What happened in late 2009? I saw the same inflection point in those redmonk github usage graphs.
Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
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Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#22Sure the interest is high, but what's the dropout rate for people, and what is the rate of people switching to other majors?
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#23How about "Possibly, they see people making ridiculous amounts of money in tech and want a piece of it?"
True. However, as a graduating CS major, almost every non-CS major I know here and at other schools has taken some programming-focused class or done Codecademy or something. Few if any are looking for what we might think of as "tech" jobs, or are motivated primarily by any promise of money. I can anecdotally attest to the fact that all the reasons listed by the author are playing a significant role.
(As a side note, a fair number of the people I know who are doing straight up startup-style "tech" jobs after graduation aren't even CS majors.)
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#24One of the most interesting (and to me) significant points about this is the amount of non-CS majors taking CS classes.
My father, in his 70's, has run several large corporations over his career. We discussed this and he sees no need for "managers to learn to program". His view is that they can just hire computer people. I disagree. My experience is that if you don't know the basics of programming it's hard to know what to even ask for or what is possible. To say nothing of all the time saving personally writing little half hour scripts to do this and that.
My opinion is that anyone who is serious about a professional career involving information is very well served to know a bit of programming and handicapped if they refuse. I think maybe this realization is finally hitting home with others as well and this is partially responsible for the trend we are seeing (to say nothing of the perception of vast fortunes possible in startups).
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#25What is the biggest reason for this growth?
I can speak to a few anecdotal factors having recently graduated from Stanford.
1) The current tech boom. There's the perception of being able to easily create a startup or to get a programming job at a tech company. Some major in computer science also for the technical skills it gives even though they plan not to pursue programming as a job. They may want to become a PM, or a related non day-to-day programming role for which understanding technical concepts is important.
2) Financial downturn of 08. Many students who would have previously majored in economics or finance have chosen computer science due to the folding of many investment banks as well as the increasing negative perception of working on Wall Street.
3) Increase in diversity of the major. The major has become more interdisciplinary. You used to be required to take very "hardcore" classes like operating systems and compilers. Now though with the rise of fields like HCI the major has become more diverse.
4) Social tipping-point. There is a common joke at Stanford that everyone is a CS major. More people majoring in CS means more help from peers who have been through the same classes and can help out. This social support leads to the positive feedback loop of more people entering the major.
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#26Professionals who talk about this stuff never mention that learning computer science is a lot like learning a foreign language. The people who learn something in their early years tend to have an easier time learning new computer skills as they age. I wish more parents knew this.
Programming and graphic design perhaps (personally, I've yet to meet someone who programmed as a child who was better than a good programmer who learned later), but I really doubt there is much of an advantage to teaching your child Depth-First Search. I don't really think CS is like learning a foreign language at all. The advantage for languages supposedly comes from the fact that we are hard-wired to acquire langua…
> but I really doubt there is much of an advantage to teaching your child Depth-First Search
There is a huge advantage if you can teach it to him in a way that he can understand it, not just memorize the algorithm, like the unfortunate way kids learn to divide and multiply without understanding wtf they are actually doing, which is a big IF. It's a basic reasoning skill, even more basic than "basic logic" or arithmetic and if you can wire it into a very young mind you've changed that mind for ever. He will understand much better anything from philosophy to the theory of evolution, because you will have primed the mind for algorithms and logic. It doesn't matter if he ends up an investment bank manager or a politician, he will have learned how to understand algorithmic thinking.
90% of the population are, imho, what I call "mud-minds", they are incapable of deep understanding of logic and algorithmic knowledge, they can just learn instructions and apply them, sometimes to great results, but they don't "grok" them. And when it comes to truly abstract concepts that have no direct equivalent in the real world, they can only recite definitions from books, they have no "intuitive vision" of abstractions. And I think they are like this because their parents and teachers fed them a strict diet of 100% practical knowledge and scientific facts and never exposed them to abstract algorithms, patterns and processes. (As a different line of thinking, I think "separating the mind from reality" also helps young minds get a better grip of abstraction, like "running" an algorithm or visualizing a pattern as pieces of a fantasy world or advice of an imaginary companion, though child psychologists would obviously not be happy of such ideas of education...)
By teaching your kid something like depth-first-search (A* search on a game maze map would be even more awesome if you can grab a kid's attention though...), you give him a chance of not becoming such a "mud mind".
True, if a kid is technically oriented, you'll probably have more luck teaching him/her general programming before a bunch of algorithms. But the algorithms are the stuff that really "sharpens the mind" and you don't even need programming to get them, they can be explained in more mathematical or more graphical terms. And you don't even need a computer to teach a kid depth-first-search and you don't even have to tell him how it's called or what it is, just try and imprint a deep intuitive understanding of the process and algorithm on his mind.
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#27If I was going into college this fall, instead of 15+ years ago, I'd focus on EE, ME, or Physics and just cherry pick advanced CS courses on the side.
If I was going to college this fall instead of 20 years ago I would get a tattoo on my arm reminding me that extra classes and networking pay off better long term than drinking beer and getting laid.
But... I'd probably do the same thing all over again anyway.
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#28What I'd be interested in, if anyone has a perspective to share, is whether we should be worried? Will the job market change? Will our salaries stagnate or fall?
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#29I didn't understand this: "10% of Princeton’s students are computer science majors Far more at MIT 10% of Princeton’s faculty are unlikely to ever be in computer science! Ditto" It's the last two lines I don't understand. 10% of currently existing faculty are not likely to work in the CS department? Or it's unlikely that in the future 10% of Princeton faculty will work in the CS department? And the 'ditto'? Far more…
Before the dot.com bust, for decades MIT's EECS department had 40% of the undergraduates (there's several degrees there, all require some CS and EE, the two relevant ones would be the CS focused one, 6-3, which few take nowadays, and the one that's sort of split between both, 6-2, which if I remember correctly is now the most common one).
That fell by more than 1/2 after the crash, but as of late, like other schools such as Stanford, it's gone back up significantly, fairly close to the old numbers.
However the Institute has always keep the department's size proportionately much smaller, like 6% if I remember the '80s figures correctly. That's because history is littered with formerly extremely popular fields like aeronautics which at some point crashed and never returned (aero/astro did so in the early '70s). So even for MIT far less than 10% of its faculty will "ever be in computer science" given your latter interpretation of the phrase and the fact that many EECS faculty are EE types.
Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]
#30This is evidence that programming has become a skill akin to literacy. The migration seems similar to the hypothetical situation in which universities and society had primarily been based on an oral tradition of communication, and then this fancy new technology called "writing" appeared (at first only in "Departments of orthography science"). Some of those who majored in "orthography science" would go on to study it,…
Yes. Would love to see programming as a commodity skill as writing so that real programmers can become writers that pursue the medium as an art and human expression rather than entrepreneurship; and entrepreneurship programming standardized and professionalized as accounting or communications fields.
And also Theory of Computation moved to mathematics, Bioinformatics moved to the life sciences. Digital humanities into the humanities. And only then CS departments focus on only the aesthetics of software architecture and the interpretation of software code as a testament to the creators' socioeconomic influence of the time and to the academic's present-time critical theories.