Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education • Hacker News Board

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#11

Post by army » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:34 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #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? Ev…

That's like saying that ever programmer in industry should spend 5-10 hours a week keeping up with the latest CS research on top of the work they put into their continuing education. It's just not reasonable to expect academics to know the latest JQuery or Enterprise Confabulator or whatever API.

If you're doing CS education, you have a very small window of opportunity at the start of someone's career to teach them things that they're not necessarily going to pick up working in industry. You really need to think about what you can teach them that will allow them to be prepared for 30-40 year careers and whatever technological changes that brings.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#12

Post by TheSOB88 » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:36 PM UTC

_RPM wrote: post #8

verelo wrote: post #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…

Yes, what is reason for uppercase letters with an exclamation point? He seems angry.

The article author is a woman. Also, a lot of people are missing that she is talking about children, not university students. She teaches A-levels, or the equivalent to AP classes here.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#13

Post by army » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:38 PM UTC

glesica wrote: post #2

I 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…

I think there's also another point, which is that the endpoint isn't to churn out CS students to be good workers that plug immediate needs in industry: it's to produce graduates are going to have the tools to do things better and maybe even put the existing people out of business.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#14

Post by snowwrestler » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:39 PM UTC

It's a great subtle troll that the title refers to professional programmers as "IT professionals."

They of course don't think of themselves that way; they're "developers", "engineers", or "hackers." To them, IT is the poor guy installing Adobe Reader on the manager's PC.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#15

Post by karmelapple » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:40 PM UTC

throwaway5752 wrote: post #10

verelo wrote: post #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…

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 degr…

I'm curious what the "computer science" equivalent in the engineering world would be.

All of the engineering majors study a particular type of engineering: mechanical, electrical, computer, construction.

There's no "engineering science" program that I'm aware of that would teach the theory behind engineering and award a degree just for that. Instead, the engineering student must understand that way of thinking simultaneously while learning the practical components of the degree (analyzing free-body diagram forces, producing printed circuit boards, building physical objects for competitions, etc).

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#16

Post by sp332 » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:43 PM UTC

karmelapple wrote: post #15

throwaway5752 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 degr…

I'm curious what the "computer science" equivalent in the engineering world would be. All of the engineering majors study a particular type of engineering: mechanical, electrical, computer, construction. There's no "engineering science" program that I'm aware of that would teach the theory behind engineering and award a degree just for that. Instead, the engineering student must understand that way of thinking simult…

They would probably study some form of math or maybe theoretical physics, which is basically just math ;)

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#17

Post by anorwell » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #14

It's a great subtle troll that the title refers to professional programmers as "IT professionals." They of course don't think of themselves that way; they're "developers", "engineers", or "hackers." To them, IT is the poor guy installing Adobe Reader on the manager's PC.

Referring to people who build software as "IT" is a UK thing. The author is from the UK.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#18

Post by MarcScott » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:45 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #14

It's a great subtle troll that the title refers to professional programmers as "IT professionals." They of course don't think of themselves that way; they're "developers", "engineers", or "hackers." To them, IT is the poor guy installing Adobe Reader on the manager's PC.

The original title doesn't mention anything about IT professionals. The title has been (sensibly) moderated as "Hands up who likes PHP?" didn't really summaries the gist of the post.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#19

Post by grecy » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:46 PM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #14

It's a great subtle troll that the title refers to professional programmers as "IT professionals." They of course don't think of themselves that way; they're "developers", "engineers", or "hackers." To them, IT is the poor guy installing Adobe Reader on the manager's PC.

They of course don't think of themselves that way; they're "engineers"

My Software Engineering degree is accredited by the Australian Institute of Engineers. I am an Engineer.

Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education

#20

Post by na85 » Wed, Jun 04, 2014, 9:46 PM UTC

verelo wrote: post #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…

>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.

This is a huge distortion of the point the author is making.

The author is not saying "schools should be paid to churn out students that are not useful."

The author is saying "schools should be paid to churn out students *already equipped with the skills they will need to learn once they get to the work force."

Anyone, and this includes you, that expects a fresh CS graduate to "hit the ground running" with no adjustment period and to be fluent in whatever language/toolset you decide is important is deluded.

The point of a CS education is not to master every library, every IDE, and every language. The point of a CS education is to master the fundamentals so that even if you learned Java in school, you can spend a weekend learning the syntax of Swift because really that's all that's different. You already know object-oriented design (or whatever).

The problem is that employers expect new employees to start being profitable on day 1, when that is absurd. There's always a learning period, even for a seasoned veteran. Whether that learning period is 3 weeks or 3 months, there's always a learning period and I wish employers would get this through their seemingly think skulls.