATH and GOROOT variables until I could figure out how to get things installed properly.

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

#435

Post by [deleted] »

sidlls wrote: post #214
sbov wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is a huge number of tech jobs are within these locations. The SF bay area has something stupid like the top 3 cities when it comes to tech jobs. Throw out all the locations with the most jobs and surprise, salaries suck.

Well, I wouldn't say salaries "suck" outside of well-known tech centers like SF/Bay Area and NYC. They aren't great, though. Even in the Bay Area, at least, the salaries of engineers still pale in comparison to the salaries of managers and executives.

[deleted]

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

#436

Post by Emp202 »

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…

Not sure what universities you went to but that view is as far from the truth as it can be, at least for where i'm at (germany). I majored in CS myself but had a lot of friends in mechanical and electrical engineering. To say their fields revolve around a small number of vignettes is downright bizarre. I was never bad at math, but i gotta admit it got hard in CS along the way. However, the math the did in EE in the higher semesters to me was completely arcane. Like several steps above what we had to do in CS. The grief factor of coding? Seriously? Load up a halfway decent IDE and have immediate feedback when you did something wrong, then tinker until it works and you can hand it in? It doesn't get any easier. Compare that to "drawing some boundaries and applying some equations" (over 10 sheets of paper), then noticing you made a mistake on page one and your results don't make sense... I'll take the "code grief" any day. I don't mean to be snarky but you sound like a frustrated CS undergrad student that hasn't had to much exposure to the other fields you devalue so easily.

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

#437

Post by Sharlin »

azakai wrote: post #238
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 of my professors actually made the opposite point: that in CS, the compiler will give you an error. You can fix it and move on to the next. While in math (he was a math prof), the paper doesn't object to your writing nonsense. If you have an error early on in your work, all the rest might be nonsense, and you only find out much later after a human grades it. tl;dr at least in CS you get immediate negative feedbac…

Around here most CS, math, and physics courses have "demonstrations" - weekly occasions where students present their solutions to homework exercises in a classroom setting. The answers are not graded, you just have to attend and be prepared to present if you're (semi-)randomly chosen by the instructor (a TA or sometimes the lecturer themselves).

It's fun to observe the teacher's reactions sometimes when it is apparent that the student presenting is clearly heading towards a train wreck of some sort due to misunderstanding the question, not being rigorous enough, or just being generally confused about the subject matter. Occasionally I've seen professors at the math dept get this visibly pained look in their face as they watch a CS student abuse their beloved math in particularly horrendous ways.

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

#438

Post by dosgonlogs »

erikbye wrote: post #427
aerovistae wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, anyone who can't do CS must not be very smart, right? Basically if they don't have the same skillset as you, they're probably not too bright. Doesn't matter if they can draw near-photorealistically or pick up a new foreign language in mere months, or perhaps breed fascinating variants of plants in all manner of ways in their dorm room just off intuition; if they can't pass CS101, if their mind doesn't work their…

I'm just saying a person thought to be "very smart" should be able to do CS101, easily; and I don't think the examples you mentioned are indication of extraordinary cognitive faculties. I taught myself near photo-realistic drawing, it's a mechanical skill--craftsmanship; had I continued to invest more time in perfecting the technique I would have got to what’s considered photo-realistic. My Spanish was decent after f…

something tells me your Spanish was never that great, and you never got that good at drawing. You reek of someone with a fragile ego. You also suck at writing clearly and concisely in English.

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

#439

Post by rjbwork »

tsukikage wrote: post #428
YZF wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should have thought about beer money. But I was such an introverted geek. I do remember watching other people trying to figure out how to use a mouse or the most basic stuff. I've already studied algorithms and data structures and had a paying programming job. Most of the CS work seemed trivial but I did learn some math. The math did get hard so the degree was definitely not a breeze. Even with CS there were areas…

If anything, it's a disadvantage IME: the implicit lessons of the iDevice are that the world is made of non-user-serviceable black boxes that cannot be recombined to make anything substantially different than what you started with, and if one does ever manage to peek under the hood (and why would one do that, any more than they do with their fridge or their TV?) one sees only immutable non-deconstructible complexity.…

I totally agree with this. The mass produced handheld computers such as smartphones and tablets, which outnumber desktops and laptops in personal ownership worldwide, will absolutely not help the newer generations with learning how computers work.

When I was a tween I was building my own desktop, installing drivers, trouble shooting driver issues, trawling log files, and even dabbled in a little bit of python here or there when I had no idea what I was doing.

None of that is even a thing on the black box of of a touch screen device.

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

#440

Post by rjbwork »

CydeWeys wrote: post #364
jacobolus wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, I took a theory CS course in college, and all of the pure math students found it extremely easy with predictable lectures and short obvious homework assignments, while all of the programming-since-they-were-5 but not too mathy students were in way over their heads, and really struggled a lot. It’s all about what you know...

I loaded up with theory classes in college precisely to stretch myself and learn more of the difficult things that I wasn't yet already competent in. I'd been programming since I was 9, and could handle the programming projects just fine (more easily than most other students), but the theory classes were more challenging and I wasn't going to learn that stuff if not in school. It ended up being quite helpful for Goog…

I had a much easier time in theory than the other students as well, and ended up being the only non-graduate level student in Quantum Computing, and only CS major in another, Combinatorics. I think a big part of it was that I had a strong maths background, graduating as I did from a Math/Sciences magnet school.
Post reply on HN