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Computer science is a liberal arts degree

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Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#41

Post by spacemanmatt »

ukj wrote: post #34
t_mann wrote: post #28

CS is liberal arts because software is used by humans? By that standard pretty much any degree qualifies as liberal arts, including medicine, engineering, law,... Tbf, that kind of thinking actually goes back to the origins of medieval universities, so there is some case to be made (a lot of universities still award BAs for pretty much every subject). But I guess the true intention here is to lower the barrier in tec…

Not just software. All knowledge (computer science, mathematics, physics, biology, etc.) is used by humans. To what end? That is not a scientific question. To steal the sentiment from a meme. Scientist: what is philosophy good for? Philosopher: I don’t know. What is science good for? Scientist: Well science has broad application in… Philosopher: aaaand you are doing philosophy *drops mic*

> aaaand you are doing philosophy drops mic

That approach has been used for great justice in my recent work/life. When you can see that far ahead in the argument because you are correct, you just lead your conversation partner to make your point for you.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#42

Post by spacemanmatt »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #15

Ah yes the software developer jack of all trades now needs to add more skills to their bow. Or just hire people in the role of UX design as a specific profession

My life as a full-stacker: When I have to install the database, write the schema, write the app, write the DR policy, and eventually also argue for another developer, I get context switching fatigue and become susceptible to external recruitment.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#43

Post by popcube »

spacemanmatt wrote: post #39
somewhereoutth wrote: post #27

CS is not a science, certainly not mathematics, it is not about 'seeking the deeper beauty of our [for mathematics: any ] reality'. CS is not engineering, not much actual science or working principles get applied for most of the work done. CS is design, but design of a 4D artifact, something that moves in time and space, not just 3D. To make things more tractable, we do this in discreet space, not continuous space, w…

Is there some way to explain to me, a college dropout, why mathematics is a natural science but computations is not?

because math is too difficult to I can't understand what they usually do

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#44

Post by spacemanmatt »

eimrine wrote: post #35
samarama wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematics is the most science and least art form possible. Every other field of study has more artsiness than Mathematics. However, Mathematics also still has a lot of artsiness to it.

Totally disagree. Mathematics is not a science at all because there is no any possible experiments in the Math fields. And remember what David Hilbert has told about one of his students who decided to go into arts instead of keep learning Math with him. He told "he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician".

Math is abstract, so I would expect experiments in math to have abstract results. I don't think that makes it less of a science.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#45

Post by [deleted] »

eimrine wrote: post #35
samarama wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematics is the most science and least art form possible. Every other field of study has more artsiness than Mathematics. However, Mathematics also still has a lot of artsiness to it.

Totally disagree. Mathematics is not a science at all because there is no any possible experiments in the Math fields. And remember what David Hilbert has told about one of his students who decided to go into arts instead of keep learning Math with him. He told "he did not have enough imagination to become a mathematician".

[deleted]

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#46

Post by spacemanmatt »

samarama wrote: post #25
curt15 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematics itself is half science and half art.

Mathematics is the most science and least art form possible. Every other field of study has more artsiness than Mathematics. However, Mathematics also still has a lot of artsiness to it.

I feel like we have a better definition of math than we do of art. Thus it's a lot easier to accurately declare a thing is not math, than it is to accurately declare a thing is not art.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#47

Post by nxrabl »

A lot of folks here seem to have a real rose-tinted idea of what CS degrees are actually like. If you took CS more than 10, 15 years ago, you might remember it as a scrappy, fringey degree program, maybe splintered off from Electrical Engineering, a refuge for mathematically-minded nerds to find beauty in the cold algorithmic elegance of computation. That is not what it is anymore, not now that everyone knows you can make six figures right out of college with a CS degree on your CV. At the college I went to, CS is the second largest program, on track to be the largest in the next few years, and Intro to CS is the single most popular class on campus. They cannot hire professors fast enough. They're launching their own coding bootcamp just to keep up with demand. A lot of people are getting this education, and we need to look at what we're teaching them.

And what's on the curriculum? Some good hard math, but also a fair bit of nonsense. Some people in this thread seem to think colleges have been taken over by javascript, and that may be true in some places, but I wish they'd taught us JS, because what they taught me was Java Swing, because a decade ago the ivory-tower tenured professor who wrote that course thought it would be useful for getting us a job and never touched it again. They could've replaced that course with underwater basketweaving and nothing of value would've been lost, let alone any of the excellent humanities topics the author mentions in her post. There is plenty of space in the curriculum to clear out enterprise-driven cruft from fifteen years ago and replace it with some of the useful things the author mentions, without touching any of the core mathematics we all love.

In fact I would go a step further: Having a lot of people who are very good at programming but who don't know anything else is a bad thing for society. This is unique to programming as a discipline - programmers have historically unprecedented power to turn fuzzy, implicit ideas into concrete reality that affects people at massive scale. It's totally ok to let mathematicians, for example, go off and study just mathematics, because mathematicians are harmless. Programmers are dangerous. Without perspective, we will calculate ourselves right into dystopia - we're doing it right now! What good is it going to do any of us to write systems that strip away all our civil liberties with perfect big-O complexity?

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#48

Post by seoaeu »

creakingstairs wrote: post #14
fallingknife wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Degrees aren’t just about jobs But degrees are used as a gatekeeper for jobs, and the price of a degree, 4 years of lost earnings + $200K, means that the only practical reason to get one, for the vast majority of people, is to get a higher paying job. So in reality, degrees are about jobs, and universities should start acting like it. I do share your sentiment that it shouldn't be this way, but if you tried to get…

I agree with you mostly. But some random thoughts. > 4 years of lost earnings + $200K Yeah I forgot how much US universities cost. I did a double major in LLB and BA and my student loan at the end was less than 50k including some living costs. I can see why people in US are more focused on job qualification side of a degree if the opportunity cost was that much.

Yeah, anyone saying that you shouldn’t think about money when making perhaps the single largest expenditure in your life* probably doesn’t have your best interests in mind.

* admittedly, a lot of people buy homes that cost more. Still probably in the top 5.

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#49

Post by seoaeu »

ukj wrote: post #37
ycombinete wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment is confusingly written. I have no idea what you’re talking about, or what sentences you are referring to. Also, you’ll collect a lot more downvotes now that you’re obnoxiously talking about your downvotes.

What is confusing you about my comment? People who understand computer science also understand exactly what I am talking about. Because I explicitly said what I am talking about: undecidability. It is scientifically undecidable what a man; or a woman is. That is a question for the liberal arts and broader society. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undecidable_problem

Your comment is written like a logic puzzle rather than as prose that’s meant to make sense. Well, at least the start of it is, which can be enough to persuade someone to stop reading an move on

Re: Computer science is a liberal arts degree

#50

Post by nonrandomstring »

mbaytas wrote: post #5

There is a branch of computer science, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), where exactly the ideas in this article have been playing out for a few decades already. Earlier this year I wrote about HCI as the intersection of technical craft and social sciences: https://www.designdisciplin.com/hci-profession/ Interestingly the responses I got from people in the HCI field was the inverse of the sentiment in this article. H…

> Earlier this year I wrote about HCI as the intersection of technical craft and social sciences. Interestingly the responses I got from people in the HCI field was the inverse of the sentiment in this article (...) I got pushback on that too.

Some things seem defined not just by intersection but by exclusion. I've experienced both sides. As a computer scientist working in arts and music, I find the "computer music" field builds on a strong affinity. Technology and arts form a natural positive bond, although one meets the occasional purist who only hand-carves their own medieval flutes. It's a fusion intersection to which one can never bring too much humanities nor science. I don't feel out of place discussing philosophy and matrix multiplication in the same breath.

As I matured my interests post 2013 changed focus to digital rights and cybersecurity. It seems to me this area is currently defined by antagonism. It is a human-computer design field, yet is a chasm between human values and rigid thinking where people and systems clash.

In computer music, what is at stake is mostly joy. In cybersecurity what is at stake is power. As in any struggle the technocrats just wanna "hit them harder with more". More cryptography. More lockdown. More central authority. The actual utility, or god forbid 'pleasure' of computing be damned.

But there is another movement emerging in cybersecurity, to which I am affiliated. "Computing in the public interest", or "humanistic computing", whatever you want to call it, where technical concerns are fused on an equal basis with rights, freedoms and responsibilities.

Existing dead centre of that exclusion means getting push-back from both sides. But, to be honest I take that as confirmation that the work is fresh, valid, and essential.

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