11–20 of 22 posts
I think the debate is more about self-learning vs a formal education. Moreover, a CS degree is overkill for most of the programming people do.
Passions such as art history are far easier to pursue in life by constantly reading books, going to museums, and attending lectures. Computer science is impossible to engage with on a casual basis. It requires a massive and highly focused investment of time and energy, ideally with the world’s best teachers guiding you at the same time. First, I don't know that I agree with the first bit. One may certainly dabble in…
I don't know how common it really is for someone to casually teach him/herself CS. Sure, a lot of people teach themselves to build websites or mobile apps, but ask them to, say, search/filter their results and it's pretty easy to see there's not a whole lot of scientific thinking going on. Learning Computer Science is very different than learning to code (i'm not saying it doesn't happen, but from my experience most…
http://the-paper-trail.org/blog/?page_id=152 (from HN recently) http://overhack.wordpress.com/2011/06/01/self-directed-compu... (my own)
> I was tempted to switch into art history > to escape the huge engineering workload. My association with friends in the fine arts indicates that that would've been a horrible decision; probably depends on what college/university you're at, but while engineering majors seem to have a pretty consistently high workload, visual design, music composition, and art history majors seem to get periodically slammed with horre…
I think the debate is more about self-learning vs a formal education. Moreover, a CS degree is overkill for most of the programming people do.
In most places, I sense, CS is a ticket into a better position but for most people CS is overkill for the type of programming most .Net shops require. It comes down to learning basic control structures, syntax & utilizing libraries. It nearly becomes mindless & trivial for CS majors yet challenging and overwhelming to the kids taking C#/.Net classes.
Computer Science is the study of computers, the science behind them. It's data structures, algorithms, compilers, math, discrete math and so much more.
Programming is just one tiny aspect of CS. Programming is the implementation of understanding not the basis for it. Compare Programming to writing English, you need to understand verbs, subjects, adjectives, nouns, adverbs, pronouns & how to assemble them coherently. The implementation of that understanding is what we call sentences. As akin to programming, Computer Science is the study and understanding while Programming is the implementation for the computer to function.
Computer science students should be preparing to be outsourced to Hyderabad.
Hasn't quite went down like that, has it?
I think the debate is more about self-learning vs a formal education. Moreover, a CS degree is overkill for most of the programming people do.
I would whole heartily agree. I'm a CS major working at a big company this summer. I've met people with no background in CS work in software development. Some people who should not even be developers at all. Others who are expert coders but shutter at the mention of a search algorithm. In most places, I sense, CS is a ticket into a better position but for most people CS is overkill for the type of programming most .N…