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Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

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Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#41

Post by lmm »

fred_is_fred wrote: post #2

The Classical Software Studies would be quite useful. Go write a game in 64kb of RAM in BASIC. It would really stretch your creativity and coding skills.

I think working on that kind of system would be actively harmful for most programmers. It would give them a totally unbalanced intuition for what the appropriate tradeoff between memory consumption and other attributes (maintainability, defect rate, ...) is. If anything, programmers should learn on the kind of machine that will be typical for most of their career - which probably means starting with a giant supercomputing cluster to match what's going to be in everyone's pocket in 20 years' time.

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#42

Post by LPisGood »

andoando wrote: post #25
LPisGood wrote: post #9

It is interesting that no software engineering or computer science course I’ve seen has ever spent any time on CI/CD. Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, none of these sorts of things - and I don’t even mean these specific technologies, but moreover nothing even in their ballpark.

Well this has nothing to do with computer science so there's that

I could not disagree with you more.

It would be easy for me to agree with you. I hold a graduate degree in computer science and I’m named for my contributions proofreading/correcting a graduate text about algorithms in computability theory.

I love abstraction and algorithms and pure theory, but this whole “computer science is a branch of mathematics, nothing more” idea has always struck me as ridiculous. Are you willing to throw out all of the study of operating systems, networking, embedded systems, security (hardware and software), a good chunk of AI, programming languages, UI/UX/human computer interaction, graphics, just to draw a line around algorithms and Turing Machines and say this is all there is to computer science?

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#43

Post by bckr »

LPisGood wrote: post #29
hotstickyballs wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally it felt quite natural once you start to work on real software projects.

I have never felt that way, and I’ve worked on a variety of projects at a variety of companies. Everyone has a bespoke mishmash of nonsense pipelines, build tools, side cars, load balancers, Terragrunt, Terraform, Tofu, Serverless, Helm charts, etc. There are enough interesting things here that you wouldn’t even need to make a tool heavy project style software engineering course - you could legitimately make a real l…

Merging strategies, conflict resolution, bisect debugging, and version control in general are very computer sciencey.

Would make a great course.

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#44

Post by andrewflnr »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #21
corysama wrote: post #10

> CSCI 3300: Classical Software Studies Alan Kay, my favorite curmudgeon, spent decades trying to remind us we keep reinventing concepts that were worked out in the late 70s and he’s disappointed we’ve been running in circles ever since. He’s still disappointed because very few programmers are ever introduced to the history of computer science in the way that artists study the history of art or philosophers the histo…

The history of art or philosophy spans millenia. The effective history of computing spans a lifetime or three. There's no sense comparing the two. In the year 2500 it might make sense to be disappointed that people don't compare current computational practices with things done in 2100 or even 1970, but right now, to call what we have "history" does a disservice to the broad meaning of that term. Another issue: art an…

You first sentences already suggest one comparison between the histories of computing and philosophy: history of computing ought to be much easier. Most of it is still in living memory. Yet somehow, the philosophy people manage it while we computing people rarely bother.

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#46

Post by andrewflnr »

LPisGood wrote: post #24
kelseyfrog wrote: post #22

CSCI 4810: The Refusal Lab Simulate increasingly unethical product requests and deadlines. The only way to pass is to refuse and justify your refusal with professional standards.

CSCI 4812: The Career Lab Watch as peers increasingly overpromise and accept unethical product requests and deadlines and leave you high, mighty, and picking up the scraps as they move on to the next thing.

Conventional university degrees already contain practical examples of the principles of both these courses in the form of cheating and the social dynamics around it.

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#47

Post by markus_zhang »

ekidd wrote: post #8
epalm wrote: post #3

Where’s the course on managing your reaction when the client starts moving the goal posts on a project that you didn’t specify well enough (or at all), because you’re a young eager developer without any scars yet?

Back in the 90s, this was actually a sneaky part of Dartmouth's CS23 Software Engineering course. At least half your grade came from a 5-person group software project which took half a semester. The groups were chosen for you, of course. The professors had a habit of sending out an email one week before the due date (right before finals week) which contained several updates to the spec. It was a surprisingly effectiv…

Shit I was thinking about exactly the same thing: professor deliberately change requirements at last week to mess up the students and give them a bit of taste of true work.

Glad that someone actually did this.

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#48

Post by andoando »

LPisGood wrote: post #42
andoando wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well this has nothing to do with computer science so there's that

I could not disagree with you more. It would be easy for me to agree with you. I hold a graduate degree in computer science and I’m named for my contributions proofreading/correcting a graduate text about algorithms in computability theory. I love abstraction and algorithms and pure theory, but this whole “computer science is a branch of mathematics, nothing more” idea has always struck me as ridiculous. Are you will…

Cryptography is all math, networking is largely math and algorithms (IMO yes this should really be replaced with information theory. Just understanding Shannons paper would have been more valuable than learning about how routers work), AI is mostly statistics (And AI as a whole Id argue is the essence of computer science), graphics is largely math and algorithms.

Yes I very much think a computer science degree should be as close to the foundation of theory as possible. And still learning Jenkins and kuberenetes or even a general course on how effectively push code is still far from the things you listed.

Theres so much computer science that isnt even covered that id include before including courses on CI/CD

Re: Computer science courses that don't exist, but should (2015)

#50

Post by markus_zhang »

andrewflnr wrote: post #44
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The history of art or philosophy spans millenia. The effective history of computing spans a lifetime or three. There's no sense comparing the two. In the year 2500 it might make sense to be disappointed that people don't compare current computational practices with things done in 2100 or even 1970, but right now, to call what we have "history" does a disservice to the broad meaning of that term. Another issue: art an…

You first sentences already suggest one comparison between the histories of computing and philosophy: history of computing ought to be much easier. Most of it is still in living memory. Yet somehow, the philosophy people manage it while we computing people rarely bother.

I always think it is great value to have a whole range of history of X courses.

I once thought about a series of PHYS classes that focus on historical ideas and experiments. Students are supposed to replicate the experiments. They have to read book chapters and papers.

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