Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017) • Hacker News Board

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

#311

Post by screye » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:48 PM UTC

Can we talk about how much more CS people are expected to work than people in other fields ?

For most people here, CS is their hobby. So a lot of learning and knowledge acquisition happens during 'leisure' time. This is rarely the case in other professions.

If we count all the time we spend resolving environments, getting setups right, learning new tools and reading papers as work (as we rightly should), then most people in tech would be working far more than 55 hours/week.

This already ignores a lot of the quiet time people spend pondering over things and letting them stew semi-consciously. CS work is flexible, but is not easy or less-time consuming by any means.

If we try to force people into CS, then we will get what India has. A massive glut of incompetent tech 'talent' with BS in CS, but need to be retrained all over-again to even do the most mundane sweat shop coding that companies like Infosys and TCS need their employees to do. (I say this as an Indian). Millions who hate their job, earn low pay and have a very small set of nontransferable skills, because what they actually know is 'sweat shop tools' and not CS. IMO, if there is any demographic that AI/ML is most poised for eradicating, it is likely this one.

If CS in the US wants to increase participation without compromising on its present identity, then the only solution might be to foster interest and love for science/math/coding early in life and hope you can cast a wider net to capture everyone who would come to consider this profession a hobby.

Alternatively, it can go the way of every other mature profession and turn into a 9-5 boring thing you hate, but still continue doing because you need to put food on the table.

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

#312

Post by nyanpasu64 » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:49 PM UTC

shpongled wrote: post #303

HanP77 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I've been working has a web developer for two years after completing a bootcamp. Peoples often ask me questions because they think about doing the same. I always say to them that this is not for everbody, you are banging your head against the wall most of the time. Off course nothing beat that sensation when you finally found the problem or even when you get closer. But that has to be your thing.

> I always say to them that this is not for everbody, you are banging your head against the wall most of the time This is what I tell people who want to get into bench science. It's funny, because I find programming to be an escape from the 'head-banging' of science. At least when I get stuck debugging a programming issue, I know that there is a fix, and I'll eventually find it. Compare that to science, where you mig…

Not all CS algorithmic or systems design problems, you know there _is_ a fix.

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

#313

Post by chosenbreed37 » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #307

ipnon wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be a little crazy to want to spend your life trying to get these damned things to work.

You don’t have to be crazy to be great at programming, but it helps. My own anecdata suggests that best programmers are the craziest ones. But that’s also true for just about every other field that requires extensive self discipline to master.

> My own anecdata suggests that best programmers are the craziest ones. But that’s also true for just about every other field that requires extensive self discipline to master.

That's interesting. I can see this being true for Math, Astrophysics, Genetics, etc. Somehow it doesn't ring true for Law, Accounting, or Actuarial Science

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

#314

Post by burntoutfire » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

radford-neal wrote: post #204

gedy wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "There remains the possibility that a toxic culture in high school has prevented some students from realizing that they are interested in computers" I take some issue if the characterization is "the nerds" are the toxic ones here. It's been a while, but the high school culture was overall toxic if you were not attractive and popular, and computer geek types were frequently targets for their interests. Young women w…

I didn't mean to imply that the "nerds", or any of the students, were "toxic". It's the culture. Probably starting with the whole concept of segregating teenagers from the rest of society.

Interestingly, there was almost no bullying in my high school in Poland in the nineties. I think school bullying may be a product of Anglo-Saxxon culture, which is very individualistic, success oriented (i.e. if you're a "loser" you're barely a human being) and also kind of heartless. Currently, as Poland converges to the standard of global culture emanating from the US, there are reports of some cases of bullying, but still I don't think it's the everyday reality of each school.

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

#315

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

rjsw wrote: post #305

thaumasiotes wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I'm assuming that my experience is common, which it is. That's more than enough to disprove the idea "I'm not good enough at doing essay style exams to pass a CS degree". Everyone is that good, because there is no minimum essay-skill requirement to pass a CS degree. Are you thinking that the only CS degree you could conceivably otherwise have passed also had a strict essay requirement?

What style of CS exams were the ones that you took, multiple choice ?

They were math tests. Commonly proofs. Sometimes things like "calculate the result of this addition in this ALU".

Sometimes also things like "what is the output of a lexer?" ("A stream of tokens."), or "identify the bug in this code snippet".

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

#316

Post by ahartmetz » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

commandlinefan wrote: post #261

ipnon wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to be a little crazy to want to spend your life trying to get these damned things to work.

... and never be appreciated for it. ("why did it take so long?")

Money is a quite sincere form of appreciation :)

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

#317

Post by zxcmx » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:52 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #64

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…

That pretty much lays out one of the more standard explanations for why more women don't go into CS. Things arguably changed in the early 80s with the rise of PCs and gaming. While programming certainly existed before that, it wasn't something that most kids were exposed to in high school and CS curricula in general were heavily theory oriented and often in the Math department. Today, if you want to be a mechanical e…

The observation re: engineers who never set foot in a machine shop is actually a real problem in industry, and a common cause of antagonism between engineers and the victims of their designs and drawings: machinists and fabricators.

There's a huge class divide in engineering between designing the the thing and making the thing, despite the fact that the two activities might require equal skill in different ways, or that sometimes making a thing to spec might be harder than doing the design work.

The best engineers have mechanical and process sympathy.

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

#318

Post by ntsplnkv2 » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:53 PM UTC

superhuzza wrote: post #122

battertenr wrote: post #47

The reason is because it is a terrible job. Unlikely 90% of other jobs, you have to mentally burn your brain out each day, constantly learn new things, and focus intensely, supposedly for 8 hours. The reward is nothing, not even good pay outside of a couple of tech giants in the USA. If you compare it to a trade, there is a night and day difference to your mental health. The wage data in this article is meaningless b…

>No sane person dreams of sitting at a computer all day doing harder things than everybody else sitting at the computer and making average pay. Not only that, but most employers would rather pay a person $5 an hour to make their app from somewhere in yemin then they would hire a local person. A bit arrogant to assume that your job is harder than everybody else's - most people feel that way. And pretty much any office…

Let me know when a company outsources their Finance department to India...

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

#319

Post by AlwaysRock » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

Eh. I grew up in a rural area. Took two basic coding classes in high school but I didnt realize being a developer was a real option for anyone other than very smart math lovers. My college didnt have an actual computer science program. I don't think I would have been an amazing developer but I think I could have done the job, and would have, if I knew it was a realist option at an earlier age.

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

#320

Post by csa » Mon, Jun 29, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

I thought about adding CS as a second major. Then I saw how much the CS majors had to work. The CS program at my alma mater has/had a reputation for having some extremely time intensive courses — iirc, some courses had weekly homework assignments that took 20-40 hours per week (per course). Maybe it was just a few courses that were weeder courses, but I didn’t think that was the best use of my time in college. It seemed excessive and perhaps abusive in a hazing kind of way. Maybe they thought having ENIAC on display would motivate people through the grind.

I didn’t mind working hard in school, but I definitely wanted to explore things outside of coursework.

I also already knew how to program, and I didn’t need a CS major to get programming work. The benefits of a CS degree just didn’t seem to be worth that much at the time (this was decades ago, so it may be different now).