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Go To University, Not For CS

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Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#121

Post by rbanffy »

werrett wrote: post #83
rbanffy wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> an entire new city, was built by unskilled laborers working for dollars a day. Let's see if it's still standing a couple decades from now.

>> an entire new city, was built by unskilled laborers working for dollars a day. > Let's see if it's still standing a couple decades from now. I didn't realise that it was solely teams of skilled engineers and artisans doing the riveting on Empire State back in 1930.

You do, of course, understand how over-engineered is the Empire State by today's standards.

I seriously doubt 30's margins are still being applied.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#122

Post by DanielRibeiro »

wheels wrote: post #12

It was a great post right up until the part where he started talking about computer science. It left me with the feeling that either Zed did not study computer science, and is just talking out of his ass, or went through a very bad computer science program and has generalized that all of them must be that bad. How arrogant can you be? There's nothing for you to learn from 100 years of algorithms, complexity theory, l…

After reading this post, I can't help but remember 3 people:

1. Alan Kay on ACM (http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523): Once you have something that grows faster than education grows, you’re always going to get a pop culture.

2. Paul Graham: I’ve never liked the term “computer science.” The main reason I don’t like it is that there’s no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia

3. Edsger W. Dijkstra: Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.

How I finally disagree/agree with the author: if you plan to take a bad CS course, you are probably better off just getting a job. If you going for a good CS course, don't think you will learn just programming. You will learn it, not all of it, and it will probably be one of the least important things you'll learn.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#123

Post by hga »

vault_ wrote: post #84
hga wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sigh, algebra based non calculus physics is cargo cult science much in the original sense that Feynman started the meme. No one outside of education does it this way, or as I like to put it, there's a reason Newton invented the integral calculus to develop classical mechanics and why Edison couldn't compete with Tesla (self-taught Edison didn't have the math to do polyphase AC, which was the only practical approach b…

I just finished a 2 year course on Physics from a high school that was algebra based. I'll attest that algebra based Physics is the biggest waste of time ever. The worst part, if you know some calculus, is that you can glimpse what is happening behind the scenes of the formulas they give you. All I really learned from the course was a shortcut for doing the homework problems: make your givens somehow come out to the…

Indeed; I now realize I was really lucky when I took my high school physics course in that the teacher didn't assign any homework, it was all lecture and an automatic A. So the next year when I did physics for real with the calculus I had nothing to unlearn.

Although at the same time due to the senior class math teacher having refused to teach I had to learn the calculus at speed, but I managed and it probably works better when you have real physics problems you're solving at the same time. E.g. I learned why trig is really important.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#124

Post by hga »

snikolov wrote: post #91
hga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The termination with extreme prejudice of 6.001 suggests that some people mostly agree ( http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-fr... ). Certainly there's an ever increasing role for people pasting together big libraries and frameworks without a deep understanding of what goes on behind the curtains....

I think characterizing the courses that replaced 6.001 as exercises in "pasting libraries together" is unfair. The new introductory courses 6.01 and 6.02, are focused on introducing fundamental EECS design principles, in the context of mobile robotics and digital communication systems, respectively. Having just taken 6.01 and 6.02, I have mixed feelings. One the one hand, you had to write relatively little code withi…

Agreed with the first point, 6.01 and 6.02 are as you point out a lot more than that.

It sounds like from what you're saying that the software component of them are as Sussman has commented, mostly "exercises in 'pasting libraries together'" with little deeper understanding of what's going on. And if you don't take 6.004 ("Computation Structures", from CMOS circuits to designing your own RISC processor)---it's not required for everyone anymore, right?---then one might graduate with an EECS degree without ever gaining that deep understanding of what's going on that starts with 6.001.

The real shame, or at least what I've guessed, is that when you take the new 6.005 which is supposed to teach most of the rest of what 6.001 taught which isn't covered in 6.01/2, you'll be doing it in Java, a language which for this purpose isn't even wrong.

I'd be very interested in your comments on 6.005.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#125

Post by hga »

snikolov wrote: post #92
hga wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The termination with extreme prejudice of 6.001 suggests that some people mostly agree ( http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/link/2110/why-mit-switched-fr... ). Certainly there's an ever increasing role for people pasting together big libraries and frameworks without a deep understanding of what goes on behind the curtains....

Eliminating 6.001 also seems to me a part of a trend to allow more freedom in the EECS curriculum. Aside from eliminating 6.001 (which is the most talked about change), computer science students now have more freedom to take computer science courses (rather than certain required electrical engineering courses) and vice versa. For example, in the old curriculum, electrical engineers had to take 6.001 and computer scie…

"Eliminating 6.001 also seems to me a part of a trend to allow more freedom in the EECS curriculum."

What the elimination of the required for everyone 6.001-4 (EECS's Unified???) says is that the department no longer believes there's a broad core of materiel everyone needs to learn. As described to me, a MIT EECS degree used to mean that an EE wouldn't freeze up when asked to do some embedded programming and a CS wouldn't freeze up when having to integrate digital electronics into a project.

Today, a MIT EECS degree means something different. This new thing may be better, may be worse, which will depend on lots of things and the judgment of history.

And agreed on the dropping of 6.001. If I had been able to finish my degree in Chemistry (finances prevented that) 6.001 would have been all I would have really wanted to take out of the department's offerings.

It certainly was and it a tremendous and pioneering crown jewel of CS (and just happens to cover or provide the foundation for just about all of CS that I'm really interested in). And the promise of teaching a 12 unit version of it (the old version was 15 (that means number of hours per week it in theory consumes)) somehow dropped by the wayside....

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#126

Post by adzp »

philwelch wrote: post #42

My main regret about university isn't that I studied CS, but that I didn't study mathematics. Coming out of high school, I didn't have the faintest idea what mathematics really was. I did study philosophy, but the parts that appealed to me most were, frankly, the most similar to mathematics (symbolic logic and proof-writing). And then when I studied CS, my favorite parts...were mathematics again! All quite ironic for…

I studied mathematics as an undergraduate and am now pursuing advanced study in computer science. The foundation that studying advanced mathematics provided me for further study in CS is rock solid, particularly since my interests lie in artificial intelligence realms of CS. I've also found that in "the working world", once you prove you can code, you are a favored candidate for more interesting, complex job assignments by your employer.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#127

Post by hga »

hga wrote: post #68
madmanslitany wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dude, the normal career path of pretty much everyone is over by 35-40. Lawyers that haven't made partner, traders that haven't made been made head of their desk, engineers in general that haven't made it to management, teachers that haven't moved into administration. It's not like they take all the programmers over 40 out behind the cubicle farm and shoot them or something. I also feel compelled to point out that "pr…

That's not been my observation for engineers outside of software (there's some truth to it, certainly GM plays that game) and certainly not for teachers. Nor is it true for scientists. Don't know about mathematicians. Certainly not true for doctors. They may not "shoot them or something" but they do stop hiring them. I have some interesting personal anecdotal experience here: I look much younger than I am (at 49, unt…

CORRECTION: but we all know that most suits are interested in paying as little as possible

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#128

Post by j_baker »

acangiano wrote: post #20

> Another way to explain the shallowness of Computer Science > is that it's the only discipline that eschews paradox. > Even mathematics has reams of unanswered questions and > potential paradox in its core philosophy. In Computer > Science, there's none. It's assumed that all of it is > pretty much solved and your job as an undergraduate is > to just learn to get a job in this totally solved area > of expertise. Zed…

Erm... Not to say too much, but I'm pretty sure mathematicians would envy CS not having paradoxes.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#129

Post by hga »

ilcesco wrote: post #107
ComputerGuru wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is an intermediary; an Engineering degree that hands you some basics of CS and a whole lot of critical thinking. The whole aim of a degree like that is to point you in the right direction and let your interests develop into a career. You may not have it in the states, but the rest of the world does. I graduated a five-year (160 credit hour) curriculum in "Computer Engineering" which is a bundle of low-le…

It makes sense, I've studied 'IT engineering' here in Italy, and we can also get the best of both worlds. The sad thing is that as an engineer you'll be always labeled as a technical person, and somehow not competent when it comes to crucial functional decisions, especially when you end up working for a big corporate, where business analysts are more likely to be former MBAs..

Hmmm, that's true in the US as well. Are there any countries/cultures in the world where "technical people" get a seriously greater amount of respect?

MIT takes it position as the world's preeminent technical school seriously and in the mid-80s decided this was the single biggest external issue it/the STEM professions had.

Re: Go To University, Not For CS

#130

Post by lazyant »

ErrantX wrote: post #94
wheels wrote: post #12

It was a great post right up until the part where he started talking about computer science. It left me with the feeling that either Zed did not study computer science, and is just talking out of his ass, or went through a very bad computer science program and has generalized that all of them must be that bad. How arrogant can you be? There's nothing for you to learn from 100 years of algorithms, complexity theory, l…

Well, I agree with his first part; and here is why. I've employed a goodly few programmers - invariably the least good are CS majors, the best are usually engineers or physicists. The reason is that CS is a theoretical degree, and far too many people do it assuming they will become a "programmer of value", rather than a potentially important CS researcher. I've had applicants bore be with details of compiler theory t…

"the least good are CS majors, the best are usually engineers or physicists. The reason is that CS is a theoretical degree..."

I found the same thing. I think the reason is that CS in general is easier than engineering/physics (or math) so on average the engineer/physicist is smarter than a CS person (lots of exceptions of course). Just look at the math involved (I've been in the three places btw).

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