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Computer science is a liberal arts degree

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Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#131

Post by rad88 »

nxrabl wrote: post #47

A lot of folks here seem to have a real rose-tinted idea of what CS degrees are actually like. If you took CS more than 10, 15 years ago, you might remember it as a scrappy, fringey degree program, maybe splintered off from Electrical Engineering, a refuge for mathematically-minded nerds to find beauty in the cold algorithmic elegance of computation. That is not what it is anymore, not now that everyone knows you can…

We were taught date structures by a Unix fundamentalist, entirely with C and makefiles. He absolutely despised "Micro$hit", and emails containing any format other than text/plain, but helpfully offered that he could receive email sent from emacs. We worked with some kind of perl-based VCS that I forget the details of.

You're saying students are no longer taught all this??

Levity aside, I do have rosy memories of that course (taken around 2009). It taught me well, though I can see how it probably put a lot of people off, maybe even causing them to abandon programming.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#132

Post by renewiltord »

savolai wrote: post #129
ankurdhama wrote: post #76

Ah, the ever green tradition of humans to define very fuzzy categories and then debating enlessly about what stuff belongs to what category.

It’s sadly a repeating phenomenon that when anything too humanistic is proposed here, the argument is often dismissed. Here, as just linguistic or even just philosophical. The actual argument gets lost, and nobody here seems interested in the actual papers the author is referencing. To me, the meat of the argument is: What do the fields/papers (whih the author IS referring to, very concretely) have to offer to the di…

All that stuff is easy. Point of education isn’t to give you reading material you can self learn in a few months.

After all, you’d expect best performers in this field to all be from liberal arts colleges like Middlebury. And the folks there are great but it’s not like they’re superpowered compared to the Vanderbilt guys. So it isn’t some sort of game changer.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#133

Post by JellyBeanThief »

solveit wrote: post #98
nxrabl wrote: post #47

A lot of folks here seem to have a real rose-tinted idea of what CS degrees are actually like. If you took CS more than 10, 15 years ago, you might remember it as a scrappy, fringey degree program, maybe splintered off from Electrical Engineering, a refuge for mathematically-minded nerds to find beauty in the cold algorithmic elegance of computation. That is not what it is anymore, not now that everyone knows you can…

> This is unique to programming as a discipline - programmers have historically unprecedented power to turn fuzzy, implicit ideas into concrete reality that affects people at massive scale. Politics? Economics? Writing? I don't necessarily disagree on the dangers, but they're certainly not unique to programming. Some German guy wrote a few thousand pages of fairly dense and convoluted economics/philosophy and ninety…

> Politics? Economics? Writing?

A good shot, but I don't think good enough. All of those still involve humans changing each other's thoughts by communicating with each other.

A computer program replaces human thought. Depending on the application this may be good or bad, but the point is that once the program is in place, humans don't need to think or talk about it anymore.

I mean, they do, but they won't. After all, there's so much other stuff to think about, talk about, and then replace with software.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#135

Post by triyambakam »

bjornsing wrote: post #19

This is the direction things have been going in Sweden over the last 15 years, but I think it’s a shame and a waste of human potential. Why would you need a university CS degree to do UX design and write some JavaScript? There should be other degrees for that to be honest. I’m hoping this trend will now reverse and “real” software engineers will reclaim their profession, despite now being in the “minority”. Personall…

Vad...? I would have no idea what you intend by calling yourself that if I hadn't read your comment.

What's the problem with having a computer science education and writing JS? There are ample situations to utilize CS in browser code.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#136

Post by savolai »

renewiltord wrote: post #132
savolai wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s sadly a repeating phenomenon that when anything too humanistic is proposed here, the argument is often dismissed. Here, as just linguistic or even just philosophical. The actual argument gets lost, and nobody here seems interested in the actual papers the author is referencing. To me, the meat of the argument is: What do the fields/papers (whih the author IS referring to, very concretely) have to offer to the di…

All that stuff is easy. Point of education isn’t to give you reading material you can self learn in a few months. After all, you’d expect best performers in this field to all be from liberal arts colleges like Middlebury. And the folks there are great but it’s not like they’re superpowered compared to the Vanderbilt guys. So it isn’t some sort of game changer.

If all that stuff is easy then why avoid the discussion? You would think you could just tell us why the papers are irrelevant to current tech discussion, instead of just dismissing it with secondary arguments?

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#137

Post by sudosysgen »

ukj wrote: post #122
sudosysgen wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interactive theorem proving is not an experiment on nature because the theorem priver is itself a mathematical construct.

It sure seems like the goal posts are being moved. Every experiment is an experiment of nature. Humans are part of nature. Human constructs are part of nature. Every interaction that results in the testing or falsification of some hypothesis is a valid experiment. Irrespective of the object being experimented/interacted with. I am experimenting with (testing/falsifying hypotheses against) your linguistic constructs r…

I think you're missing the point. Mathematics isn't a natural science, and that's what I was trying to point out. There is a term for doing science on human constructs - it's called social science. Is your thesis that mathematics is a social science?

> Humans are part of nature. Human constructs are part of nature.

Humans physically are part of nature, sure. Human constructs are not considered to be as far as classification in the social and natural sciences.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#138

Post by solveit »

JellyBeanThief wrote: post #133
solveit wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is unique to programming as a discipline - programmers have historically unprecedented power to turn fuzzy, implicit ideas into concrete reality that affects people at massive scale. Politics? Economics? Writing? I don't necessarily disagree on the dangers, but they're certainly not unique to programming. Some German guy wrote a few thousand pages of fairly dense and convoluted economics/philosophy and ninety…

> Politics? Economics? Writing? A good shot, but I don't think good enough. All of those still involve humans changing each other's thoughts by communicating with each other. A computer program replaces human thought. Depending on the application this may be good or bad, but the point is that once the program is in place, humans don't need to think or talk about it anymore. I mean, they do , but they won't. After all…

As opposed to laws and policies that control the lives of millions? It's not possible for human thought to work at the scale of modern society. Software is not special in that it replaces human thought. Something must 'automate' human decision-making, whether it be software or a civil servant looking at a spreadsheet going through a checklist.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#139

Post by ukj »

sudosysgen wrote: post #137
ukj wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sure seems like the goal posts are being moved. Every experiment is an experiment of nature. Humans are part of nature. Human constructs are part of nature. Every interaction that results in the testing or falsification of some hypothesis is a valid experiment. Irrespective of the object being experimented/interacted with. I am experimenting with (testing/falsifying hypotheses against) your linguistic constructs r…

I think you're missing the point. Mathematics isn't a natural science, and that's what I was trying to point out. There is a term for doing science on human constructs - it's called social science. Is your thesis that mathematics is a social science? > Humans are part of nature. Human constructs are part of nature. Humans physically are part of nature, sure. Human constructs are not considered to be as far as classif…

I am not sure why you are using the phrase "natural science", is there any other kind? Lets revisit with the wikipedia definition:

  Science (from Latin scientia 'knowledge') is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.
That seems pretty general and all-inclusive to me. Any knowledge about humans; or societies; or the stuff human societies invent is knowledge about the universe. Because we are part of the universe.

Now, you seem to be trying to differentiate the different sciences from one another - tell us why. What's the purpose of drawing a distinction between science and (what you call) "natural science"?

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#140

Post by renewiltord »

savolai wrote: post #136
renewiltord wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All that stuff is easy. Point of education isn’t to give you reading material you can self learn in a few months. After all, you’d expect best performers in this field to all be from liberal arts colleges like Middlebury. And the folks there are great but it’s not like they’re superpowered compared to the Vanderbilt guys. So it isn’t some sort of game changer.

If all that stuff is easy then why avoid the discussion? You would think you could just tell us why the papers are irrelevant to current tech discussion, instead of just dismissing it with secondary arguments?

The stuff is easy. Telling you why it's not necessary in education is hard. But it's okay. I thought about it and I realized I’d entered a discussion I don’t care that much for. So I’ll apologize and step out. And concede if that helps.
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