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Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

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Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#81

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

NalNezumi wrote: post #48

I've always seen the same pattern in College decision: self-projection. That is, a combination of what they know and what they think they can do/like . Most people choosing Uni choose from what they know. Majority of young people know little about anything CS or nerdy; They often know the end product (computers, phones, apps) but very little about the people working on it. Compare that to doctors, managers, Wallstree…

CS types in the movies are basically magicians. Something needs to happen, they open a laptop, they type away furiously, there's a cutaway which shows them frowning, then a red dialog box on the screen turns green, and the thing happens.

It's hard to get from that to the reality developing CRUD apps.

There may be some drama, but arguments about which framework to use are not usually very cinematic.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#82

Post by burntoutfire »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

I don't think CS is a high social status field at all . You're deluding yourselves. Outside of our peers also in the industry nobody cares that you're a staff engineer at Google. Absolutely nobody. They'll assume you're doing IT work like the characters in the IT Crowd if they even bother to think about it at all and haven't already walked away. Here's a concrete example to make it really obvious. How many computer s…

I dunno, the news of exorbitant salaries of SV programmers slowly make it into the mainstream media and those jobs are sometimes mentioned next to other traditionally highly desirable career choices, such as a doctor or a lawyer. Given how much America equates human worth with money, it should translate into increase in social status.

Another take: CS is in no small part just an obscure field of mathematics with only tangential contact with the real world. No wonder people don't care about it. Software engineering, on the other hand, should have higher social status.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#83

Post by cs702 »

deeg wrote: post #80
cs702 wrote: post #51

There's one other possible, additional reason. I recently asked a 17-year-old high school senior who is heading to college what she's planning to study, and she said it would be mathematics, biomedical engineering, or some other kind of engineering. She's self-motivated -- says she will be studying multi-variate calculus, PDEs, and abstract algebra on her own this summer. She maxed out her high school math curriculum…

My niece had almost the exact same opinion despite having multiple family members who didn't fit that description, including her mother! It wasn't until I introduced her to some of my younger female co-workers that she committed to being a CS major. She's now a third generation software engineer, which has to be fairly unique.

That is unusual indeed!

The question for which I don't have a good answer is, why did your niece have the same opinion despite so much firsthand evidence to the contrary?

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#84

Post by exdsq »

heraclius wrote: post #56
exdsq wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, you’re awarded an MA (Oxon) after a few years of graduating, but this is a ‘proper’ Masters course

The fourth year of an undergrad also gives an “undergraduate master’s”.

Yeah, this too. What I mean is that the MSc in SoftEng is a "normal" Masters program. Oxford has too many weird caveats to cover :D

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#85

Post by ironman1478 »

I personally think CS is generally taught extremely poorly, specifically any portion where a professor attempts to teach you to code. It generally just comes down to opinion and memorization, its not really fun. I had the experience of having more project based programming classes (like a game or operating system) and that was totally fun, but classes where you have to implement tiny examples of OOP or something are so unbelievably boring (this is what I imagine the cs101 classes are at many schools). If that was my intro to it, I don't think I would have stuck with CS. I also think the theoretical stuff is taught poorly too, it can just be so dry. I think a big issue is you are taught that a concept exists, you don't necessarily go through and try to solve it yourself. I remember my intro to sorting was "here are all the algorithms you should know", not "try to come up with a strat for putting numbers in order." The latter is significantly more interesting and engaging.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#86

Post by chrisseaton »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #78
silveroriole wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re right. I went to a slightly posh school and my parents actually got commiserations that I was going on to study comp sci. “I.T.” is still not a high status field in the LEAST in the UK. It went down like telling people I was going to drop out and become a mechanic (not that there’s anything wrong with that either, but it’s all about the perceived status of the field).

The UK - especially the UK Establishment - is spectacularly clueless about STEM. When I did my EE degree a friend of the family was pleased that I'd be able to use my Honours Degree and mathematical insight into Maxwell's Equations to get a good job as a TV repairman. There's a strong class bias against people who do things. The class ideal is someone who owns things and tells others what to do in broad terms ("busin…

Right - I get exactly the same thing. I have a PhD and am a senior staff engineer and people in UK society still assume I'm very low paid and very low status, and that I work in a cubicle as an underclass troll. I have my feet in two camps because I'm also an Army officer. As soon as I put that hat on (literally) my social status goes up by an order of magnitude. I think a lot of people in CS don't know what it's like in other fields and they assume they're relatively well regarded and respected by society. They aren't!

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#88

Post by cs702 »

christiansakai wrote: post #79
cs702 wrote: post #51

There's one other possible, additional reason. I recently asked a 17-year-old high school senior who is heading to college what she's planning to study, and she said it would be mathematics, biomedical engineering, or some other kind of engineering. She's self-motivated -- says she will be studying multi-variate calculus, PDEs, and abstract algebra on her own this summer. She maxed out her high school math curriculum…

I don't understand where did this perspective come from? Is it from movies? I've been in this field for 6 years now, and I never encountered the stereotypical nerd in this field whatsoever. Not during my CS course not during my career.

In her case, it comes from her experience in high school. Nonetheless, I do wonder whether and how the stereotype is reinforced in popular culture.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#89

Post by easterncalculus »

ForHackernews wrote: post #3

Why would you major in computer science if you want to work as a software engineer? It's like getting a physics degree to become a civil engineer.

This is an incredibly flawed analogy. I can say safely that software engineering students (SE specifically, and not CS) have at a general level a massive amount of missing knowledge compared to their CS counterparts. Practically every SE concept either is or can be taught on the job. I don't hire but I can safely say that if I ever did I would hire CS graduates long before someone who calls everything they use an 'app' and couldn't explain tail recursion to me. I will never understand how SE people can brush past basic concepts in favor of specific frameworks that might be out of favor by the time they graduate.

SE students tend to miss fundamental parts of creating good applications while they study how to do so (security, privacy, performance (!), etc). This gap creates a liability in the job markets they saturate, as well. This culture of companies that hire SE majors and SE degree programs is pretty lax when it comes to the stuff that isn't arbitrary software framework knowledge. Frankly, the 'optimization' of CS has been a disaster. Buggy software can cause just as many damaging or long term effects as poorly designed buildings or machines, but in none of the programs that would output people capable of creating those do we see a movement supporting 'practical' knowledge over the basics. It's incredibly short-sighted, and at the very least, it means smaller CS programs.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#90

Post by orobinson »

arethuza wrote: post #77
tosser0001 wrote: post #72

The problem is CS is just a miserable field to be in unless you really, really enjoy the grind of it. To me it comes down to some CS-specific version of Mike Tyson's (perhaps apocryphal) quote "everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth" - something along the lines of "Everyone has fun programming until they have to start debugging". My city has several years of programming courses at the high school. A…

An an aside: I would say debugging is one of my favourite bits of programming!

Nothing quite matches that triumphant moment when you finally discover the root cause of an issue that's been bothering you for days.
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