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Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

lazowska.cs.washington.edu

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Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#71

Post by kimdouglasmason »

raverbashing wrote: post #53
leot wrote: post #19

This is evidence that programming has become a skill akin to literacy. The migration seems similar to the hypothetical situation in which universities and society had primarily been based on an oral tradition of communication, and then this fancy new technology called "writing" appeared (at first only in "Departments of orthography science"). Some of those who majored in "orthography science" would go on to study it,…

"Who wants to place bets on when country development metrics include "population % who know how to code" ... ? " Oh, an example of how CS people overestimate their importance, how funny. Dentists, doctors don't need to know how to code. Teachers don't need to know how to code. Maybe it's better that they do (some of them, still). The same with other professions. Humanity survived up to the 1980/70s without computers…

Well said. Other things that strike me as more important than knowing how to code, which aren't common knowledge:

1. How our political system works. 2. How the economy works: specifically, what money is, where it comes from, how the banking sector works, and the relationships between money creation, interest rates, asset prices, and incomes.

Most people don't understand these things, and that holds our society back far more than not knowing how to code.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#72

Post by vezzy-fnord »

In relation to "coding becoming the next literacy" and having demographics on people who know how to code...

What use does a mere "learning to code" actually have to most people? How do we measure fluency in "coding"?

Think about it. A crash course on basic procedural constructs like loops, variables, functions and maybe some simple exercises where one makes use of a language's standard library is not particularly useful. Even the conceptual knowledge that one gains is relatively minimal.

It's not like the huge percentages of people "knowing how to code" will do anything meaningful with it. Why? Because they wouldn't have the skill.

Many discussions revolving around compulsory code education seem to completely ignore the tons of domain-specific knowledge one requires to put coding skills to any real use. It's likely that little of the "code literates" will ever contribute to an open source project, for instance.

This is because besides code, you have (potentially): a build system, continuous integration, documentation generator, actual protocols that must be understood (HTTP, DNS, FTP, etc.), use of OS-specific system calls and constructs, general knowledge of memory layout, knowledge of system administration, etc.

These are merely condensed into a nutshell. Code by itself is of little use without actually knowing how computers work in general, which is no small task to comprehend, and requires tons of domain-specific knowledge as to the many abstractions we have created around software and hardware. It's a perpetual learning experience. A person who has learned rudimentary C is of little use in any serious project that requires knowledge of the POSIX and/or glibc API, for instance.

It's a completely meaningless metric in general. Most people will just do some basic imperative coding in a highly abstracted knowledge with no real conceptual understanding of what actually goes on, and promptly forget about it. Maybe they'll remember how to write a recursive Fibonacci sequence procedure.

Software is more than code. It is complex and multi-faceted. I can see blind coding having some uses for things like VBA macros, but those can be picked up by individuals on a case-by-case basis, when and if they need them.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#73

Post by asdfologist »

patio11 wrote: post #48
phaus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big money is still in finance, unless you manage to build a successful business.

There now exist options in engineering which are comparable with those in finance, and importantly, there is now a credible case that engineering is one of the best median outcome career paths for a bright student who is willing to push whatever lever and turn whatever knob required to get to professional success. Stanford undergrads with their degrees still wet are getting $1X0,000 offers from AmaGooFaceSoft. That's…

I keep hearing all these high numbers getting thrown around a lot. Is $300K really the typical pay among, say, 5th year Google engineers who joined out of college? If so that's pretty amazing.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#74

Post by sp332 »

patio11 wrote: post #48
phaus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big money is still in finance, unless you manage to build a successful business.

There now exist options in engineering which are comparable with those in finance, and importantly, there is now a credible case that engineering is one of the best median outcome career paths for a bright student who is willing to push whatever lever and turn whatever knob required to get to professional success. Stanford undergrads with their degrees still wet are getting $1X0,000 offers from AmaGooFaceSoft. That's…

I don't think the "median outcome" for a CS grad is to work at AmaGooFaceSoft, though.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#75

Post by bagels »

asdfologist wrote: post #73
patio11 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There now exist options in engineering which are comparable with those in finance, and importantly, there is now a credible case that engineering is one of the best median outcome career paths for a bright student who is willing to push whatever lever and turn whatever knob required to get to professional success. Stanford undergrads with their degrees still wet are getting $1X0,000 offers from AmaGooFaceSoft. That's…

I keep hearing all these high numbers getting thrown around a lot. Is $300K really the typical pay among, say, 5th year Google engineers who joined out of college? If so that's pretty amazing.

I really wonder that too. Places like salary.com indicate a much lower median.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#76

Post by TheEzEzz »

wanderingstan wrote: post #60
kimdouglasmason wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree. Having everyone knowing how to code is the opposite of specialisation. It's inefficient and pointless. If a certain profession needs a piece of software, it's much more efficient for specialist developers to consult with domain experts, write that software, and sell it into the industry. Having every (for example) doctor being able to code adds negligible value, and I would argue the opportunit…

Someone a thousand years ago would have dictated to his scribe the following: "Having everyone knowing how to read and write is the opposite of specialisation. It's inefficient and pointless. If a certain profession needs a document, it's much more efficient for specialist scribes to consult with domain experts, write that document, and sell it into the industry. Having every (for example) doctor being able to read a…

This is an alluring retort, but I have to agree with kimdouglasmason that it has no actual weight. kimdouglasmason explains and gives examples of why literacy has had such a huge impact on the world. You give no examples of how code literacy will have similar impacts. You just make an analogy and say it will affect the world "in ways we can't imagine".

Your argument could just as easily apply to electrical engineering. The whole world runs on electricity, how is it that no one knows Maxwell's equations! Everyone should obtain basic proficiency in applying electromagnetic theory: it will help the world in ways we can't imagine now.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#77

Post by chroem »

platz wrote: post #21

What happened in late 2009? I saw the same inflection point in those redmonk github usage graphs.

There has been a cultural shift lately from "Ha! Those people are nerds!" to "Man, those guys are going to make so much money.". I would argue it has a lot to do with this movie:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Network

Also, as a student at the University of Washington, I would like to note that, anecdotally, the quality of CS students has dropped through the floor. I'm a mechanical engineering major, but I often find myself helping my roommate with his CS homework, even though he's probably in the top five percent of CS students here. These people don't even understand basic things like what bytecode is.

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#78

Post by codesuela »

randomdata wrote: post #70
jotux wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to the median income for most of the US ($40-$50k/year), $90k for a new grad is pretty high.

Not to mention that $50K is the median household income. Individuals earn even less, on average.

this is a perfect illustration of why people protest the Google Shuttles in SF

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#79

Post by streptomycin »

kimdouglasmason wrote: post #56
ktran03 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, I think we are at a peak for outrageous programmer salaries. The market is currently correcting itself.

Programmer salaries aren't outrageous. Most peoples' real incomes have declined substantially, making programmer salaries look high. US GDP is $15.68 trillion (2012), with 146 million people employed (April 2014). That's $107,000 per worker. US median wage is around $27,000. Programmers are one of the few occupations that have managed to retain bargaining power. Compare the lifestyle (e.g. house, vehicle, ability to…

Are you implying that GDP per capita and median wage should be the same?

Re: Responding to the Explosion of Student Interest in Computer Science [pdf]

#80

Post by null_ptr »

hkmurakami wrote: post #66
patio11 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There now exist options in engineering which are comparable with those in finance, and importantly, there is now a credible case that engineering is one of the best median outcome career paths for a bright student who is willing to push whatever lever and turn whatever knob required to get to professional success. Stanford undergrads with their degrees still wet are getting $1X0,000 offers from AmaGooFaceSoft. That's…

The gap is closing for the first few years of engineering vs finance (first 3 years of comp in finance is definitely a lot lower now vs 2007, whereas first 3 years of comp at GOOG post 2009 has exploded), but the gap grows as you approach your mid 30's. When you're getting to $300k at GOOG, your buddy is over $500k at GS as a VP (VP is middle managemnt in high finance and iirc the high fliers get there in 6 years). F…

What jobs make $300-500k at Google, I assume upper management positions?
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