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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

#111

Post by snikolov »

dr_ wrote: post #106

This is interesting, but I'm not certain there need be an institution with just a heavy interest on software engineering. The article suggests that there are those who may not be proficient at other academic pursuits, but may have a keen interest in software engineering. To be honest, most of those kids are the types who will start coding/hacking on their own, not sure if a special school is needed for this. Plus the…

To be honest, most of those kids are the types who will start coding/hacking on their own, not sure if a special school is needed for this

I might be a special case but for what it's worth: I didn't start programming until I was a freshman at Stuyvesant High School. I took the intro course on a whim and was hooked. If the computer science program didn't exist, I might not have gotten into it. I was more into art than math/cs back then. I didn't have much of an environment to discover that I loved programming before that, and I bet many other kids don't either.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#112

Post by jedc »

tokenadult wrote: post #61
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 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 Specialized high schools are moderately common in the United States, some organized as general public schools, and some organized as "charter" schools (a form of regulation in the United States with public funding, but less public funding than most schools, and some…

Wow... it's been ages since I thought of UMTYMP. I went through two years of UMTYMP, and it was the most amazing program. In those two years we covered four years of high school math. It taught me math quick, and also how to work hard.

A side benefit is that because I was taking math at the University of Minnesota outside school hours, I had a free period at school when I would normally take math. (Along with two friends.) We had free reign over our Macintosh computer lab for nearly an hour a day for two years and it was AWESOME. I programmed some pretty wicked stuff in Hypercard, messed around with ripping audio from TV shows onto the computer, fked around on the school's network, and loved it all. (I'm dating myself a bit; this was around 1990-1992 or so.)

Programs like this are amazingly awesome, and they should spread far more than they do.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#113

Post by zamansky »

blueprint wrote: post #6
danjvowelsn wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a question: how does he always come up with such brilliant ideas for Halloween costumes?

This is just a guess but he's been teaching for long enough that each year he probably keeps an eye out for concepts that he can use during Halloween and then works on the ones he judges to be the best. Some say brilliance is often a product of hard work over a long time.

actually, I generally procrastinate until early October and than something hits me.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#114

Post by [deleted] »

asnyder wrote: post #84
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…

As a Brooklyn Tech grad, we too had the shop and technical drafting requirements, though we also had a major system, which included Computer Science ( http://www.bths.edu/majordesc/CompSci.jsp ) as an option, which is technically required for graduation since it's your major. The courses offered as part of the major has changed since then, we had C++, Networking, and Computer Architecture, in addition to Java and Web…

[deleted]

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#115

Post by eigenvector »

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 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.

And who, exactly, do you think is designing these new processors?

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#116

Post by spitfire »

mjwalshe wrote: post #97
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting question. Certainly, I know of a few people that after high school got urban planning degrees and seem to be happy in their jobs, so I am not one to denigrate fields related to construction. However, on a daily basis I am bombarded with articles that say how the supply of software engineers is low, but I don't often see articles that says that the supply of mechanical and civil engineers is low. O…

Not according to Ross Brawn (you know the Best car designer in the world) - He and Mercedes have gone on the record that the CS grads are hopeless as they don't know the mathamatics to do CFD. Though the last time I used my Mech side was to point out to an engineer in the 4th largest Civil Engineers that he had used the wrong equations for a bridge design.

Do you have any links to his comments? I agree with him (Most ruby "hackers" couldn't write a single line of code for an F1 car), and feel they also don't have enough soft skills, I'd like to see his view on the matter.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#117

Post by mace »

asnyder wrote: post #84
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…

As a Brooklyn Tech grad, we too had the shop and technical drafting requirements, though we also had a major system, which included Computer Science ( http://www.bths.edu/majordesc/CompSci.jsp ) as an option, which is technically required for graduation since it's your major. The courses offered as part of the major has changed since then, we had C++, Networking, and Computer Architecture, in addition to Java and Web…

I went to Brooklyn Tech as well and 'majored' in CS. Going into college, it was a huge advantage (maybe disadvantage in hindsight since I became bored in most of my 1st and 2nd year courses.)

I haven't seen the curriculum for this new school, but I hope they balance the theoretical with the practical. I hope it doesn't churn kids who end up being cheap labor for the big IT companies in NYC and who don't see Computer Science as a discipline and an art.

Looking back to my CS classes at Tech, I still recall what I learned about basic data structures and common algorithms. Heck, I still remember and find useful the things I learned about assembly.

The things I don't find useful and wish I could forget: Visual C++ and Windows programming.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#119

Post by Daniel_Newby »

botker wrote: post #66
yummyfajitas wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

We don't need more Continental philosophers. We need all the Analytic philosophers we can get. A curriculum that emphasizes rigorous thinking skills and logic is an invaluable foundation for CS as well as every other valuable human endeavor.

Philosophy also teaches one to carefully define terms and examine underlying assumptions. Clearly stating the problem often makes the solution obvious.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#120

Post by mkramlich »

from the article:

"Starting salaries for smart programmers from top schools are flirting with the $100,000 mark. "

By that logic, we better start churning out more doctors, lawyers and CEOs because, gosh, the salaries for those folks are flirting way way past the $100k mark. And we can't have that!

"One of the reasons the elite US colleges seem to turn out so few computer science majors every year is that they are only drawing from a narrow pool of mostly white and asian males."

Ooooh... we definitely can't have that! There's also a startingly low percentage of redheads and part-time harpists. Let's fix this, stat.

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