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Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

lazowska.cs.washington.edu

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Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#111

Post by jqm »

thewarrior wrote: post #101

Programming is not going to be as lucrative a few years from now. As soon as interest rates rise in a few years the startup boom will cool down a bit and the influx of new programmers will really depress the earning potential of the field.

Probably. But longer term software is only going to become increasingly important. Some refugees from the start up implosion (if there is one) will move on to other careers in other fields. Some will adjust and keep right on developing whatever comes next. There may be a bubble right now. But, it has a grain of truth to it. And that is... computing is changing the world.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#112

Post by pjbrunet »

timr wrote: post #93
nlawalker wrote: post #69

The problem is that 'computational thinking' has become expected of a university education, regardless of major , but universities haven't shifted to meet the need. All the other basic requirements of a university education are filled through entry level classes - credit-fillers that students have to take in order to graduate. This structure works out well for everyone: the university ensures that students are gettin…

Look at the chart for non-major interest in upper-level CS classes at Harvard: operating systems has no interest; "data science" is surging. Andrew Ng's machine learning class has more than twice the enrollment of computer architecture or software engineering (which is a particularly pathological case, since by definition, nobody else can teach Andrew Ng's class). This is not general-interest demand. Students are hop…

"Shortest path to a high-paying job."

Big student loan needs to get paid somehow. Too many desperate programmers in the world is a bad scenario, IMO.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#113

Post by hga »

null_ptr wrote: post #106
hga wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anything, really (well, aside from areas requiring additional formal education and/or expensive in time and/or money credentials; this not a path to becoming a doctor, lawyer, scientist, etc.). There's very basic "work skills" that any job requires, e.g. showing up; the object here is to get a "real", career type of job before, say, a couple of years have passed unemployed, after which I've read its very very hard to…

That sounds like an awful waste of 20 years' worth of skills and experience. I never saw this "check out at 35-40 and do something else" advice given in other specialized and relevant professions, but I can see how it may fit in the context of a jobs bubble where the industry can't sustain all the gold-rushers for their entire working life.

"That sounds like an awful waste of 20 years' worth of skills and experience."

Indeed. But then again, what can you say about a field where "senior" is commonly added to titles after 5 or so years?

If you're a programmer in the US and below the age of 40, I sincerely hope you investigate this before you find yourself only able to get consulting work. Or perhaps embedded, there are those who respect grey hairs in that field. Or government work; that's likely to be only attractive if you get a job requiring a serious security clearance, e.g. TS/SCI or Q, from an organization that's willing to have to mark time or whatever while you get it, then of course stay in jobs requiring a high clearance.

But this has been going on since at least the '90s, it has nothing to do with jobs bubbles, heck, it was strong at the height of the dot.com bubble, when I had my personal epiphany on it (was 35 in 1996), it's age discrimination. Or partly wage discrimination, young people, and/or those on H-1B and L-1 visas are cheaper, more malleable, etc. Google has provided one of the more notorious examples, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reid_(computer_scientist...

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#114

Post by kimdouglasmason »

hershel wrote: post #82
kimdouglasmason wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Having everyone knowing how to code is the opposite of specialisation. It's inefficient and pointless. If a certain profession needs a piece of software, it's much more efficient for specialist developers to consult with domain experts, write that software, and sell it into the industry. Having every (for example) doctor being able to code adds negligible value, and I would argue the opportunit…

> a lot of badly-written toy programs. That's not necessarily true. On some panel about python, one of the participants who teaches python to science students said that after their relatively short amount of training, scientists can do useful stuff with python and that resonated well within the panel.

This is another example of a field where coding is relevant to the job. Many current scientific methods involve heavy use of computers for things like simulation, complex calculation, or control of custom built equipment.

I still maintain there are many professions where coding is almost completely irrelevant. Some scientists use general purpose programming languages as part of their work. No (for example) physical therapist does this as part of their work.

Many people on this board also seem to underestimate just how difficult it can be to learn to code for many people who have skills in other areas. People who are studying science are probably the type who are good at coding. If you want to see how difficult coding is for many, just look at the drop-out rates in Computer Science 1.

The general argument that I am responding to is that coding is comparable to literacy. I argue that both in need and applicability, it simply is not. If you are illiterate, the number one thing you can generally do to improve your life is learn to read. I argue that unlike literacy, there are many professions where learning how to code provides less benefit than spending that effort learning or doing something else.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#115

Post by shabadoop »

nlawalker wrote: post #69

The problem is that 'computational thinking' has become expected of a university education, regardless of major , but universities haven't shifted to meet the need. All the other basic requirements of a university education are filled through entry level classes - credit-fillers that students have to take in order to graduate. This structure works out well for everyone: the university ensures that students are gettin…

>CS entry level classes traditionally fell into the latter category. Demand has resulted in students treating them as part of the former.

I was in a funny position with this. In university, I had taken the engineering "Intro to C" class as a first year student, but when I switched to a math major, I had to take the intro level CS classes.

Now, the first year CS classes are required for math, physics and chemistry majors at my school so you'd expect the syllabus to take that into account. The class was almost entirely built around working with the Java API and object hierarchies and writing bloated Java programs to perform simple tasks. It was a huge waste of time, and I didn't have much time to spend on a freshman level general ed requirement. I like to think my whining was one of the reasons why the math department finally made the push to offer a scientific programming course for the rest of the science departments.

I don't mean to bash my school's CS department, either. I took some higher level Systems Programming and Algorithms courses and thought they were fantastic. They just treated their intro courses like software engineering weed-out courses, when other departments required them as general ed courses.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#116

Post by pakitan »

scotty79 wrote: post #89
pakitan wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was a time when 'writing' was a specialist activity best left to professionals. Imagine if that never changed? Writing = thoughts put on paper. When writing was a "specialist" activity it was due mostly to technical difficulties rather than people needing a whole new breed of skills. The anatomist analogy is a good one. But if we extend it to IT, it doesn't mean everybody should be able to program. Rather, ev…

Programming = putting thoughts into computers in executable form. I think all people should learn how to make computer do their bidding at a rate more than one click at a time.

Don't stop there. Architecture = putting thoughts in a "virtual building" form. Therefore everyone should learn how to design their own house. Seriously, you're making quite the jump putting writing on the same level as programming.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#117

Post by lsc »

Didn't this also happen in the mid-to-late '90s, with the first dot-com boom? I mean, I don't think that the proportion of CS majors dropped precipitously after the crash, but the rise certainly seems to correlate with demand for programmers.

It makes a whole lot of sense, really, except that if you started your degree in 1998, you were going to graduate right into a crash.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#118

Post by hga »

lsc wrote: post #117

Didn't this also happen in the mid-to-late '90s, with the first dot-com boom? I mean, I don't think that the proportion of CS majors dropped precipitously after the crash, but the rise certainly seems to correlate with demand for programmers. It makes a whole lot of sense, really, except that if you started your degree in 1998, you were going to graduate right into a crash.

"[...] I don't think that the proportion of CS majors dropped precipitously after the crash..."

MIT's EECS enrollment more than halved, after being 40% of the undergraduate body for more than 2 decades.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#119

Post by aet »

usaar333 wrote: post #94
null_ptr wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What jobs make $300-500k at Google, I assume upper management positions?

Plenty of software engineers make this as well. (you must include equity which is often not reported in surveys)

Mid-career median at Google is $141,000.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#120

Post by kelseyfrancis »

nlawalker wrote: post #69

The problem is that 'computational thinking' has become expected of a university education, regardless of major , but universities haven't shifted to meet the need. All the other basic requirements of a university education are filled through entry level classes - credit-fillers that students have to take in order to graduate. This structure works out well for everyone: the university ensures that students are gettin…

Georgia Tech considers "computational thinking" to be an important component of a liberal arts education, so much so that it used to require all majors to take the same intro CS class that CS majors took. It was a legit intro CS course taught using SICP with Scheme.

As far as I can tell, all majors still must take an intro CS course, but the school now offers a wider variety of intro CS courses, because many people studying things like international affairs and even many engineers didn't want/need or couldn't handle the rigor/difficulty. So it seems at least some universities have indeed shifted to meet the need (and a long time ago at that).

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