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Computer Science Education

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Re: Computer Science Education

#191

Post by a_j_c »

shuntress wrote: post #142
wolfgke wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are free to study what they want. If there are more men who want to study a STEM subject, this will of course lead to a majority of men. Indeed, typical STEM subjects have no limitation on your A-level mark (Numerus Clausus) for being allowed to study it. So there is clearly no selective barrier to entry (Numerus Clausus) [but I'm not a native speaker of English - so it can be that "selective barriers to entry…

Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?

> "Have you ever been somewhere where it was clear everyone noticed you didn't 'fit in'?"

Yes, being an actual liberal in SV and not just a Dem apologist...

Re: Computer Science Education

#192

Post by jkaptur »

duderific wrote: post #180

> Computers are everywhere in our world today and being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science and its underlying problem-solving methodology of computational thinking. I know this is just some copywriter writing this, but this seems the height of Silicon Valley bubble thinking. Plenty of people do just fine in their lives barely interacting with computers at all. Sure,…

Plenty of people "do just fine in their lives" without knowing how to read. This is discussing how to "be an educated citizen", a far higher bar. An educated citizen:

* can have an informed opinion about the NSA's definition of "collecting" information [0].

* when told "we need to make sure that this list of 100,000 URLs are all valid websites", doesn't respond "wow, we'll need to hire a big team".

* can reason about data-driven classification of documents (e.g. Facebook's news feed, Google search).

[0] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect

Re: Computer Science Education

#193

Post by joe563323 »

duderific wrote: post #180

> Computers are everywhere in our world today and being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science and its underlying problem-solving methodology of computational thinking. I know this is just some copywriter writing this, but this seems the height of Silicon Valley bubble thinking. Plenty of people do just fine in their lives barely interacting with computers at all. Sure,…

Almost the whole population of earth is affected by computers on a daily basis. Seems logical for the citizens to know the fundamentals irrespective of the domain they are in. Because almost all the domains will be soon run through computers.

Re: Computer Science Education

#194

Post by x0x0 »

e40 wrote: post #184
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was past 40 when I was hired at Google, worked there for almost 10 years, knew many other older devs. I disagree that they were discriminatory. At least in my experience, that was not an issue.

It almost certainly varies from manager to manager. I cannot imagine that Google has a company-wide practice of discrimination.

And they would certainly never have an company wide policy of wage constraint. Why, that would be illegal!

Re: Computer Science Education

#195

Post by maolt »

ng12 wrote: post #187
duderific wrote: post #180

> Computers are everywhere in our world today and being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science and its underlying problem-solving methodology of computational thinking. I know this is just some copywriter writing this, but this seems the height of Silicon Valley bubble thinking. Plenty of people do just fine in their lives barely interacting with computers at all. Sure,…

It's exactly like knowing how to diagnose and fix issues with your car. Is it helpful to know at least a little bit? Absolutely. Is it a necessity? Not by a long shot.

Did you mean like "knowing how to read and parse textual content for information?"

Re: Computer Science Education

#196

Post by euyyn »

whyileft wrote: post #182
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is mostly about female to male ratios. Certainly we need more women programmers, but there aren't enough to hire. Every company I've ever worked at wanted more women, but there aren't enough graduates. At google, one way they were able to hire women devs was to pay for women were were stem students to go to the grace murray hopper conference who were cs students and then interview them and hire them on t…

Everywhere I've been begs for female applicants. I feel like the low numbers of women trying to get into tech is a fantastic example of how market forces do not solve everything. There is an enormous gap between the supply of female applicants and the demand for them with little change in sight. To any women reading this comment. Places are desperate to hire you so do not be afraid to apply at places where you feel y…

Plus, it was discovered that when looking at the list of requirements for a job offering, women wouldn't apply if they didn't meet some requirement, while men would apply as long as they met ~3 of the requirements.

Re: Computer Science Education

#197

Post by svkrs »

whyileft wrote: post #182
NotSammyHagar wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article is mostly about female to male ratios. Certainly we need more women programmers, but there aren't enough to hire. Every company I've ever worked at wanted more women, but there aren't enough graduates. At google, one way they were able to hire women devs was to pay for women were were stem students to go to the grace murray hopper conference who were cs students and then interview them and hire them on t…

Everywhere I've been begs for female applicants. I feel like the low numbers of women trying to get into tech is a fantastic example of how market forces do not solve everything. There is an enormous gap between the supply of female applicants and the demand for them with little change in sight. To any women reading this comment. Places are desperate to hire you so do not be afraid to apply at places where you feel y…

And yet my wife who has masters in computer science, multiple years of experience finds it hard to get a job because she took multi year break from work for raising kids...

Re: Computer Science Education

#198

Post by NoodleIncident »

hdctambien wrote: post #39
dotancohen wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why this rather insightful post is downvoted. The site specifically targets these groups by name. Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys?

> Why ... are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees. They want to hire more women. In order to hire more women, there needs to be more qualified women applying for jobs. In order for there to be more qualified women applying for jobs, there needs to be more qualified women. In order for there to be more qualified women we…

> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees.

As the one judging the ones doing the judging, it's fun to imagine that the judgement is what motivates the corporation's actions. I don't think that's actually what happens though.

The motivation I've actually seen corporations act upon, is that diversity in employees has direct benefits to the company's bottom line. For example, googling "facebook diversity" gets me this paragraph:

>"Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. In order to achieve that mission, we need an employee base that reflects a broad range of experiences, backgrounds, races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, abilities and many other characteristics."

You can assume that they're all lying to virtue signal if you want, it's impossible to stop anyone from assuming such things. But if you're proposing an alternative to their stated motivations, you should probably explain why that motivation isn't actually true.

Re: Computer Science Education

#199

Post by zizzles »

I glimpsed at the content for 30 seconds. This does not look anything like a computer science education: "Pencil Code", "Blockly", "Coding Adventures", "Craft Small Projects in HTML/CSS". These are just glorified baby-games for 5 year old's; or at the very most a stupefied introduction of basic development for girls and malnourished Indian children.

Re: Computer Science Education

#200

Post by xtreme »

jkaptur wrote: post #192
duderific wrote: post #180

> Computers are everywhere in our world today and being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science and its underlying problem-solving methodology of computational thinking. I know this is just some copywriter writing this, but this seems the height of Silicon Valley bubble thinking. Plenty of people do just fine in their lives barely interacting with computers at all. Sure,…

Plenty of people "do just fine in their lives" without knowing how to read. This is discussing how to "be an educated citizen", a far higher bar. An educated citizen: * can have an informed opinion about the NSA's definition of "collecting" information [0]. * when told "we need to make sure that this list of 100,000 URLs are all valid websites", doesn't respond "wow, we'll need to hire a big team". * can reason about…

I disagree. That is like saying that an educated citizen must:

* have an informed opinion on current Emission standards

* be able to change oil on their own car

* could describe how a 4-stroke engine works

Replace the computer with a car and you will see that what you consider basic knowledge is not basic to most people. They rely on experts for advice, opinion, and guidance.

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