Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
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Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
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Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#2I see this a lot from small- and medium-sized business owners I interact with from time to time. They want CS graduates who can walk in the door and design and implement an entire system using a very specific set of (often closed-source, vendor-specific) tools with zero training. And they'd ideally like to pay no more than $40k/yr because, ya know, this person just got out of college!
CS knowledge is, I think, valued highly (or at least valued) in the tech sector itself, but once you leave the sphere of companies that make tech products for tech people, or if you happen to be outside one of the major software hubs, the atmosphere can become rather absurd. And who gets blamed by these business owners and managers? The CS programs, because they are clearly just a bunch of ivory tower jackasses who don't want people to have any useful knowledge. Ever. Ugh.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#3Well said.
University is not Job Skill training. CS Students are not Engineers because they have a degree. It takes years as someone's junior to learn "how it's done in the real world".
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#4I think there's a distinction to be made between Computer Science and Software Engineering as separate disciplines.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#5"Do you expect Chemistry students to walk out of school ready to begin work in a lab?"
Erm, yes? In fact, the folks I know who made it into industry and graduate school openly hated people who had come into their workspaces without that knowledge.
It is simply not possible for teachers to be able to keep up to date with the latest flavours in industry"
Then why the hell are we paying as much as we are for tuition? Every professional programmer I know worth any salt spends at least 5-10 hours a week in continuing education of one form or another (even if it's just reading about the new JS whatever on HN).
"I really have no time for developers who go on about how we should be teaching lambdas or mutability or tail recursion to 12 year olds or that kind of high horse gubbins."
A simple analogy will usually get the point across, and a simple disclaimer of "This is a better way of doing things, but don't worry about it" means your job of showing the door without getting sidetracked is complete.
~
The author mentions A-levels, so perhaps they aren't looking at college-level students, but even so that's no excuse for dumbing-down the subject matter.
That said, it is important to be able to explain these concepts without being technical--anyone who has dealt with piles of dishes understands stack semantics, anyone who has lived with other people in close proximity has a few intuitions about mutable state.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#6I see this a lot from small- and medium-sized business owners I interact with from time to time. They want CS graduates who can walk in the door and design and implement an entire system using a very specific set of (often closed-source, vendor-specific) tools with zero training. And they'd ideally like to pay no more than $40k/yr because, ya know, this person just got out of college! CS knowledge is, I think, valued…
A good part of this is that almost all software engineering is vocational, right? But it isn't always taught that way, and somehow in the public mind CS has become equated with "able to program computers".
This sucks two ways: first, it means that people with solid theoretical foundations in CS are derided if they can't--for example--get an iPhone to print to a wireless printer, and second (and worse!) it means that people who want to do something with computers think they can't because they don't have a CS degree. It's a sad state of affairs.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#7"It is a school’s job to churn out students who will be able to walk into a job in industry on day one and work in whatever language/paradigm is flavour du jour.
WRONG! We’re here to teach children the core concepts of Computer Science"
Am I the only one ticked off by the "WRONG!" in this post?
If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some form of fraud.
Schools like Waterloo in Canada do a great job of providing core concepts while providing the workforce with useful people. I'm an employer (who didn't go to Waterloo personally) and we love to see their interns come our way, as does LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and many others. The school realizes they're not good at making people useful, but they do what they can to help the student become useful by connecting them with the real world, while providing them with the core concepts to enable them to be successful in that position.
Maybe you're frustrated and getting a lot of opposition because you're WRONG!?
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#8"It is a school’s job to churn out students who will be able to walk into a job in industry on day one and work in whatever language/paradigm is flavour du jour. WRONG! We’re here to teach children the core concepts of Computer Science" Am I the only one ticked off by the "WRONG!" in this post? If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some…
Yes, what is reason for uppercase letters with an exclamation point? He seems angry.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#9Most IT professionals also don't have a clue what computer science is. Think your active directory sysadmin knows what a linked list is? I doubt it. That said, I don't think the points made are completely invalid[1]. I just dislike the norm of calling everyone who has anything to do with computing "IT."
[1]: (though I do softly disagree with some of them -- while chasing the latest tech trends shouldn't be a thing, things like language choices do matter, for example.)
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#10"It is a school’s job to churn out students who will be able to walk into a job in industry on day one and work in whatever language/paradigm is flavour du jour. WRONG! We’re here to teach children the core concepts of Computer Science" Am I the only one ticked off by the "WRONG!" in this post? If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some…
I guess I'm annoyed by the false dichotomy. I don't agree with you, though. I think the schools should teach theory. Anyone that can learn that theory (algorithms, data structures, computability) should probably be able to be useful without much trouble. That's been my experience with CS interns, at least.
edit: I also distinguish between CS and CE. I'd firmly agree with you that CE or other engineering oriented degree programs should be almost vocational.
edit: can't stick around to wait til I am allowed reply to you, karmelapple, so I have to reply by edit. I know some schools have a computer engineer degree, in addition to a computer science degree. I would say that mechanical & structural are applied physics, and EE and some others are more like applied math (in which I invite, but back away from the centuries old math/physics flamewars)