This article and most of the comments around here seems to have mistaken computer science and software engineering.
I wish software engineering degrees were more common so I could've studied computer science like I intended to.
Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
201–210 of 308 posts
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#202I would have loved a class on the Theory of Version Control. Unfortunately, I didn't learn about it until my first job after I graduated.
Architectures (centralized, distributed), implementations (diffs, patches, full state, etc.), branches, merges, etc.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#203> CSCI 2100: Unlearning Object-Oriented Programming?? People in tech industry, seem to have no idea how the systems in the wild work. Enterprise Java runs the backbone of operations for all of large business organisations such as banks. It is just as grounded as MS Office is. It is object-oriented software that is running the bulk of production environments of the world. Who is going to maintain these systems for the…
> It mirrors the business entities and a natural hierarchy and evolution of things
I've seen the entities you're describing from the inside and they resemble nothing natural besides perhaps a tumor. Hopefully we can just dispense with them rather than shackle the next generation with the burden of maintaining them.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#204For CSCI 2100: Unlearning Object-Oriented Programming I'd recommend Casey Muratori's Handmade Hero series. Also check out https://www.youtube.com/@BetterSoftwareConference
Let's be real for a moment. I just looked it up and found a playlist for the full Handmade Hero series which contains 696 videos. Adding up the total duration of the playlist gave me a time of 4726711 seconds, or 1313 hours. Even for the most passionate of developers, you're gonna have a hard time getting someone to commit even a fraction of that time towards educational content. If you think there are any specific v…
You don't watch the full playlist from start to finish. You start and keep watching until "you get it". Most of the foundational stuff is of course at the beginning. Feel free to pick the topics you find interesting, like allocations, etc.
There's a sizable community around Handmade Hero which can point you to more specific topics.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sadly this naturally happens in any field that ends up expanding due to its success. Suddenly the number of new practitioners outnumbers the number of competent educators. I think it is a fundamental human resources problem with no easy fix. Maybe llms will help with this, but they seem to reinforce the convergence to the mean in many cases as those to be educated is not in a position to ask the deeper questions.
> Sadly this naturally happens in any field that ends up expanding due to its success. Suddenly the number of new practitioners outnumbers the number of competent educators. I think it is a fundamental human resources problem with no easy fix. In my observation the problem rather is that many of the people who want to "learn" computer science actually just want to get a certification to get a cushy job at some MAGNA…
I agree, it is another important factor. Pandemic pay and hire rates certainly accentuated this.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#206There should be a course on Linux. Not your typical operating systems course where you write a toy OS and teach a bunch of theory, but rather a deep dive into various Linux subsystems, syscalls, tooling, etc.
Actually, I think it should be the inverse of that. A CS student should come into CS!01 after hacking for years as a teenager and know how to use something like Linux from a practical standpoint and then college course should be all about the theory and ideas.
I remember when I was 10 or 12 or so hacking with my IBM 8086 and using basic, I accidentally "invented" the bubble sort. In fact, mine was extra slow and inefficient because both my outer and my inner loop went from 1 to N and there was no early exit if no swaps were made. A true O(N^2) algorithm. I didn't now what O(N^2) meant, but I had some understanding the things quickly got slower.
Then later in CS101 I learned about big-O and all the theories around sorting and it immediately clicked because I had a deep understanding of something that I experienced and then could tie it to real theory. The other way around - learning the theory before the experience - wouldn't have worked as well.
To tie it to your comment, you should have a deep experience with your OS of choice and then when you go to school, you learn why things are the way they were.
When I say this I often get accused of gate keeping, but I don't view it that way. I look at it as other types of majors that have existed longer than CS. I often make an analogy to music majors. I can't enroll as a freshman and say I'm going to be a music major without ever having played an instrument. People get accepted to a music department after they demonstrate the ability (usually though the equivalent of hacking while they were kids), and in their music classes they learn theory and how to play different instruments (just like learning different OSes or languages).
I kind of feel that CS should be the same way, you should show up to CS101 knowing how to do things from deep experience. You may not know any of the whys or theory, that's fine, but you should have experience in doing.
To tie it back to the parent: you should come to CS knowing how to run Linux, maybe because you copied configurations or scripts from the dark corners of the internet. And then the CS classes should be around why it's all that way. E.g., you know that to schedule something you use cron; and CS would be a discussion around how generic OSes need a way to schedule tasks.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#207I think the misconception here is that studying computer science prepares you for a career as a software engineer. It helps but there are a lot of blind spots in the curriculum that boil down to the notion that academics don't really tend to have engineering backgrounds. The fix isn’t stuffing the curriculum with pet topics, because the list of useful ones is practically endless. And it would get outdated soon anyway.
I actually did a phd in the topic of software engineering and I had to learn a lot of stuff after I started practicing what I preached. I realized that this was the case while I was working on my thesis and it was a big reason for me to get some hands on experience.
Basically, academics tend to have a lot of somewhat naive notions about software engineering that usually manifest in them waffling about things like waterfall style development or emphasizing things like formal methods, which in 30 years of practice, I've rarely encountered in the wild.
That doesn't mean teaching that is a waste of time. But it does mean that there's more to software engineering than is taught in universities. You can't really learn most of that from someone that hasn't been exposed to real life software engineering. Most academics never leave university so they are not necessarily that up to speed with modern practices.
Teaching in most engineering disciplines boils down to a lot of theory followed by apprenticeships. The theory doesn't evolve nearly as fast as practice and tools. That's why it's fine using somewhat outdated or academic languages and tools in university. I don't think that's unique to computer science either.
Studying computer science gives you a theoretical basis and the ability to learn. Which is nice and relevant. But I actually know a lot of software engineers that studied completely different topics (theoretical physics, philosophy, mathematics, geology, etc.) that do fine without it. A few years of working can compensate for that. Having an academic background prepares people to wrap their heads around complex new stuff. Getting a degree basically means "you have a working brain". The most important skill you learn in university is using your brain.
I don't care what language people use in university. But I'd prefer people to have been exposed to more things than just 1 language and knowing that there are multiple ways to do the same thing. I did logic, functional, and imperative programming in my first year. OO was kind of hot and newish but that was a second year topic. I later studied aspect oriented programming as well (there are several flavors of that) and a few offshoots of object oriented (prototype based, role based). Many javascript programmers may have never heard of the language Self. But that's one of the the languages that inspired Brandan Eich; it's a prototype based OO language (no classes, just prototype objects). That's the difference between a good engineer and one with a decent computer science background. You don't need to know that to use Javascript. But it helps.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#208After reading this article, I suddenly remembered an elective I took in college called “Software Archaeology.” The professor asked us to reimplement compiler exercises from the 1970s. At the time it felt useless, but later I realized that course taught me more about system design than any modern framework ever did.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#209After reading this article, I suddenly remembered an elective I took in college called “Software Archaeology.” The professor asked us to reimplement compiler exercises from the 1970s. At the time it felt useless, but later I realized that course taught me more about system design than any modern framework ever did.
Software archaeology in its most literal form would be a fantastic course addition for anyone going into a company with a medium-large codebase > 5 years old. Especially if you end up at a FAANG or something akin to it.
Being able to navigate not just a codebase but bugs/tickets attached to it, discussions in documents, old wiki pages that half work, extracting context clues from versioning history, tracing people by the team they worked on at the time...digital detective work is a serious part of the job sometimes.
Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)
#210There should be a course on Linux. Not your typical operating systems course where you write a toy OS and teach a bunch of theory, but rather a deep dive into various Linux subsystems, syscalls, tooling, etc.
My university offered a Linux Kernel elective one semester. I really wanted to take it but it was scheduled during one of my TA shifts