Please don't teach kids PHP. Fucking anything but PHP.
Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
71–80 of 92 posts
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author teaches CS to 11-18 year old students. In the UK School != University
I think there's a major problem with terminology here, because high schools don't teach computer science. They may teach programming, but I've never heard of one that taught anything remotely resembling computer science.
It's a recent thing! The blog post talks about the "CAS Community". CAS stands for Computing At School, it's a movement to introduce computer science as a subject in British schools. http://computingatschool.org.uk/
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#73Spoken exactly like what I'd expect from a teaching field that is doing everything possible to obsolete itself. Look, let me sum up the problem with CS education in a nutshell: today, when I think about hiring someone, I basically don't care about their CS education. This is increasingly what I hear from my colleagues as well. Degree in CS means more or less nothing. Notice that that's not the case in Chemistry (sinc…
The author is not teaching degrees, she's teaching a high school class. There's a clarification at the top of the article (in italics, directly after the heading), appropriate commentary peppered throughout the article body, and half a dozen comments here on HN to that effect. I'm astounded that so many people are pinging the author for not being on the ball, yet missing all the massive signposts saying "This is a hi…
I think that disclaimer was added after the fact. I don't remember it being there when I read this story the first time. Either way, I didn't see it at all when I read the article. I'm willing to admit that I'm just not on the ball, but the fact that a bunch of people missed it is rather telling, isn't it?
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author teaches CS to 11-18 year old students. In the UK School != University
Some perspective, but doesn't necessarily change my point. Why should we allow CS to be bludgeoned into the same awful educational pattern of memorization and ...irrelevance... that we've allowed to happen to mathematics? Students often hate math because of the awful, disconnected, uninspired way it is taught. Spend time teaching students how to make games with Unity or iPhone apps or whatever! Not only can teachers…
I'm not sure what your experience is with kids of high school age, but in my experience (around 10 years of teaching high school CS) it's very rare to find kids who are capable of jumping into a complex environment and learning much from it. The vast majority, whilst they are interested in writing games or mobile apps etc get discouraged by the weight of new concepts and just tune out unless they get spoon fed everything.
Back when Flash was more in favour I used to do ActionScript programming with my 15 year olds as a basic course since it was relatively easy to wrap your head around building something to look at and then attach code to it (one of the few redeeming features of Visual Basic) and even then few kids coped well.
I've yet to see much success from high schools I've visited that tout courses that involve mobile development and what have you that don't also have very large pools of students and significant streaming of those kids into the CS course.
Now it could be quite valid to argue that perhaps I'm just not good enough at teaching, but I've seen enough top end success with my students that I don't think that's enough to explain it away.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#75Doesn't this have a simple solution? Break down CS into componets just like Chemistry has Chemical Engineering or Physics has Mechanical Engineering. Offer different types of courses: Computer Literacy (for those completely new to computers), Software Development (for those wanting to work with computers vocationally), and Computer Science (for those who want to become Researchers). Maybe the Computer Science route should be known to take longer and more effort (generally speaking) as well. Maybe Computer Scientists need to know both theory and industry thoroughly?
Also the reason why Physics has: Mechanical Engineering but Computer Science has no vocational counterpart is because: there is money in Computer Science. Microsoft could not afford to not do R&D. Computer Science research can pay off within 5-10 years. Theoretical Physics research cannot. :P
So the industry tends to be as up to date as Computer Scientist are while there is money to be such. (Although, I have met plenty of programmers who do not understand theoretical computer science topics).
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
You realise that the post was about high school, right? It's all very well getting on the high horse about degrees in CS, but that isn't the case in point.
Yeah saw after the fact that that was mentioned, my point stands for college degrees though (which I have indeed heard similar opinions on). In this case... I guess I just find the premise that a bunch of industry people are telling her what to teach some high schoolers a little hard to believe/overblown (but I guess I'm not from the UK so maybe its common there to do that?). But yeah, sure, teach them whatever you w…
I really wouldn't go so far as saying teach whatever you want (I teach CS in high school), but in Australia as well I get industry PD sessions where we get fed totally unrealistic expectations for the level most teenagers are operating at.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#77Spoken exactly like what I'd expect from a teaching field that is doing everything possible to obsolete itself. Look, let me sum up the problem with CS education in a nutshell: today, when I think about hiring someone, I basically don't care about their CS education. This is increasingly what I hear from my colleagues as well. Degree in CS means more or less nothing. Notice that that's not the case in Chemistry (sinc…
What you seem to want is a Software Engineering degree. They exist. Hire people with those degrees if that's what you're looking for.
My CS degree was about 50/50 CS and programming. I felt is was a good balance, but there was still tons I needed to learn on the job. I'd never done web dev outside of that one weekend I checked out codecademy. I'd never set up a web server or pulled a repo from github or any of the other things you'd want me to be able to do in industry, because they weren't a part of my education. I did write a tcp/ip server from scratch, make Roombas write things, and the like, because those were part of my education, but none of that has come in handy in my current job.
There's a real divide between what education is and what industry leaders think it should be. It has never been and likely will never be about churning out job-ready young adults with all the skills industry wants. That's vocational school, not university. Don't confuse the two.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author is not teaching degrees, she's teaching a high school class. There's a clarification at the top of the article (in italics, directly after the heading), appropriate commentary peppered throughout the article body, and half a dozen comments here on HN to that effect. I'm astounded that so many people are pinging the author for not being on the ball, yet missing all the massive signposts saying "This is a hi…
I think that disclaimer was added after the fact. I don't remember it being there when I read this story the first time. Either way, I didn't see it at all when I read the article. I'm willing to admit that I'm just not on the ball, but the fact that a bunch of people missed it is rather telling, isn't it?
In one of the final paragraphs, she repeats 'teaching children' a couple of times, and the language in the rest of the article is high-school-related. It's not just the disclaimer. For example, how many people do post-graduate study in Education, then teach at University? Apart from the people teaching Education itself, it's a vanishingly small number.
the fact that a bunch of people missed it is rather telling, isn't it
Not particularly, given that the author's criticism is that folks in our industry give her short shrift and ignore what she has to say. It actually plays directly into her criticism that a bunch of us just tilted at her windmill without bothering to understand what it is that she actually does first.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think there's a major problem with terminology here, because high schools don't teach computer science. They may teach programming, but I've never heard of one that taught anything remotely resembling computer science.
It's a recent thing! The blog post talks about the "CAS Community". CAS stands for Computing At School, it's a movement to introduce computer science as a subject in British schools. http://computingatschool.org.uk/
Interesting. It looks like the real deal, too. I'm not sure if it's entirely wise. I think the stuff that makes up CS as opposed to software engineering is inherently high-level and fits best into university teaching (sort of like how you learn algebra and maybe calculus in high school, but nothing that a mathematician would consider "math"), but I certainly could be wrong about that.
Re: Misconceptions that IT professionals seem to have about CS education
#80For whatever reason, the author and the comments are experiencing a huge disconnect in expectations.
1. The author appears to be talking about pre-university level CS education. 2. The "IT Professionals" and the commenters here appear to be talking about CS Degrees (undergrad and up) and their relevance to jobs/hiring.
I do not see how those two connect. In fact, I argue that they shouldn't be related at all. Teaching children, especially at the age the author mentions - 12 year olds - is not about preparing them for future work. Most children at that age don't even know what they want to be yet. So what is taught and how it is taught cannot be judged by how useful it would be in employment.
No one here is making any sense. I also find it funny that the author uses teaching a secondary language as a comparison because the manner in which the US (and other countries like Japan) teach secondary languages is all manners of messed up. The system and approaches used in secondary language education do not produce fluency or even long term retention.