Computer Science will end up like Math. Lots of adults today learned geometry, trigonometry, and calculus in school. If you ask them how much of it they use on a daily basis most will tell you they don't.
Computer Science Education
221–230 of 251 posts
Re: Computer Science Education
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Imagine someone unable to read - they lose access to an important source of information. Lacking basic computer literacy is similar - they lose access to news, modern encyclopedias, research, political announcements, etc. Those resources are critical to being an educated citizen and being able to participate in the democratic process meaningfully.
An educated driver may not be able to explain in technical detail how an engine works, but they can explain the basic rules of the road and understand that a car needs oil, gas and basic maintenance. They likely have a basic understanding of what a modern combustion engine is (it takes in oil and gas to produce rotational energy) and understand that emission standards exist and that they have to follow them to some extent (they can't dump oil in their backyard).
Re: Computer Science Education
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Because the gender ratio in STEM fields skews heavily towards men. >What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys? I can't imagine there would be anything that was 'inappropriate', though there may be some boys less excited about making a dress l…
> some boys less excited about making a dress light up you're using gender stereotypes ("girls like dresses", and implied its corollary, "boys like machines") in an argument against gender exclusion.
Yes. Regardless of anyone's stance on them, these stereotypes exist right now and are being re-inforced by society.
It's not easy to break down cultural barriers, and doing so in one fell swoop is near impossible. Employing these stereotypes in order to bring an end to them is not necessarily a bad thing
Re: Computer Science Education
#224Earlier 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…
OK, so could you help me understand something?
I certainly can see how there could be some injustice in the gap between men and women in the industry. And I could certainly see how the lack of perspective from women causes decisions that are suboptimal in some contexts. There are probably some companies in some subindustries that would benefit from hiring women programmers.
But every company being desperate to hire women? I don't see how most companies benefit from hiring a woman vs. a man.
To clarify, I'm saying that it seems that hiring a woman vs. a man has roughly the same value to most, but not all, companies. Thoughts?
Re: Computer Science Education
#225> 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,…
Math and science isn't used in a lot of people's every day life, but you have to learn it.
Re: Computer Science Education
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Imagine someone unable to read - they lose access to an important source of information. Lacking basic computer literacy is similar - they lose access to news, modern encyclopedias, research, political announcements, etc. Those resources are critical to being an educated citizen and being able to participate in the democratic process meaningfully. An educated driver may not be able to explain in technical detail how…
basic computer literacy != learning to code
Re: Computer Science Education
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Why in the age of a _World_ Wide Web and "post-discrimination" are large companies such as Google deliberately targeting specific groups? Because the gender ratio in STEM fields skews heavily towards men. >What will be in the girls-only code program that might be inappropriate for boys? I can't imagine there would be anything that was 'inappropriate', though there may be some boys less excited about making a dress l…
> Because the gender ratio in STEM fields skews heavily towards men. Girls are free to study what they want. If they don't want to study STEM fields - their problem, which I don't feel having to care for.
>Girls are free to study what they want.
Of course, but when the disparity is so large we should at least question why that is. Are girls biologically less inclined to find any appeal in STEM, or is it due to upbringing? This course appears to be following the latter, and either challenging any social bias that may dissuade girls, or balancing out any extra persuasion of boys
Re: Computer Science Education
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
> How do you define discrimination? Using any other criterion than ability for e.g. staffing jobs/university places/... In this sense every forced quota on gender/skin color/race/... is discrimination. Women only programs are, too (as "men only", "white only" or "black only"). EDIT: > How do you feel about Spanish language programming courses? Living in Germany I openly don't understand what you want to imply with th…
I'm implying it's not as simple as you are making it out to be. Does Google fall under your definition? They must, or it wouldn't seem fair to be upset at them. What counts as a "program"? If your complaint is mainly about quotas, I don't have as much to say about those. My intuition is that strict quotas are overly heavy handed and also treating the symptom not the cause. I would guess that programs that seek to hel…
To clarify, I was referring to Google's C.S. education program that is targeted at women, not hiring processes
Re: Computer Science Education
#229We replicated a CS degree path which you can fill with free MOOCs: https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree Admittedly we have left our course list dormant for a while but we will be pushing an update in a few weeks.
Nice work - just signed up. What criteria you use in selecting MOOCs for the degree path? How do you keep it up to date?
Even before we had a degree path we set up a classification system. This means we assign a subject and level to every course similar to what is done at many leading universities. Courses that cover the same or similar material will have the same CourseBuffet subject and number.
The goal of this system is for a user to be able to directly compare courses that cover similar material (liner algebra) , not just aggregate courses of same general subject (math). We only list courses that are roughly equivalent to a course that might be found on campus. We don't list say a 1 week on say Photoshop. While that material might be valuable it isn't a traditional university course.
When creating the degree path we looked at dozens of US universities' CS and management degrees and their requirements. We tried mirror what they required using our classification system. For example you have to take intro to computer science (we list as CS 101), Algorithms (we list as CS 295), etc.
All the courses we had previously classified as falling under say CS 101 then can be used in the degree path since we said CS 101 is a degree path requirement. The goal being a path that is provider neutral so one can pick and choose without having to be tied to only Coursera, edX, etc.
It is in no way a perfect system. While courses grouped under a classification should cover roughly the same material they are not perfect substitutes. We encourage users to use their best judgement.
As for keeping it up to date that is a huge challenge. If we were doing basic aggregation it would be a matter of just posting up new courses as they became available. But then users would have to take the time to sort through say all the math courses. With our classification systems they don't have to waste their time doing that.
The problem with having a much better organization of courses than anyone else is it is harder to maintain. At the moment we are behind in listing new material and thats why in my first post I gave the disclaimer.
Re: Computer Science Education
#230Sweet, just started a course in CS, so anything that can help is welcome!