In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills • Hacker News Board

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#51

Post by Mc91 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:05 PM UTC

harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

> many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with well-paying jobs

I switched into programming and am low paid, and am doing this right now for interviews. Practicing for whiteboard interviews, or coding tests (real time online and in person).

I re-read the language docs and then did (so far) 20 or so self-timed programming tests. Most of them I did in 5-30 minutes, 1 or 2 I got stuck on and subsequently reviewed. After finishing reading the language docs I will read though the platform docs, and may do some quizzes on that as well. As well as whiteboard high level class creation tests (HAS-A, IS-A).

The tests have a lot of array stuff, String manipulation, using long instead of int, casting from one type to another, doing a lot of stuff with maps and sorting maps by value. It also uses things then can be done quickly and compactly in streams. I do these things once in a while, but now have it memorized and down cold.

Hopefully this all leads to the latter result you mentioned.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#52

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

martin_a wrote: post #19

sidlls wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On average the best paying and most technically interesting ones are.

> most technically interesting Like making six figures a year for screwing people over at Facebook? Sorry for being snarky, but lots of jobs in IT businesses in the US tend to be somewhat unhelpful for the society at all and not really providing any benefit in the long term. In regard of this I'm always somewhat "happy" that we fail in Europe with building "the next Google", "the next Facebook" or whatever.

You must come from a well off background to afford the luxury of morality when choosing jobs.

While you might be happy Europe has no six figure SW jobs, I, not being able afford a decent house in a decent area to raise a family on your average Austrian SW dev salary, am not, and would gladly take a FAANG job any day regardless of how morally questionable it may seem from your McMansion.

My family's well being comes first.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#53

Post by cf141q5325 » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

If buzzfeed can win a pulitzer prize, then ieee can get a magazine with buzzfeed headlines. What a time to be alive!

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#54

Post by ionforce » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

> streamlining for whiteboard interviews

Can you clarify what this means?

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#55

Post by bialpio » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:08 PM UTC

jhall1468 wrote: post #32

t_fatus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

meanwhile European CS students, with their fellow students from the UK, Switzerland, Korea, Japan, [add whatever country you like except the 3 which are - on average - worst than the US in CS) are busy getting even more better than the average CS US student

Going to need a citation on that. The US presently dominates the tech sector. Rankings of programs are generally to be taken with a grain of salt, but MIT, Stanford, UCB and Carnegie Mellon all rank the top 4 on almost any list you'll find. Meanwhile, in the UK CS grads have the highest unemployment among any field, and have maintained that "award" for nearly a decade. That certainly indicates that your educational p…

US dominates EU w.r.t. salaries in CS, so they are able to hire top talent. As for other dominance, it's always fun to watch the results of ICPC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Collegiate_Progr...

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#56

Post by sbov » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:09 PM UTC

bfrydl wrote: post #36

harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

The funny thing is the question is actively harmful to real world problem solving. If I had to write a feature where passwords could not repeat any character the spec would spend a lot more than 1 word explaining that (and why there is that weird restriction in the first place). Assuming they wanted such a system based upon a single word would be a bizarre conclusion to jump to.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#57

Post by commandlinefan » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:11 PM UTC

BeetleB wrote: post #35

ummonk wrote: post #24

> making sure that both the educational institutions and students enrolled at those schools were statistically representative of schools and computer science students throughout the respective nations. Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities... Either beca…

>Given the typical CS student body, this basically means Indian, Chinese, and Russian students studying at US universities performed better than those studying at Indian, Chinese, and Russian universities Once you get down to the average university, the number of foreigners in undergrad classes drops dramatically - it's just too expensive for most foreigners to pay out of state tuition unless it is a prestigious univ…

Maybe at the undergraduate level. My grad school experience was exactly the opposite. I was the _only_ U.S. citizen in most of my classes and one of maybe three in the entire CS program.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#58

Post by ketzu » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

bfrydl wrote: post #36

harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Personally I really dislike multiple choice question format, as they often end in "gotcha" type of questions or overthinking of the question. In the exams of my university (for computer science) they are rare (most exams have at most 1/10 as multiple choice).

Does anyone have an assessment of reliability/validity/fairness of multiple choice comparing to other test types? (afair objectivity is very good in multiple choice tests)

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#59

Post by kristopolous » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

bfrydl wrote: post #36

harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

I took a look at the sample questions for the test, having never heard of it. It's 66 multiple choice questions, and many of them seem like “gotcha” questions where one of the answers is an off-by-one error or something like that. And how about this lovely question: > A personal identification number that opens a certain lock consists of a sequence of 3 DIFFERENT digits from 0 though 9, inclusive. How many possible P…

Asking "how many 3 digit numbers are there where each digit of the number only appears once?" is nearly a mathematically identical problem but without the fake backstory.

Being able to go from some constructed story to a math problem is a skill that can be tested elsewhere (and really, should be assumed if someone clearly has proficient enough numeracy to do combinatorics) Questions should be testing one thing as isolated as possible, not the same things repeatedly.

Re: In a study of senior CS majors, U.S. students are tops in skills

#60

Post by harias » Tue, Mar 19, 2019, 4:22 PM UTC

ionforce wrote: post #54

harias wrote: post #17

> Once the students were selected, the researchers then administered the Major Field Test in Computer Science, an exam that was developed by the U.S. Educational Testing Service and is regularly updated. There is a huge variation among countries in how subjects are taught and tested. I would like to add that many of my peers have resorted to streamlining for whiteboard interviews, and unsurprisingly, they end up with…

> streamlining for whiteboard interviews Can you clarify what this means?

They spend all their free time on interview prep websites. It is very easy to pass courses in India (except a select few colleges), so they spend next to no time on courses like computer architecture, networking etc and focus entirely on DS and Algorithms. It is quite effective though.