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Why do so few people major in computer science?

danwang.co

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Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#341

Post by hasenj »

lgessler wrote: post #294
simonsarris wrote: post #11

Slight note about Dan Wang picking 2005: That was the peak of CS degrees awarded because it's 4/5 years after the height of the dot-com bubble. So the upward bump in the mid-2000's is somewhat explainable as an anomaly. I think his point 1 is underrated. CS degrees are flat because aptitude is flat. You can compare CS degrees to other degrees over time at nsf.gov: https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/2016/nsb20161/#/report…

Re: the Wordsum test, I can't believe it is seriously used to assess IQ. If we assume that all participants know all of the words used, then maybe it would have some merit. But so many of the words used are either archaic, little-used, or culturally specific to North America that you could only reasonably expect a well-read and/or well-educated (and therefore wealthy) American person to know them.

It's hard to believe a person of high IQ is not going to be well-read and/or well educated.

The only point about this test is it's specific to native speakers of English, but if you were born in North America than it surely applies to you even if your parents speak another language.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#342

Post by meej »

walshemj wrote: post #247
watwut wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. I would say that this basically screams "badly taught programming". Missing semicolon does not take down work, it just needs to be put back in and ide should help you. "Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, a…

novice programmers should not be starting a CS degree

in my day/at my alma mater non-novice programmers had a reputation for dropping out because they were bored by the introductory material in the first year of the program.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#343

Post by gms7777 »

flexie wrote: post #200
lordnacho wrote: post #107

The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, and coding doesn't come into it, you will hit a coding wall early on. In fact, every exercise in CS has this problem. You add a new thing (eg inheritance), and it breaks. B…

The premise of the article is wrong. From 2009 and until 2015, the number of CS grads almost doubled and any of those economics majors could have seen that in the graph, even if their essays are "basically bullet points" and their field is dead simple. They could also have told the blogger that causality might go the other way; Salaries are high precisely because demand is bigger than supply. If (or when) high salari…

Yes, I'm sure there are other factors but the graph tells a pretty simple story. Numbers declined from 2005-2009, which means students that entered college around 2001-2005 -- students that were in high school during the dotcom bubble burst and aftermath. CS may not have seemed like an attractive field at the time. Over time the state of the field has recovered, and as you point out continued to grow and get more interesting, and growth in graduates returned.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#344

Post by letmein »

Want to hear something horrifying?

In Alaska, last year, only 25 people in the entire state graduated with CompSci degrees.

The chasm between the Haves and the Have-Nots, Urban VS Rural, Hipster VS Redneck, White VS Native is only going to grow even wider.

Entire demographics are being left behind and they are never going to catch up.

But then again, do folks in Alaska need most of the toy services and silly startups in SF that are only useful to other rich techies?

Probably not. However, that gap is going to condemn the youth of an entire state to being stuck in lower and lower skilled jobs with plummeting wages.

Good job rich whitey Code Bros at $Silicon_Valley_MegaCorp_Monopoly! You're still fucking over the dwindling population of Natives.

What is the solution?

Here's what I would do:

TRUST BUST.

Smash the Monopolists.

There should be 30 Apples, 20 Googles, 10 Microsofts, 7 Oracles, and 5 Facebooks, etc etc.

Somewhere over the past 20 years, The Powers That Be got too enamored with Bigger More Take-The-Whole-Pie. Because that's where the Billions are.

But that consolidation that only benefits about 10,000 mega rich has come at a great cost and incalculable damage to society.

Instead of a diverse tech ecosystem like we used to have, we now have an unstoppable monoculture. Which makes it so much easier for NSA to spy on, for hackers to hit entire populations, and for fewer and fewer working IT professionals who know the full stack and are competent across multiple specializations, like the Master Masons who built European Cathedrals a thousand years ago.

Those Cathedrals will still be standing in 1,000 years.

Your GoogaAppaMicroFaceZons won't.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#345

Post by theprop »

I'm not sure about that data. Definitely lots of engineers and physicists as it has been noted have programming experience. Beyond that, tons more people are majoring in computer science as of the last 10 years.

It's become the most popular major at Stanford.

At Princeton in just 5 years from 2011 to 2016 it grew 3x to become the most popular major from 36 to 130 majors. At Yale in those 5 years, the number of CS majors doubled (though it's not the most popular major there).

In at least 3 states now the single most popular job is software engineers (30 years ago in just about every single state it used to be driver), and I imagine that trend is only going to continue so you will see more and more computer science majors.

https://paw.princeton.edu/article/rise-computer-science-beco...

http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2014/10/21/cs-department-strug...

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#346

Post by rhinoceraptor »

walshemj wrote: post #247
watwut wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. I would say that this basically screams "badly taught programming". Missing semicolon does not take down work, it just needs to be put back in and ide should help you. "Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, a…

novice programmers should not be starting a CS degree

I did my BS in CS with no prior programming experience.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#347

Post by matheweis »

One thing that seems missing from the post is the proliferation of alternative degrees; Computer Information Systems, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Information Technology, etc etc.

I would be surprised if the aggregate of all of those degrees didn't meet or exceed the trend of the others.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#348

Post by Baeocystin »

ashark wrote: post #221
lordnacho wrote: post #107

The grief factor of learning to code is on a different scale to every other major. One missing semicolon will take your whole tower down, and you realise this in the first day of practical exercises. Even if you are of the opinion that CS is math, and coding doesn't come into it, you will hit a coding wall early on. In fact, every exercise in CS has this problem. You add a new thing (eg inheritance), and it breaks. B…

I don't think it's even the programming that's the problem. There's a ton of Stupid Computer Shit we all know, mostly from messing around on our own time, that makes programming or doing anything else with computers much easier. A set of skills for navigating and troubleshooting issues, and a hard-earned intuition for where and how to look for answers. My CS program was really easy and I still don't know how people w…

>There's a ton of Stupid Computer Shit we all know, mostly from messing around on our own time

This, I think, is the core issue. Like most of us here, I started playing with computers as a young child, from a Timex Sinclair 1000 as a pre-teen to a Commodore 128 as a young teen, then an Amiga and beyond. It wasn't work, it was fun, a hobby. And more importantly, by the time I hit college, I had literally thousands of hours of practice just being immersed in how computers work.

I started tutoring other students in CS for some beer money, and it was a real shock at how awful otherwise very intelligent people were at what I considered utterly trivial questions. But they weren't trivial. They were only simple if you already had a complex, detailed and well-worn model of how computers work running in your head. Without that, even simple computer tasks may as well be written in cuneiform for all the good it does the genuinely new student.

I'm not even sure it is possible to take a young adult who is truly computer illiterate and have them succeed in a technical major. At least not in a standard 4 years. There is simply too much foundational knowledge you need to have before you can even begin the real work of learning what to do.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#349

Post by CamperBob2 »

skookumchuck wrote: post #329
throwaway7645 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing against comp Sci, but engineering is its own set of problems as you have to take a lot more advanced math classes than comp Sci, while taking all your calculus based engineering problems. Some you use techniques to convert to simple algebra problems...that end up being 2-3 pages long. All while having to learn CAD, robotics, practice circuits, design trusses, and yes, quite a few programming languages (basic,…

> It is often a cruel and harsh mistress. If your engineering project doesn't work, there's no pretending that it does. It's the ultimate in fairness :-)

If your engineering project doesn't work, there's no pretending that it does.

Yeah, that's marketing's job.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science?

#350

Post by Yhippa »

alistairSH wrote: post #269
walshemj wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

novice programmers should not be starting a CS degree

Poppycock. I studied CS at UVA in the late-90s and had no previous programming experience. I was an experienced computer user, which wasn't a given in the 90s, but I hadn't done any programming. There wasn't anything in the curriculum that required previous experience. Linux wasn't required for entry-level courses. At the time, they were taught using C++ and a Borland IDE on Windows. Similarly, source control wasn't…

I was there the same time you were and while I thought I came in knowing a lot but I was dead wrong. I had to learn a ton of things from the ground-up like everyone else.
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