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Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

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Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#41

Post by danielvinson »

jowiar wrote: post #18
the_af wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed! This paragraph is telling: "For example, Temple’s computer science program still requires Calculus 1 and 2. It turns a lot of students off and isn’t really necessary to become a developer, Shi admits. These aren’t problems specific to Temple, he said. They plague most computer science programs." There. Calculus may not be necessary to be a web developer (then again, I suspect even then it is, at least fo…

You seem to be blaming the student. Did I know as a 17-year-old applying to college what the hell the difference was? No. Did I study CS? Yes. Was it the right decision? Probably not (though I did stay in it). And I had about every advantage in the world of being exposed to programming from when I was 5 or 6. Maybe the craziest part of the US college system, and technical fields in particular, is that most people don…

This is exactly how I feel. I spent much of my senior year of high school talking with everyone I knew about what options I had to go into website development (which I already had a job doing). The answer from everyone was basically "Get a CS degree, but don't use it. Otherwise nobody will take you seriously". In the end I dropped out since I realized that spending 3 years doing GE and taking classes on things I already understood was a huge waste, even if the last year would have been very useful.

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#42

Post by 0359B02149AB »

jasode wrote: post #7

The journalist wrote from the perspective of the "computer science" curriculum being "wrong" or "not relevant" to real world skills those students wanted to learn. However, the other perspective the journalist could have explained was that the students misunderstood what a "computer science" degree actually is . The Computer Science curricula grew out of the Mathematics department. That's why it has classes on topics…

It's funny, I'm a senior software developer at Temple University, and I started working here just to be able to take classes at the college (I have my MSc in Comp Sci from Stevens Institute of Technology).

I don't understand what people want from computer science - no thinking? Computer science is awesome because it's hard and you can't just solve problems by beating them up with brute force combinations of things you can find on stackoverflow. Computer science is all thinking.

I'm also female, and this is one of the places I've been where I don't feel like an outsider all the time. I don't know what it's like around the students and professors as a general population. But plenty of my coworkers are students, and some are professors and some have gone off to be full time professors, so... just throwing in a perspective from the other side.

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#43

Post by Jun8 »

jasode wrote: post #7

The journalist wrote from the perspective of the "computer science" curriculum being "wrong" or "not relevant" to real world skills those students wanted to learn. However, the other perspective the journalist could have explained was that the students misunderstood what a "computer science" degree actually is . The Computer Science curricula grew out of the Mathematics department. That's why it has classes on topics…

True, as stated by the quip "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes", which is mis-attributed to Dijsktra (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science) but still very much true I think.

The blame is not all on the student, though. It's on CS departments that present a vague picture of what they are doing. Some of these focus on mathematical aspects, some on AI, etc.

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#44

Post by Iftheshoefits »

TTPrograms wrote: post #38
jowiar wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be blaming the student. Did I know as a 17-year-old applying to college what the hell the difference was? No. Did I study CS? Yes. Was it the right decision? Probably not (though I did stay in it). And I had about every advantage in the world of being exposed to programming from when I was 5 or 6. Maybe the craziest part of the US college system, and technical fields in particular, is that most people don…

If one is not prepared to take an active role in identifying their course of study and desired path of education I would suggest that that person should wait to go to college. Not that anyone does.

That's an incredibly privileged point of view. It is not frequently the case that students with the apitutude for college have the support they need from family and relevant experts at school to engage in the kind of thoughtful deliberation you suggest.

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#45

Post by scott_s »

fintler wrote: post #31

"Many of her friends in their third and fourth year in Temple’s computer science department haven’t written a line of code outside of basic Java, she said." Temple CS '08 grad here. They had us writing C, lisp, and x86 asm (simple multiple precision arithmetic) in the first year. I think she's exaggerating a bit. Java was introduced in the third and fourth years when they started on higher level data structures and a…

This exchange in the comments between another CS student at Temple and the subject of the article supports your observation: http://technical.ly/philly/2015/05/12/computer-science-dropo...

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#46

Post by erroneousfunk »

larrik wrote: post #29

I've spent a lot of time helping to hire coworkers for a rather good remote position, and having worked with the ones that passed all of our filters and also accepted the position. It's still a bit early, but I've found that the difference between someone who actually got a proper CS degree, and someone who learned to "code" on their own is pretty stark. The fact is that calculus, algorithms, data modelling, and the…

I don't have a CS degree, but even in entry level positions, it crops up when you least expect it. My company gathers data off of truck engines, with a data sample every .3 seconds. The data samples contain things like instantaneous "fuel rate," "vehicle speed" and other "rate" values. If the manager says to me "erroneousfunk, I want the cumulative fuel usage values over time, in a graph" I need to know that they're looking for the second derivative of the fuel rate, and how to model and summarize that data in the database appropriately for a fast processing and lookups across any combination of companies/drivers/trucks/date ranges they can think of.

Voila! Calculus, algorithms, and data modeling!

Or perhaps I need a job title upgrade :-p

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#47

Post by TTPrograms »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #44
TTPrograms wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If one is not prepared to take an active role in identifying their course of study and desired path of education I would suggest that that person should wait to go to college. Not that anyone does.

That's an incredibly privileged point of view. It is not frequently the case that students with the apitutude for college have the support they need from family and relevant experts at school to engage in the kind of thoughtful deliberation you suggest.

It certainly doesn't take any more support or resources then attending college does...

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#48

Post by rplst8 »

CS programs at American universities run the gamut. A well balanced CS program will teach fundamentals/theory and also application of that knowledge. Perhaps Temple's CS program is heavy on the theory in the early years (or even through all levels). That does not mean that CS or even this specific CS program is not relevant, and I'd go as far as saying "extremely relevant" to creating software.

I see many folks who graduated with a degree in something other than CS that do well in the software industry. That said, I also see fundamental mistakes made frequently in the design and architecture of software (and I'm not talking about ignoring common design patterns). For relatively small sizes of N this is not a problem, but once something needs to scale (which is often the case if your creation becomes successful) then the proverbial fit hits the shan. A CS degree doesn't necessarily solve this, experience plays a large part too.

I think someone who is not yet a member of an industry dismissing a curriculum out of hand is pretty foolish though.

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#49

Post by thelambentonion »

jkestner wrote: post #39
the_af wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agreed! This paragraph is telling: "For example, Temple’s computer science program still requires Calculus 1 and 2. It turns a lot of students off and isn’t really necessary to become a developer, Shi admits. These aren’t problems specific to Temple, he said. They plague most computer science programs." There. Calculus may not be necessary to be a web developer (then again, I suspect even then it is, at least fo…

Part of the problem is that the field moves faster than colleges. Kids who might be looking for a path to that career that they're aware of, try their best to find a fit. Computer Science is what all the job postings seem to want.

In my opinion, the problem is that people going into these degree programs (CS included) assuming that they will come out prepared to work in those fields.

It seems that many people who are going for a degree in CS are really looking for vocational education in software development [0]. That kind of education can move faster and track changes in the field better than a full-fledged degree program.

[0] And it looks like 'code bootcamps' are what's popping up to address this!

Re: Why this woman dropped out of Temple’s computer science program

#50

Post by gambiter »

DIVx0 wrote: post #14

Student wants to learn the vocational art of programming, discovers Computer Science is not about programming, drops out. Sounds like everything went the way it should have. I majored in CS and there were no end of students complaining about discreet math or analyzing algorithms when all they wanted was to learn what ever the hot language was at the time. Schools don't need to change CS programs, they need to better…

The related issue, though, is that many job listings specify a CS degree for routine things like web development.
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