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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dijkstra preferred "computing science", didn't he? Now, calling it "science" at all is problematic if you don't consider mathematics to be a science.
Do mathematicians perform experiments? Do people who research computation?
I heard that many CS majors in India have never used a computer, some of them have impressive theoretical knowledge and become successful in real jobs.
“Computer Teacher With No Computers Chalks Up Clever Classroom Plan” is still blowing my mind months later. https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/03/01/5895194... > For Hottish, who spends about 30 minutes making these drawings before every class, teaching this way is really no big deal. "Every subject is taught on the blackboard here," he says.
It was awesome to watch him work, he was much faster on chalkboard than we were on paper with better tools and could draw spirals and screws in seconds.
Unlike computers, his equipment never chugged or crashed.
I heard that many CS majors in India have never used a computer, some of them have impressive theoretical knowledge and become successful in real jobs.
I have heard this was the same reason behind the vast dominance of Russian programmers in the early days of HFT (cf. Michael Lewis' Flash Boys ): CS classrooms in late-80's USSR had maybe one computer between them, so you spent a lot of time getting your programs right on paper before it was your turn to use the machine.
That was called "welcome to CompSci 101!" in the first CS course I took in the early 80s. Submit your card deck, wait your turn for the operator to load the deck, an hour later you get to find out that you made a typo and it didn't compile.
Inspired by this, I led a group of 5th graders and high school students through a "peanut butter and jelly sandwich robot" exercise. I had a blast and so did the kids. We had them list some steps to make a pb&j sandwich, and then I, as the robot acted the steps out as literally as possible. When they said "gather materials", I went around the room and picked up erasers, markers, water bottles; whatever I could find.…
I heard that many CS majors in India have never used a computer, some of them have impressive theoretical knowledge and become successful in real jobs.
Knowledge, maybe. But when you put them in front of a computer, they can't write code. (Your mileage may vary though)
I'm in my 2nd year, and it's incredible how these teachers teach computer science without computers. The ironic thing is that they have projectors in classes. They even have laptops. Most of my peers have laptops, I think. And still they teach with a blackboard.
Just yesterday, my shell programming teacher wrote out the output of `ls -l` manually, by hand. She literally had it memorized. And said that we have to memorize it too, because of course, computer science is a written exam :)
I never expected to see this kind of response on HN. Some of these people don't know how to turn on a computer, and keyboard typing is a long stretch. You really don't know what you're dealing with here!
The admission process is fully exam based (physics/chem/math). I wasn't asked once, in the entire admission process whether I had ever used a computer in my life. Most parents don't let their kids use computers because they think it will spoil their childhood. I was fortunate enough to have good access to Internet and computers in my home. I admit that I spent a lot of time playing games, but I totally have a better understanding of how computers work. At least I'll be a cs major who actually knows how to code...