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New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

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Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#71

Post by sliverstorm »

tghw wrote: post #26
mjwalshe wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you do need to have a wider range than just CS In fact a lot of what industy needs is more Computer Enginering and lees hyper secpecialised CS majors - you dont see Audi or Mercedes saying we need engineers lets train a load of physicists.

Computer Engineering is generally hardware and firmware design, something that is becoming less and less important as generalized processors have become smaller, cheaper, and more powerful. At this point, almost everything can be done in software, so a Computer Science degree is more important. Also, your Audi/Mercedes analogy is flawed. Physicists and engineers are very different, and if they needed more engineers,…

Computer Engineer here- while I would selfishly argue that Computer Science is not more important, the CS field is even now still growing, while our field is contracting. I do not expect ours to ever go away entirely, but the answer is not to make everyone a CE.

I think maybe what mjwalshe is thinking about, is the Computer Scientist graduates who cannot even program.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#72

Post by eternalban »

serge2k wrote: post #58
eternalban wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"vocational school": I guess it is official now: IT programmers are the blue collar workers of the digital age. Nothing against hard working men and women regardless of the color of the[ir] collar, but software is a mind product and this disparages the true measure and worth of [what] we do as software engineers. [ edit ]

For a while now I've been thinking that there should be a divide between software engineers, programmers, and computer scientists. Software engineers should be considered the people who go out and design a system, who are the primary create force and technical experts. Programmers should be people who implement. Computer Scientists should be (mainly) scientists. I see a lot of people who I have gone through school wi…

The divide exists as a matter of practice; I do agree with you. But I think it a disservice to steer young people who gravitate to the field [from casting a wide net as far education goes]. My formal education background is BSEE (through which I learned to reason about systems) and MArch (through which I learned to think about total design of artifacts subject to orthogonal concerns). I have been happily coding since 16 years of age (20+ years professionally), but my one regret (as far as software goes) remains not hitting the CS fundamentals earlier, and I have been addressing that for the past few years. (I'll admit that back in engineering school we used to make fun of CSs ("is computer science? /snicker") Turns out the joke was on me!)

If you haven't seen this, I recommend this lecture by Dr. Alan Kay, that does address this issue (besides being a phenomenal talk):

http://tele-task.de/archive/video/flash/14029/

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#73

Post by YuriNiyazov »

chernevik wrote: post #68
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #57

I went to Stuyvesant HS 10 years ago, and I took all the CS classes that the school had offered from Mr. Zamansky ("Z", as we affectionately call him), and can add some more specific information as to why this was necessary. Stuyvesant opened in the beginning of the 20th century, and there are some vestigial components that should've been amputated long ago: in addition to the standard math, science, language (Englis…

"It's worth pointing out that none of the CS classes qualify for any graduation requirement." Wow. I've commented with others about the dangers of hyperfocus -- the flip side is denigration of CS by folks who are ostensibly guardians of "general education". [deletion, material sent in email to poster, probably should have been so in the first place] But at this point Zamansky has probably gone too far down this other…

You are right about Z and this other road, but it's sad to see other high schools be left in the last century. However, aside from Z, I don't know of any other potential champion who is inside Stuy to pick up the baton.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#74

Post by absconditus »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #42
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion class aside, it seems a loss to do away with geography, philosophy and foreign languages. I love that you guys had a shell and learned so many great tools, but I think programming is also enhanced by being exposed to many non-CS topics.

Compare unemployment rates in geography, philosophy and foreign languages. We need more CS people. We don't need more philosophers. (Though admittedly, knowledge of English or German might be very useful if you are coming from Romania.)

So school should be thought of as nothing but a job training program?

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#75

Post by kiiski »

jrockway wrote: post #8

I'm not sure it's a great idea to get so focused at such an early age. There's a lot to learn about the world when you're 14, and it might be good to explore a wide range of topics. (I personally took most of my "real" classes in high school, so by the time I got to college, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. After going to college for a year, I realized my needs would not be met in that way. But deciding at 20 is…

Here in Finland people have two different paths to choose from after the first (compulsory) 9 years of studying. The academic path means going to an upper high school and then to a university. The other option is to go to a vocational school, and then to either get a job, or continue to a university of applied sciences[1].

The system seems to be working pretty well. The vocational path has been gaining popularity all the time (at the moment I think almost 50% of students choose it). The academic path is still considered more prestigious though.

The main difference seems to be that here we make the decision when we're 16-17 years old.

[1]: The difference is that a University teaches "computer science" while a University of Applied Sciences teaches "software engineering". You can also go to a University from a vocational school, or to a UoAS from an upper high school, but usually people don't do that.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#76

Post by rdouble »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #57

I went to Stuyvesant HS 10 years ago, and I took all the CS classes that the school had offered from Mr. Zamansky ("Z", as we affectionately call him), and can add some more specific information as to why this was necessary. Stuyvesant opened in the beginning of the 20th century, and there are some vestigial components that should've been amputated long ago: in addition to the standard math, science, language (Englis…

Stuyvesant opened in the beginning of the 20th century, and there are some vestigial components that should've been amputated long ago

It's interesting to hear that Stuy requires drafting and shop. As a former NYC transplant I always thought it was more like a public prep school. My high school in rural Minnesota also required a year of shop, and drafting was one of the electives.

A few of my friends from high school focused on drafting and CAD, and have great jobs with architectural and engineering firms in the area. When I had to return for a while to deal with some family stuff, I could not find a local programming job to save my life.

NYC has continual construction, both with new buildings and public works projects. Drafting certainly seems antiquated, but perhaps there actually is a local need to get high performing students interested in the preliminaries of construction, civil engineering, city planning and other related fields?

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#78

Post by kiiski »

sliverstorm wrote: post #67
seer wrote: post #38

I am actually astonished that this is the first time something like this is tried in the US. And I also don't understand the negative comments here in HN - most of you guys probably had a passion for computers at even earlier age and would have enjoyed this kind of school greatly. Here In the Sofia (the capital of Bulgaria) this is long established practice - we have loosely specialized schools and students decide wh…

I also don't understand the negative comments here in HN I bet many HN'ers are remembering what they were like at that age. Sure, plenty of geeks started programming in kindergarden or what have you- but I know I didn't pick engineering until I was twenty, and when I was fourteen I still had no idea what I wanted to do. (Besides knowing that I liked woodshop) If I had been forced to decide back then, I probably would…

Even if you had chosen "wrong" when you were 14, surely you could have switched to engineering when you were 20. I think that's what he meant by saying that some of his friends ended up with surprising careers despite studying programming.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#79

Post by jmduke »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #42
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion class aside, it seems a loss to do away with geography, philosophy and foreign languages. I love that you guys had a shell and learned so many great tools, but I think programming is also enhanced by being exposed to many non-CS topics.

Compare unemployment rates in geography, philosophy and foreign languages. We need more CS people. We don't need more philosophers. (Though admittedly, knowledge of English or German might be very useful if you are coming from Romania.)

This is the wrong way to think about education. Learning is learning, regardless of job placement, and while I recognize the need for stronger STEM education it shouldn't come at the expense of equally important topics.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#80

Post by rdouble »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #42
rgrieselhuber wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion class aside, it seems a loss to do away with geography, philosophy and foreign languages. I love that you guys had a shell and learned so many great tools, but I think programming is also enhanced by being exposed to many non-CS topics.

Compare unemployment rates in geography, philosophy and foreign languages. We need more CS people. We don't need more philosophers. (Though admittedly, knowledge of English or German might be very useful if you are coming from Romania.)

According to census data from 2010, foreign language majors have a lower unemployment rate (5.2%) than computer science majors (5.6%). Geography (6.1%) and philosophy and religion (7.1%) don't fare as well, but are doing about as well as computer engineers (7.0%).

Worst off are clinical psychologists (19.1%), best off (0%) are actuaries, pharmacists, school administrators, and surprisingly, geologists and astronomers (!).

http://graphicsweb.wsj.com/documents/NILF1111/#term=

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