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The limited value of a computer science education

nathanmarz.com

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Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#141

Post by imtringued »

capote wrote: post #65
InclinedPlane wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a degree in Mathematics, I think my educational experience has made me a better developer than if I'd have pursued a pure CS degree alone. Does that mean that I think everyone who wants to develop software should get a math degree? Not even a little bit. But I also don't think they should pursue a CS degree either. In the end the answer is "it's complicated, and there isn't one good answer yet", but we don't g…

You're still, in this post, trying to extract the value of a degree in terms of job power. That's what I'm arguing against. I paid $180,000 to go to university and I think it was 100% worth it, regardless of my job or how much it helped my job. My selection of 7 points was mainly to make a point , that point being that I see a lot of value in university, many people do, and we should all stop trying to fit all of thi…

>because they have very little to do with each other.

Not everyone has $180,000 lying around. Someone has to pay for it and if it's not your parents then you have to do it yourself so obviously people prioritise degrees with well paying jobs and that's how it's supposed to work in an efficient economy. Otherwise if you can spend $180,000 on something without intending to get financial value out of it, you could just as well do something random such as buying a lot of bananas.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#142

Post by imtringued »

capote wrote: post #124
twillirvy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I was with you until this post--I'm curious if you haven't wondered, even a bit, if 180k was too steep of a price tag? I'm a fan of university in general, but find the sky-high prices of private institutions hard to stomach compared to similarly-good in-state options.

Yeah... it's definitely a high price tag. I should've probably gone to a state school to save that money. But I still find it worth it because I see what I got from school as priceless, as silly and dramatic as that sounds. As an aside, I am of the opinion that university should be free. But in the US, it's not. It's super expensive. That's a bummer, but like I said, it's worth it to me, money or not, job or not.

> But I still find it worth it because I see what I got from school as priceless, as silly and dramatic as that sounds.

Okay that means the answer to your question why young people get college degrees for jobs can be described in one word: economics (And that should be obvious given your level of education)

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#143

Post by imtringued »

jacobevelyn wrote: post #92
_delirium wrote: post #8

I may have been lucky, but I don't recognize this statement when I think of my own CS curriculum: The vast majority of what a programmer does, forming good abstractions and avoiding complexity, is almost completely untouched by computer science curriculums. That's the majority of what my CS degree covered, in several different programming paradigms. Even the idea that there are "programming paradigms" is something I…

I see complaints about big-O notation being a useless interview torture device all the time, and yet I'd be hard-pressed to find something else in my very theoretical CS education that (a) was easier to learn (it's the most hand-wavy math I've ever encountered), (b) I retained as well, or (c) is as useful to me as a full-stack web developer. I can't speak for others, but knowing when to use an array vs. when to use a…

>I can't speak for others, but knowing when to use an array vs. when to use a set feels pretty fundamental to me being able to do my job well.

I'm not sure why you assume that the only way to learn this knowledge is through a CS degree. These are things than can be quickly learned by reading a few articles online.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#144

Post by guylepage3 »

Some very valid points made in this post. Is CS valuable? I believe it is. I've witnessed the difference first hand in our startup but then again it's "hard tech."

The part I question is, the percentage of programmers that will work at a "hard tech" company is so small that, unless the company you're working at is a hard tech company, then there is no relevance to onboarding someone with CS skills. It does not diversify the team. Diversification in a team is of high value. Most engineers want to hire others engineers so that they have something to talk about. But that's a comfort thing.

Long story short, soft tech companies should only have one or two hard tech engineers on their team especially in the early days and only test at the skill level required when onboarding.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#145

Post by imtringued »

wfo wrote: post #64

Interestingly enough, I think the misguided constant push to move CS degrees towards industry relevance more and more makes them more and more worthless -- we have academics going to industry conferences and asking what kind of developers would be preferable to churn out, students whining that they aren't 100% ready to drop in at a company when they graduate. So schools are pushing teaching how to write CRUD apps in…

>students whining that they aren't 100% ready to drop in at a company when they graduate.

I think the problem is not with the students. The problem is that the companies expect you to be 100% ready to drop in and the only education you can put on your resume comes from a CS degree or previously having a job in the industry.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#146

Post by [deleted] »

capote wrote: post #34

Post number 7,819,394 talking about how useful or not useful a CS degree is to a programming job. Here are some lessons I learned by going to school that I find incredibly useful: 1. How to shut up and get some work done, even if I don't see the point to it. 2. How to shut up and get some work done, even if it isn't directly applicable or valuable to a job or something I want in the future. 3. How to take feedback an…

[deleted]

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#147

Post by xyience »

imtringued wrote: post #143
jacobevelyn wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see complaints about big-O notation being a useless interview torture device all the time, and yet I'd be hard-pressed to find something else in my very theoretical CS education that (a) was easier to learn (it's the most hand-wavy math I've ever encountered), (b) I retained as well, or (c) is as useful to me as a full-stack web developer. I can't speak for others, but knowing when to use an array vs. when to use a…

>I can't speak for others, but knowing when to use an array vs. when to use a set feels pretty fundamental to me being able to do my job well. I'm not sure why you assume that the only way to learn this knowledge is through a CS degree. These are things than can be quickly learned by reading a few articles online.

I also don't see why one would necessarily need to reason from complexity arguments, rather than more intuitive "I'm using a set because I want to use set operations like union and membership". If performance is crucial, reasoning by complexity analysis is not sufficient and often not even necessary.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#148

Post by laichzeit0 »

neutrin0 wrote: post #132
laichzeit0 wrote: post #116

So I did a 4 year computer science degree about 10 years ago. It's really hard to understand why anyone would bash a degree. What I still find "relevant to practice" from then is: - Any good CS curriculum is basically a calculus, statistics, linear algebra, real analysis, combinatorics, discrete mathematics course with a bunch of CS modules thrown in on the side - All the computational intelligence stuff we did (part…

Huh. I'm a 2nd year undergrad atm, and came across an instance of the nurse scheduling problem at my on-campus job. I did some research and delved into evolutionary computation, eventually deciding on genetic algorithms to solve my schedule problem. (I'm using a self-adapted version of NSGA II) Anyways, all my research has gotten me very interested in all the topics you mentioned, also neuroevolution. I actually brou…

I can only point you to the book we used at the time: Computational Intelligence: An Introduction http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/7/1/reviews/ramanath.html Although there were many class handouts and journal papers we had to read too.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#149

Post by Waterluvian »

capote wrote: post #34

Post number 7,819,394 talking about how useful or not useful a CS degree is to a programming job. Here are some lessons I learned by going to school that I find incredibly useful: 1. How to shut up and get some work done, even if I don't see the point to it. 2. How to shut up and get some work done, even if it isn't directly applicable or valuable to a job or something I want in the future. 3. How to take feedback an…

I went to school for non CS STEM and now I do software engineering as a career. You're absolutely right. All that stuff was totally critical to me.

Re: The limited value of a computer science education

#150

Post by caseymarquis »

Seems silly to pay thousands of dollars to read through some books at a slow pace.

My employer wants to pay me to get a bachelors in ee or cs (have half of one, but dropped out when it was clear I couldn't afford to finish), followed by a masters/phd, but it's only tangentially about the 'education'. It's all about networking and being able to wave around credentials.

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