151–160 of 452 posts
Why would you major in computer science if you want to work as a software engineer? It's like getting a physics degree to become a civil engineer.
I've always seen the same pattern in College decision: self-projection. That is, a combination of what they know and what they think they can do/like . Most people choosing Uni choose from what they know. Majority of young people know little about anything CS or nerdy; They often know the end product (computers, phones, apps) but very little about the people working on it. Compare that to doctors, managers, Wallstree…
CS types in the movies are basically magicians. Something needs to happen, they open a laptop, they type away furiously, there's a cutaway which shows them frowning, then a red dialog box on the screen turns green, and the thing happens. It's hard to get from that to the reality developing CRUD apps. There may be some drama, but arguments about which framework to use are not usually very cinematic.
To me this is the interesting part. I guess it's fair to say that you tend to see more and more films with clips of someone hacking away at a computer. Perhaps the issue is they they are rarely the star of the show. They're always the supporting act. Think of the two guys who with work with Tom Cruise in the MI series, or the technicians/magicians that assist James Bond. In the years that have elapsed, in spite of the success of FB, Instagram, Twitter, Stripe, Google, WhatsApp, even Microsoft (presumably all started by "nerds") it seems that it's not something many aspire or look up to.
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> Outside of our peers also in the industry nobody cares that you're a staff engineer at Google. Absolutely nobody. Not true at all. They get excited because you can build their amazing app idea. It's just like facebook but for... Oh no, you won't? Oh okay. Well let me give you my card in case you change your mind.
I've had this encounter so many times in the wild, it's insane. "Well, what can you build?" is typically the question after mentioning you write software.
I don't think CS is a high social status field at all . You're deluding yourselves. Outside of our peers also in the industry nobody cares that you're a staff engineer at Google. Absolutely nobody. They'll assume you're doing IT work like the characters in the IT Crowd if they even bother to think about it at all and haven't already walked away. Here's a concrete example to make it really obvious. How many computer s…
I dunno, the news of exorbitant salaries of SV programmers slowly make it into the mainstream media and those jobs are sometimes mentioned next to other traditionally highly desirable career choices, such as a doctor or a lawyer. Given how much America equates human worth with money, it should translate into increase in social status. Another take: CS is in no small part just an obscure field of mathematics with only…
I don't think CS is a high social status field at all . You're deluding yourselves. Outside of our peers also in the industry nobody cares that you're a staff engineer at Google. Absolutely nobody. They'll assume you're doing IT work like the characters in the IT Crowd if they even bother to think about it at all and haven't already walked away. Here's a concrete example to make it really obvious. How many computer s…
I'm not sure I agree. Either you are conflating vocation, field of academic study, political power, socioeconomic class and status, or things are just different in the UK. Here in the US, you rarely study computer science to become a computer scientist but rather to be a highly paid engineer or eventually obscenely wealthy founder. The same is true for philosophers, authors, politicians and composers; increasingly, t…
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Could this actually be good, or at least quite understandable? (I'm not actually sure whether you intend your comment to just be descriptive, or also judgemental.) Does anyone expect college music programs to be easily accessible to people who didn't play an instrument, or sing in a choir, during high school? Similarly for dance, and drama, and art. And if you're right that mechanical engineering schools no longer ex…
You're right in that music programs demand a minimum level of proficiency with the chosen musical instrument. Many (if not all) have auditions as well. I would say the programming is a bit different. It is true that someone who has been working computers before they start college is likely to do better in the programming assignments. I suspect in many cases they'll be bored. They might finish in 30 minutes what other…
But, yes, I'm pretty sure that making up for not having hacked around with Python code in high school is a way lower bar than making up for never having taken piano or violin lessons.
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CS types in the movies are basically magicians. Something needs to happen, they open a laptop, they type away furiously, there's a cutaway which shows them frowning, then a red dialog box on the screen turns green, and the thing happens. It's hard to get from that to the reality developing CRUD apps. There may be some drama, but arguments about which framework to use are not usually very cinematic.
I think part of this is the limitations of interest that come from a film. You can write a whole movie about an electrical engineer building robots and visually show the struggles along the way. If you compare that to a software engineer searching for another fucking memory leak or something then it's just not going to be as visually interesting. An interesting thing about this is that I think it's easier to show in…
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Hah that's if you're lucky. Most of the time when someone says they work at SAP or Oracle they get a "God I hate SAP" because they're using a GUI from 1990 that looks like ass and is not intuitive.
My suspicion is that people don't hate SAP because of bad looking GUI, but because it implements rigid, hard-to-discover business processes that make everyone miserable (but make the company as a whole efficient).
But you are also right as well - and you'd be surprised at how inefficient it really can be.
There's one other possible, additional reason. I recently asked a 17-year-old high school senior who is heading to college what she's planning to study, and she said it would be mathematics, biomedical engineering, or some other kind of engineering. She's self-motivated -- says she will be studying multi-variate calculus, PDEs, and abstract algebra on her own this summer. She maxed out her high school math curriculum…
That being said, I'm realizing now that doctors spend a ton of time in front of a screen as well..as are many professions now a days.