The hard part of computer science is the staggering complexity, the abstraction, the language/framework/library learning fatigue, the stress of trying to deliver on overoptimistic deadlines. Getting into a class is nothing in comparison to these actual challenges.
Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
141–150 of 305 posts
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#142This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
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Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#143"The university is looking to hire several tenure-track faculty members in computing this year, he said, but competition for top candidates is fierce. I know of major departments that interviewed 40 candidates, and I don’t think they hired anybody." That doesn't sound like fierce competition if they were able to interview 40 candidates... Did they give them all high-paying offers and they all rejected?
My experience is not from the US, but sometimes companies/universities/etc self-sabotage themselves in weird ways.
I teach in http://www.sena.edu.co/ (the biggest trainer in Colombia, run by the gov) because for a advance class about databases them not have anyone and one of the faculty ask me the favor to cover for it (I was there as part of a program for startups).
It work well, and I do it because the time commit was not bas and the extra money help. So I was ready to continue to teach about mobile development. I was like the only one that apply for it.
I was not selected, because I don't have certain diplomas related to how operate the (very) arcane Sena "education platform" and other side stuff that demand ONE YEAR of extra courses for me.
In the end, only the people that accept that get it the job, but how many with actual skills on the field?
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#144If CS is so popular right now, how can it possibly command high pay by the time these people hit the job market? Do they all expect to compete against each other for high paying positions? How is that a good bet? Do they expect that there will be a ton of jobs that will all pay well?
Yes. My school (UC Berkeley) was the same (felt like everyone wants to study CS so they made the GPA cap 3.3 so if you have <3.3 no CS for you, and classes were STILL overcrowded clusterfucks) but my graduating class had $105k avg salary.
> but my graduating class had $105k avg salary.
I hope that's not TC!
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#145This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
I would argue the two CS courses I took is school gave me my passion for programming. I ended up switching majors but because of those classes I had the fundamentals I needed to go out on my own and learn new CS principles and get a good job out of college. I don't think I would have been able to learn what I know without those two courses.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#146Isn't CS teaching the kind of thing that ought to be able to scale? There's no other subject that's as well covered on the internet; nothing in an undergraduate course isn't public knowledge. There's loads of video lectures these days. And the coursework is incredibly scalable too, in addition to being similar to what people actually use in industry. My brother did CS at an Ivy, and they were just pushing repos to a…
Every topic has plenty of literature published. Scantron was founded in 1972. Self-directed learning has always existed. CS isn't special. A bachelor's degree once meant more than passing a sufficient number of tests. Now that everyone treats it like a ticket to employment, it barely even means that.
>Every topic has plenty of literature published. ... CS isn't special.
Not as nicely made video lectures. I doubt I can find video classes of some of the upper electives I took in engineering. Sure - textbooks have always been available. But they are dense, and rarely does a class cover the whole book. It helps to have a professor point out "You should know this" and "Don't bother with this - it's just academic detail."
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Of course the reality isn't quite as utopian. It also means professions like law and medicine require whole additional degrees. I kind of like the fact that in the US, doctors usually have some exposure to science outside of memorizing facts for their next test at med school. It makes them more likely to be able to understand studies, for one thing. I might hazard to guess that if you study philosophy before going…
I believe that philosophy undergrads get the highest lsat scores, however that could have changed in the last 5 or so years.
Statisticians are actually the winners on this one:
https://www.lsac.org/sites/default/files/media/2017-18_appli...
(Although they are not that far from a few other majors, it is an interesting read in any case.)
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#148While the article bemoans these programs becoming restrictive, it is ignoring a major reality. Let's take a person. This is the person that might end up getting 'weeded out' before they've even gotten their foot in the door. They probably have 0 or near 0 background in anything related to computing. They similarly likely have negligible background in anything related to science/engineering/mathematics. And keep in mi…
> The majority of people in his class will fail/drop out of the program before graduation, regardless of background. Really? That sounds like a huge failure of the system, especially since they've gone into debt for that.
Attrition rate is high in engineering - I assume it's similar for CS.
They don't all drop out of university - just the program. They usually change majors. I assume most still get a degree. People who can't handle CS usually go for BIS or something IT related.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US university system is quite unusual (I believe Canada also has a similar system): at the undergraduate level you typically don't apply to a specific program; all students are expected to take a variety of classes (confusingly called "courses"), only some of which apply to a specific course of study. Domain-specialized classes become an increasing proportion of your overall classes after the first or second year…
It's important to point out the underlying reason for this: a US high school diploma is absolutely worthless garbage, so you need to continue generalist studies in university to bring people up to the standard of other developed countries. E.g. someone with a French baccalauréat or enough British A levels can usually skip the first year or two of university in the US.
A US high school graduate with enough Advanced Placement classes can skip the first year of university (at least for public universities which accept those credits). But only well funded high schools can afford to offer that many AP classes.
Re: Hard Part of Computer Science? Getting into Class
#150This article is credentialism at its worst. The best programmers I know are self-taught, because they have a passion for it. I know people working at minimum wage, never enrolled in college, who got decent programming jobs after a year or two learning CS on their own. These people will always (I hope) form the core of the profession.
I didn't finish my degree, but I can tell you that "a year or two" is nowhere near enough to "learn CS on (one's) own". On a daily basis, I use the foundations that I did learn in a formal environment much more than any of my self-taught skills. It's a very complex subject that cannot be effectively navigated without some guidance. Otherwise, you may think you know it, but you're just skimming the surface (and likely…
A year or two is enough time to get your foot in the door with web dev. For more advanced stuff, sure, it's an ongoing process.
On the other hand, I question the utility of most university CS curriculums. There are usually only one or two classes covering the core "algorithms" knowledge that autodidacts might not have, given how many people squeak through these classes by copying HW, I'm not convinced that anything really sticks.