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

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

#81

Post by grecy » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 12:54 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #35

grecy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is everyone who writes software in Australian similarly accredited? Is there a legal prohibition on calling yourself a "software engineer" in the absence of such credentials? In the U.S., neither of those are true. I'm curious about how Australia might differ.

> Is everyone who writes software in Australian similarly accredited?

No. Someone could just study Computer Science and still write code.

> Is there a legal prohibition on calling yourself a "software engineer" in the absence of such credentials?

Unfortunately not. In Australia you seem to be able to call yourself anything you want with no consequence. At my previous company we had "Sales Engineers" and "Solutions Engineers" - even though none of them had been to University.

I doubt anyone would put "B.Eng" after their name unless it was real though.

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

#82

Post by hunterloftis » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 5:11 AM UTC

cproctor wrote: post #70

I'm a middle-school Computer Science teacher at an all-girls' school where CS has been promoted to a core subject. And a software developer. I don't see much substantial disagreement between the OP's post and the comments here--she's basically making three points: 1. The (secondary) education system's role is to show students how to engage with the field, not tailor their training to the specifics of a job posting. I…

1. Must the two be mutually exclusive? Teaching students irrelevant or outdated skills is a great way to encourage them to dismiss the profession as old, stodgy, useless, etc.

2. That's true. Is there a reason not to fudge the details of a current, employable technology stack?

3. Let's examine the logical extremes. On the one hand you have an incompetent teacher who can nevertheless communicate well. On the other hand you have a competent teacher who is a poor communicator. Frankly, I would rather have the latter. Otherwise, what's the point?

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

#83

Post by cproctor » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 5:51 AM UTC

hunterloftis wrote: post #82

cproctor wrote: post #70

I'm a middle-school Computer Science teacher at an all-girls' school where CS has been promoted to a core subject. And a software developer. I don't see much substantial disagreement between the OP's post and the comments here--she's basically making three points: 1. The (secondary) education system's role is to show students how to engage with the field, not tailor their training to the specifics of a job posting. I…

1. Must the two be mutually exclusive? Teaching students irrelevant or outdated skills is a great way to encourage them to dismiss the profession as old, stodgy, useless, etc. 2. That's true. Is there a reason not to fudge the details of a current, employable technology stack? 3. Let's examine the logical extremes. On the one hand you have an incompetent teacher who can nevertheless communicate well. On the other han…

A note on 3: It's not really a dichotomy between communication skills and content knowledge. Pedagogical content knowledge builds on content knowledge--it's about knowing the structure of knowledge--the paths different learners will take through ideas, the common misconceptions and the examples that will resolve them, the ability to infer the shape of a learner's web of ideas, and knowing your way around the content knowledge well enough to offer something just beyond what the student has considered, but which is close enough that she can make the leap and thereby add it to her web.

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

#84

Post by selimthegrim » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 6:24 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #16

karmelapple wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

Many schools offer an engineering physics degree - Toronto, Berkeley, Tulane, Columbia (I think)

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

#85

Post by serge2k » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 11:32 AM UTC

I find it slightly disturbing that the author doesn't consider a lack of CS knowledge to be a big problem. I would hope that a teacher would have strong knowledge of CS theory, at a level beyond what they teach. So just undergrad level knowledge would suffice in this case. In addition I would hope for reasonably strong practical knowledge of the language they teach.

I'm not saying that a teacher needs to go and learn rust/go/swift, but if you are teaching python you should it well.

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

#86

Post by collyw » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 12:05 PM UTC

army wrote: post #13

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.

I am curious who sets these end points? I studied IT, because I wanted to get a job in it.

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

#87

Post by collyw » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 12:12 PM UTC

angersock wrote: post #6

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…

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…

> 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

1) You need to explain to people what you do - "write database applications and generate web pages from the data stored in the database".

2) And what the people questioning your ability are looking for "you are looking for someone that works in a mobile phone shop, not a software engineer".

The fact they expect a software engineer to deal with configuring /installing applications on a mobile phone, makes them look stupider than a software engineer who "can't" configure a phone.

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

#88

Post by collyw » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 12:15 PM UTC

zxcdw wrote: post #4

I think there's a distinction to be made between Computer Science and Software Engineering as separate disciplines.

15 - 20 years ago when I studied (in the UK), most places had a "Computer Science" course to cover everything. I see it has gradually separated into separate disciplines over time.

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

#89

Post by fredophile » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 4:31 PM UTC

benihana wrote: post #53

> I’ve gone through a postgraduate qualification and nine years of experience to get to where I am, so don’t presume to know more than me about how to teach children - and if you do, expect that I will be justifiably miffed. This is the thing about teachers that just irritates the hell out of me. I had plenty of teachers who went through postgraduate qualification and had 20 years of experience who couldn't teach for…

Elementary and secondary (high school) teachers usually have training in how to teach. This will often include specific training in how to teach children. Where I went to school teachers needed a two year teaching program that included practical experience in addition to their degree. They know how to teach well but may not be current in the latest advances in their field and may teach subjects outside of their specialty.

University professors do not do this kind of training. They hold a PhD in their field and probably did several post-doc research positions before finding a position as faculty. This makes them experts in their field but doesn't necessarily make them very good teachers.

Her qualifications are in teaching, not in CS. It makes sense for her to assume that she is generally a better teacher than someone with qualifications in CS and not teaching.

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

#90

Post by fredophile » Thu, Jun 05, 2014, 5:34 PM UTC

hunterloftis wrote: post #82

cproctor wrote: post #70

I'm a middle-school Computer Science teacher at an all-girls' school where CS has been promoted to a core subject. And a software developer. I don't see much substantial disagreement between the OP's post and the comments here--she's basically making three points: 1. The (secondary) education system's role is to show students how to engage with the field, not tailor their training to the specifics of a job posting. I…

1. Must the two be mutually exclusive? Teaching students irrelevant or outdated skills is a great way to encourage them to dismiss the profession as old, stodgy, useless, etc. 2. That's true. Is there a reason not to fudge the details of a current, employable technology stack? 3. Let's examine the logical extremes. On the one hand you have an incompetent teacher who can nevertheless communicate well. On the other han…

Someone else addressed your third point but I wanted to address the first one as well. I write code in C++ almost every day for work. I wouldn't teach C++ to a child as their first programming language. I'd probably want to teach them a simple language that focuses on the building blocks of code that allow problem solving. Things like loops, conditionals and variables. I wouldn't want them to ever need to worry about things like integer overflows, floating point arithmetic, memory allocation, preprocessors, templates or any low level details. This doesn't mean the ideal teaching language would be stodgy and useless. It just needs to offer an appropriate level of abstraction for the current age and experience level of the learner.