What every computer science major should know (2011)

Post by trilila » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #91

It's a good list, and I always recommend these: 1. Public Speaking. If you can't talk coherently in front of a group of people and sell your ideas, your career will be stunted. 2. Accounting. Accounting is the language of business. If you don't understand double entry bookkeeping, you can't be a manager. You can't run a startup. You can't talk to investors. If you misuse terms like "gross margin" you'll be overlooked…

Post by willbw » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:12 AM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #92

pinacarlos90 wrote: post #89

I come from a CS background and learned a lot from studying CS, it definitely gave me a strong foundation and changed the way I view and understand computing. I learned most of the topics mentioned in this document while in school, and although they are all valid, they are not enough for real world needs. ~90% of CS undergraduates will end working as or with engineers, and in 2019 here are the skills that are indispe…

Most of these are in the article. The author mentions: 1) both http and ssh 2) source control and team work (and suggests courses built around these) 3) multiple sections on problem solving and algorithms (incl. proof techniquese, formal methods, knowledge of data structures and algorithms) 4) nothing in particular 5) nothing in particular 6) covers communication skills 7) emphasizes each student taking a lead role o…

Post by randomsearch » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:34 AM UTC

archagon wrote: post #98

This is tangential, but HOW, HOW, HOW does someone have the time to do all this stuff? http://matt.might.net/materials/matthew-might-cv.pdf I'd love to see a timeline of how some of these super-productive academics are able to fit so many activities into their lives. I doubt I've done 1/10th of what Matt has done in the same amount of time. (And all this while researching, publicizing, and treating his son's rare gen…

Post by drieddust » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 6:41 AM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #90

pinacarlos90 wrote: post #89

I come from a CS background and learned a lot from studying CS, it definitely gave me a strong foundation and changed the way I view and understand computing. I learned most of the topics mentioned in this document while in school, and although they are all valid, they are not enough for real world needs. ~90% of CS undergraduates will end working as or with engineers, and in 2019 here are the skills that are indispe…

This is a great list. I would add estimating , although it's implied in a few of your points. As an engineering manager I find that a consistent difference between good engineers and great engineers is that great engineers can tell me how long something will take even when they haven't done something just like it before. That doesn't mean they can perfectly forecast how the hours will be spent -- no one could do that…

Post by namenotrequired » Wed, Jul 17, 2019, 7:23 AM UTC

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #74

acbart wrote: post #72

> Racket, as a full-featured dialect of Lisp, has an aggressively simple syntax. For a small fraction of students, this syntax is an impediment. To be blunt, if these students have a fundamental mental barrier to accepting an alien syntactic regime even temporarily, they lack the mental dexterity to survive a career in computer science. Racket's powerful macro system and facilities for higher-order programming thorou…

> who doesn't love the same PL paradigms as him. I don't see that at all. It's not about enjoying it, it's about having the ability to adjust to the Lisp syntax, full stop. Given that Lisp is just about as close to programming directly in an AST as you can get, I'm not sure that claim of his is too far from the truth. Remember, we're talking about computer science, not programmers generally.