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The computer science degree isn’t dead

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Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#171

Post by __float »

lucianbr wrote: post #128
0xpgm wrote: post #116

Hypothetically if LLMs were possible in the early 90s, what would the software ecosystem look like today? Would it be 80s technology everywhere but widely deployed? Or would things have advanced further - better compilers, more ergonomic languages, better platforms etc? I don't know. But I suspect we'd still have needed people studying computer science to advance the state of the art. Now looking forward 30-40 years…

> better compilers, more ergonomic languages If anything it seems wide deployment of LLMs would go against this. When nobody writes code by hand anymore, who will care about the ergonomics of programming languages? And even if a few do care, how would you get adoption? I expect everyone will just use whatever is already used most.

Do you not review the code that LLMs output?

It seems that now more than ever, testing is important. But LLMs love to cheat the tests and make them superficially pass. If you're never reading the code, how do you know changes are reasonable?

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#172

Post by i-hate-sexpats »

mc32 wrote: post #98
anal_reactor wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I do the reverse of that. I dress like shit and when introducing myself I specifically use the word "immigrant" rather than "expat" because signalling high social position attracts people who want something from me but don't offer anything in return.

immigrants are people who tend to stay and don’t have plans to return to their home countries. Expats are temporary immigrants typically paid by their company to move and intend to move back to their home countries once the assignment is over.

[flagged]

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#174

Post by cindyllm »

i-hate-sexpats wrote: post #172
mc32 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

immigrants are people who tend to stay and don’t have plans to return to their home countries. Expats are temporary immigrants typically paid by their company to move and intend to move back to their home countries once the assignment is over.

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#175

Post by ironman1478 »

It's always been difficult for new grads to get jobs. Most new grads are a net negative for the first year or two because they're just not good at much and probably don't have the domain experience for their role. This was true 10 years and and it's probably worse now as the field has been flooded with people who don't actually enjoy doing CS and are doing it for money.

Companies will still hire new grads, but are being much more careful because the quality of new grads is just so low now. Even "experienced" engineers are having a hard time getting hired because they're honestly not that good but got in when the market just needed bodies. I think hiring is broken for people with more experience due to this.

I do feel bad that people went down a route believing there will be a career down the road for them. I do believe what would help is some sort of licensing. It would add an extra barrier, but there really needs to be a gate to prove some sort of competence because there are now way too many people in the industry who just aren't that good tbh. It's ruining the whole thing for people who do have drive and passion that now can't get in the door due to the skittishness of companies.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#176

Post by mc32 »

i-hate-sexpats wrote: post #172
mc32 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

immigrants are people who tend to stay and don’t have plans to return to their home countries. Expats are temporary immigrants typically paid by their company to move and intend to move back to their home countries once the assignment is over.

[flagged]

Perhaps less visible but also more numerous are the guys from China who are too poor to afford the bridewealth who go to poor SEAsian countries to find their brides but also can frequent the hourly hotels that cater specifically to Japanese to Chinese clientele. Euros and N. Americans stand out due to their physical differences.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#177

Post by gottorf »

le-mark wrote: post #2

> The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently placed unemployment for recent CS graduates in the United States at 6.1 percent, with computer engineering graduates at 7.5 percent. Compared to philosophy majors at 3.2 percent and art history graduates at 3.0 percent, those figures look alarming. Alarming doesn’t begin to describe it. This is an existential crises for our industry. The situation for entry level has be…

> Alarming doesn’t begin to describe it. This is an existential crises for our industry.

In my (admittedly vibes-based) opinion, this is just a result of there being a huge supply of CS grads in this country due to it being popularized as a path to a stable, high-paying job. Those degrees are now more often than ever held by people who aren't necessarily passionate about, or good at, the field.

The signal-to-noise ratio in hiring, therefore, is worse than ever. AI exacerbates the problem, of course. But I don't think this is an existential crisis; I think the market will sort itself out, as those less-qualified entrants leave.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#178

Post by bArray »

Der_Einzige wrote: post #160
bArray wrote: post #130

This article tackles the issue from a job opportunity perspective, but a bigger problem is the quality of students completing CS degrees is declining. UC Berkley are seeing it in their STEM departments [1] and I have seen the raw data for other Universities delivering CS degrees that is unpublished. Currently the only method to stop students from cheating is to run strictly controlled paper-based exams, and with smar…

Good good and good. Less competition for me, and "educators" are being punished HARD for their abrogation of their actual responsibilities, which was to teach and give exams. All exams should be verbal. The fact that verbal exams are so rare is because teachers/professors are overworked and (outside of AI) underpaid. Too many students, not enough time. The moment you pull up a powerpoint and start reading off of it,…

> Less competition for me, and "educators" are being punished HARD for their abrogation of their actual responsibilities, which was to teach and give exams.

Universities consist of a wide range of people with different incentives, the lecturers typically (in my experience) have very pure motives. It's the management parts that put pressure to pass students, meet metrics, etc.

> The moment you pull up a powerpoint and start reading off of it, or start assigning homework, you've already failed to implement the traditional liberal arts education that the humanities seems to fawn over so much.

Homework is essentially dead post-LLMs. The lecturer's responsibility is to provide guided learning, but also most importantly to assess each student's attempt to learn.

> There's ACTUALLY no solution to blooms two sigma problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem) except for teachers to fundamentally change their responsibilities. More time needs to be spent being intention to every individual student. If that means we need fewer students in universities, so be it. AI will kill the impenitence for higher education anyway.

You'd be surprised how much 1:1 with students there are. One example I'm aware of is CS students getting 4 hours 1:1 for one module per semester - that's a hell of a lot.

What you're ultimately up against is cost per student. The overheads in Universities are enormous. It's usually 40:60:+, so £40k pay, £60k overhead plus research and investment (conference paper, travel, journals, new tools, etc).

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#179

Post by deadbabe »

mxkopy wrote: post #159
deadbabe wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a frank conversation with a hiring manager about it. What he said was even if we hire juniors, juniors using AI are never going to rise to the level of our current seniors who built decades of experience without AI. So basically, today’s juniors are not worth investing in. Until society really sorts itself out with responsibile AI usage in a way that still develops independent professional skills, there is no p…

I love how the basic expectation of having a job and the life altering circumstance of not having one factors into this not even a little bit

Not sure what you mean, juniors are a poor ROI these days.

Re: The computer science degree isn’t dead

#180

Post by EsotericSoft »

taurath wrote: post #19

If one is thinking about not getting a degree and trying to go straight to work, as someone who did so (albiet out of poverty rather than choice) but didn't end up like Zuck, please heed my warning: Social capital matters more than just about anyone who has a degree can understand and tell you or mentor you about, because the majority of them have always had it, and they tend not even to interact with people without…

Opposite of my experience. I never cared about social networking. I focused only on being good.
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