How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught • Hacker News Board

Re: How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught

#11

Post by kenjackson » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 4:19 PM UTC

mcmatterson wrote: post #4

I highly recommend Charles Petzold's 'Code'. I originally bought it for my father, but soon ended up reading it myself cover to cover. It fills a lot of blanks in in my understanding; blanks that were also glossed over in my education as well (Waterloo CS & C&O, 2002). The book starts from the most basic 'switch and a lightbulb' circuit, and takes a stepwise approach that ends up disassembling x86 by the final chapte…

'Code' is also a great book to give to your non-coder spouse. Honestly, that book should be the text used for the "computer literacy" class in most colleges. Great book. Can't recommend it highly enough.

Re: How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught

#12

Post by uscfan1781 » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 5:11 PM UTC

user24 wrote: post #10

uscfan1781 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the heads up. Trying to get it up and running now.

A wordpress cache plugin will probably help. I got 25k visits in one day last week on puremango.co.uk which is hosted on a cheap-as-chips dreamhost shared server and AFAIK it didn't blink. Cache FTW.

It's funny I actually set up super-cache last night. I was just too cheap for my own good. 256MB RAM on rackspace just wasn't cutting it.

Re: How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught

#13

Post by beej71 » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 7:02 PM UTC

user24 wrote: post #6

> The Duke Computer Science Department ... taught me almost nothing about how to program in the real world That's because that's not what you learn in CS. You wanted to be doing a software engineering degree.

I think a good University program should do both through the BS level. After that it can get more theoretical.

Re: How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught

#14

Post by possibilistic » Mon, Feb 07, 2011, 7:39 PM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #13

user24 wrote: post #6

> The Duke Computer Science Department ... taught me almost nothing about how to program in the real world That's because that's not what you learn in CS. You wanted to be doing a software engineering degree.

I think a good University program should do both through the BS level. After that it can get more theoretical.

I disagree. Computer science is supposed to be a "pure" field, like mathematics. It is not meant to teach any specific technology, language, library, development model, etc. You can (and should) pick that up on your own. These things change so often anyway--you shouldn't pay a school to learn such simple things.

Maybe industry and market forces want a more software engineering-type degree; the people who want that kind of job should pursue such. In any case, there is still an unquestionable need for pure CS in academia and research.

Re: How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught

#15

Post by user24 » Tue, Feb 08, 2011, 9:13 AM UTC

beej71 wrote: post #13

user24 wrote: post #6

> The Duke Computer Science Department ... taught me almost nothing about how to program in the real world That's because that's not what you learn in CS. You wanted to be doing a software engineering degree.

I think a good University program should do both through the BS level. After that it can get more theoretical.

I've only studied CS at the Masters level, so I don't have experience of BSc CS. But I would think that there should be enough room to teach some software engineering, yes.

Re: How I Wish Computer Science Was Taught

#16

Post by beej71 » Wed, Feb 09, 2011, 2:15 AM UTC

possibilistic wrote: post #14

beej71 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a good University program should do both through the BS level. After that it can get more theoretical.

I disagree. Computer science is supposed to be a "pure" field, like mathematics. It is not meant to teach any specific technology, language, library, development model, etc. You can (and should) pick that up on your own. These things change so often anyway--you shouldn't pay a school to learn such simple things. Maybe industry and market forces want a more software engineering-type degree; the people who want that ki…

Fine point: I didn't try to define "CS".

We agree that a school shouldn't teach a breadth of languages and frameworks du jour.

But I still think a good University program will teach both theory and how to program in the real world. Is that so wrong? CS students must take spoken language and physics courses, as well, and somehow that doesn't affect the purity of their CS education.

Maybe the school doesn't call software engineering "CS" (like so many do), but there should at least be the option to learn these concepts somewhere. There must be shoulders to stand upon. I trust you'll find it impossible to argue that all the knowledge regarding software production discovered in the past 50 years is obvious to every Computer Science PhD, let alone neophyte.