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Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

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Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#351

Post by rurp »

Maximus9000 wrote: post #201
ghaff wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At which point you bang your head into the wall because the fix is so bloody obvious. :-)

And that can be demoralizing in itself. Early in my career, after make a stupid 'single character mistake' that broke my entire program, I started to think "maybe I'm not cut out for this".

When I was first learning how to program it felt like arguing with the most pedantic person in the world. I would write a script that felt like I had crafted a concise and elegant argument, only to have the computer respond, "Invalid. You missed a comma somewhere on line 564".

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#352

Post by [deleted] »

alexashka wrote: post #288
chrisseaton wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes we make ourselves look like clowns rather than professionals. It's terrible I don't know why we're doing this to ourselves.

Because there is no 'we' doing it to 'ourselves' :) If you want there to be a 'we', that would be called a workers' union. 'Professional' is when you have a strong union that forces companies to treat you as a human being, something they'd much rather not bother with.

[deleted]

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#354

Post by treeman79 »

honkycat wrote: post #287
buran77 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the best hires were the college dropouts I think this is survivor and selection bias. There were thousands of dropouts in every cycle and you'd never hear of most. For the ones that ended up being the best, school was probably the limiting factor rather than an enabler. I see some kids these days doing the same, justifying dropping out of school because Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out and they'r…

100%. Bill Gate and Mark Zuckerberg both grew up fantastically wealthy. Their decision making process should be different than the average person. Gate's parents had friends in high places, went to high quality schools, and he was a trust fund kid. He was in no danger of failing and didn't need to worry about money. He could always just go back. Zuckerberg had a private tutor. They had basically already had a college…

It was a very common opinion amongst the startup crowd at that time.

Now I would hear stories about MIT, and be impressed, but many schools had very out dated programs.

Breadboards were cool, but I wanted to learn software.

Assembly was neat, made me a better programmer. I’ve Never once used it.

Whole series of interesting but not practical skills. I ended up running school newspaper. That was super useful for getting career launched.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#355

Post by dylan-m »

aSockPuppeteer wrote: post #335
dylan-m wrote: post #322

I got about 8 years into my four year degree program in between interesting part time and then full time jobs on the side, and recently came to a set of realizations: 1. I'm never going to finish this damn thing because I keep failing or almost failing math courses (and it happens the three required courses I have left are gated by math courses). All it does at this stage is make me feel inferior. (I do suck at think…

One of my professors I liked told me she “Will not start teaching a class until she can do 100 practice problems in the subject she teaches”. We had an 84 year old lady pass the class with us. I don’t know what you’re struggling with but maybe retake a previous Calc 1 class to pass calc 2. Audit calc 3/statistics so it’s just practice. Obtain a different book and do the entire thing on your own, not only the even or…

Oh, I agree, I really would like to get better at math. I find usually this stuff makes sense for me after it's percolated for a while and I eventually find an application for it that I like, and _then_ it gets exciting and easy to sort through. (Which is perfectly normal, but I suppose I just don't have the patience for the first stage there, where the subject is more abstract). Indeed, Wolfram Alpha is awesome for working through problems. Perhaps having a book on the side for when I cross paths with discrete math stuff would help to connect the dots faster. Was there one that worked particularly well for you?

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#356

Post by plutonorm »

burntoutfire wrote: post #245
plutonorm wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, this is my biggest problem with the field. 15 years in the industry and I've never seen anyone promoted out of IT. Your only escape is a being a founder of a startup. We are not included in conversations that matter. Our opinions are discarded. We are simply dispensable cogs in the machine, its equivalent to data entry work. No status, no opinion worth listening to. I did comp sci because my dad said it was a go…

I've seen plenty of coders promoted into management. Of course, it takes time - first they have to prove themselves in some tech lead or product owner role and later, if they seem capable, they can go higher. Come to this about it, two out of three of my current bosses (incl. a guy who has hundreds of people under him) are ex-coders.

Where do you work because this categorically does not happen to any appreciable degree in small to medium sized companies in London.

Also I would kill for a product owner role. The idea that a programmer can get into a PO role is laughable. I've never seen even the glimmer of a chance of that happening to either myself or my peers.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#357

Post by b20000 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #4

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…

This is very true and one of the main problems of our field that needs to be addressed ASAP.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#358

Post by TACIXAT »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #81
NalNezumi wrote: post #48

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.

I think this is why I have so much trouble in my career. I just need to resign myself to writing tests, fucking with build systems, and not shipping a ton of features.

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#359

Post by rovolo »

misja111 wrote: post #6

The author notices that the nr of bachelor degrees went down every year from 2005 until 2014, at which year it went up again. It takes 4 to 5 years from the moment of choosing your study until earning your degree. That means relatively many people chose a CS study in 2000 and also in 2009. I guess the explanation for 2000 is that the dotcom bubble was still alive and well, the explanation for the popularity of 2009 m…

Their choice of 2005 is definitely the culprit (4 years after the dot-com crash), and it's only gotten more obvious in the years since this post. There's been 60% growth in the number of "Computer and information sciences" (CIS) BAs since then, compared to 20% for Bio-science, 15% for Physical-science, 25% for math, and 40% for Engineering.

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_322.10.a...

Re: Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

#360

Post by AnimalMuppet »

exdsq wrote: post #100
boomlinde wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, Civil Engineers do learn physics as part of their course. The analogy is apt for exactly that reason. Some knowledge in physics is fundamentally required, but for the civil engineer it's only professionally relevant to the extent that they can apply it to solve practical problems. A solid understanding of physics (and indeed how to come out wiser after reading a paper relevant to your field) is just one part…

What would you learn in a BSc Software Engineering that's not in a BSc Computer Science course that's not going to become redundant after a couple years and couldn't be covered in a module? I have thought about this before and argued for Software Engineering to be a specific course/field, but it's just too ephemeral at the moment with a lack of 'core' elements to warrant a 3 year course. Edit: To be clear, I want the…

I'd like to see them have to go into a million-line code base, find the right place, and add some new functionality. They'd learn a lot about the importance of good organization, naming conventions, and leaving pointers for the people who come after you - things they never would have learned in a lecture, or by working on 1000-line programs.
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