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Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

computerworld.com

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Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#41

Post by gems »

rizzom5000 wrote: post #31
gems wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can say this happens with undergrads at UC Berkeley.

That's scary. Berkeley CS is one of the more selective programs in the US. Aren't the Intro to CS courses supposed to weed the fakers out?

They weed the people who don't want to do the work for the classes. That's all. The classes don't necessarily teach practical things. There are only 2-3 classes you have to take which involve "heavy" programming: data structures, operating systems, and the intro course which used to be based on SICP (if that doesn't count, pick one from the required breadth). Ironically, if you take the software engineering course here, you can end up in a group where your entire role is "testing". About a third of the upper division CS classes involve minimal to no programming whatsoever. There are also plenty of nontechnical classes you can take outside of the department which count towards the major.

Also this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5347363

Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#43

Post by socialist_coder »

ams6110 wrote: post #3

Anecdotally, as a part-time sysadmin at a university I've seen more than a few examples of "students" in a computer science Master's degree program who are obviously in it for the perceived job opportunities. But they don't seem to actually care about the subject. They copy and paste code from google search results and if it doesn't work they are helpless. They don't make any effort to understand what is happening or…

Big ancient companies who can afford to heavily manage and baby sit their programmers can use people like that. Not everyone needs to be a "rock star" in order to contribute.

Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#44

Post by RougeFemme »

purplelobster wrote: post #29
kirinan wrote: post #11

Computer Science is a very interesting degree. Having done the program myself, you learn math you will never use* and ton of other things that can be counted as useless, however I am better for it. Calculus taught me less about how to do Calculus (I don't remember how to do an integral, but I don't get paid to do that), but it did teach me how to study properly and that grinding (hard work) really can solve some issu…

I don't get this at all. I need my understanding of calculus, trig, discrete mathematics, probability/stats and especially linear algebra. Then again I do computer vision, but even building web apps (that do something non-trivial) in my spare time I end up using that knowledge. Basically, build trivial stuff (simple UIs and a RoR backend?) and you probably don't need math. For anything else, you'll be stuck without i…

I'm not a programmer but. . .unless you're coding an explicitly math-intensive application, aren't there tools that could do any math that's required? Of course, the tool would have to come from a trusted source.

Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#45

Post by RougeFemme »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #40
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

I suspect it'll be like the dotcom bubble: zillions of students signing up because they heard you can get rich this way (and by happy coincidence you don't need the high scores needed to get into law or medicine). Eventually there's a popping noise and such folk leave the industry for sunnier pastures. The rest of us go back to being wildly unpopular and bickering amongst ourselves about the finer points of ... well,…

Here's a question: Imagine this new bubble has just popped, 5 or 50 years from now. What do people looking to both learn something of substance and be highly compensated for it study? Biotech? Engineering? Materials science?

Possibly something that most of us haven't thought of/aren't aware of currently.

Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#46

Post by jacques_chester »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #40
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

I suspect it'll be like the dotcom bubble: zillions of students signing up because they heard you can get rich this way (and by happy coincidence you don't need the high scores needed to get into law or medicine). Eventually there's a popping noise and such folk leave the industry for sunnier pastures. The rest of us go back to being wildly unpopular and bickering amongst ourselves about the finer points of ... well,…

Here's a question: Imagine this new bubble has just popped, 5 or 50 years from now. What do people looking to both learn something of substance and be highly compensated for it study? Biotech? Engineering? Materials science?

I don't feel qualified to predict what professions will be well compensated in 50 years. Some of them don't exist yet.

5 years? Still no idea.

Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#48

Post by RougeFemme »

kirinan wrote: post #11

Computer Science is a very interesting degree. Having done the program myself, you learn math you will never use* and ton of other things that can be counted as useless, however I am better for it. Calculus taught me less about how to do Calculus (I don't remember how to do an integral, but I don't get paid to do that), but it did teach me how to study properly and that grinding (hard work) really can solve some issu…

I think the value of almost any math class is that it teaches you to think logically, weed out noise (in data). . .both of which are valuable traits for programming.

Re: Computer science enrollments soared 30% last year

#49

Post by wissler »

invalidOrTaken wrote: post #40
jacques_chester wrote: post #28

I suspect it'll be like the dotcom bubble: zillions of students signing up because they heard you can get rich this way (and by happy coincidence you don't need the high scores needed to get into law or medicine). Eventually there's a popping noise and such folk leave the industry for sunnier pastures. The rest of us go back to being wildly unpopular and bickering amongst ourselves about the finer points of ... well,…

Here's a question: Imagine this new bubble has just popped, 5 or 50 years from now. What do people looking to both learn something of substance and be highly compensated for it study? Biotech? Engineering? Materials science?

Ideally look at the kinds of problems that are difficult and important and that we have a long way to go in, such as nanotech, biotech, and materials science. Compensation ought to be more or less irrelevant, you just want to do something worthwhile and get paid enough that you can keep doing it.
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