New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

At my high-school in Romania we silently eliminated religion (yeah, surprised?), philosophy, 1 lesson of geography, 1 lesson of french and maybe something else.. and at the end we got 2 cs theory lessons and 6 full lessons of coding in the lab per week. We all had a linux shell on the school's server and most used vim to code C with gcc and makefiles.

That had a lot to do with what kind of programmer I am today even if I was one of the worst students in the class.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#5

Post by danjvowelsn » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 4:38 PM UTC

blueprint wrote: post #3

Mike Zamansky was my AP CS teacher in high school. Way to go Mr. Zamansky! Edit: If anyone has any questions about him or his teaching style I might be able to answer.

I have a question: how does he always come up with such brilliant ideas for Halloween costumes?

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#6

Post by blueprint » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 4:44 PM UTC

danjvowelsn wrote: post #5

blueprint wrote: post #3

Mike Zamansky was my AP CS teacher in high school. Way to go Mr. Zamansky! Edit: If anyone has any questions about him or his teaching style I might be able to answer.

I have a question: how does he always come up with such brilliant ideas for Halloween costumes?

This is just a guess but he's been teaching for long enough that each year he probably keeps an eye out for concepts that he can use during Halloween and then works on the ones he judges to be the best.

Some say brilliance is often a product of hard work over a long time.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#7

Post by JonWood » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 4:50 PM UTC

I'm not convinced by the idea of heavily specialised high schools. At that age you should be discovering what you're passionate about, and sampling a wide range of subjects.

The focus here seems to be more on training kids up for a job - would anyone be so enthusiastic if we replaced "software engineering" with "assembly line work" or "street sweeping"?

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#8

Post by jrockway » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 4:51 PM UTC

I'm not sure it's a great idea to get so focused at such an early age. There's a lot to learn about the world when you're 14, and it might be good to explore a wide range of topics. (I personally took most of my "real" classes in high school, so by the time I got to college, I had an idea of what I wanted to do. After going to college for a year, I realized my needs would not be met in that way. But deciding at 20 is a lot different from deciding at 14.)

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#9

Post by johnrob » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

I am certain that if this thing actually happens, it will spin out companies on par with any accelerator.

Re: New York City gets a Software Engineering High School

#10

Post by digitallimit0 » Fri, Jan 13, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

JonWood wrote: post #7

I'm not convinced by the idea of heavily specialised high schools. At that age you should be discovering what you're passionate about, and sampling a wide range of subjects. The focus here seems to be more on training kids up for a job - would anyone be so enthusiastic if we replaced "software engineering" with "assembly line work" or "street sweeping"?

The thing is, those aren't fair comparisons. Software engineers are in exceedingly high demand at this stage. This is just a reaction to that demand. In addition, software engineering is a very flexible field. You can engineer under or tangentially to almost any position or field and be a part of what makes those things interesting. Assembly line worker and street sweeper are not so similarly blessed.