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Computer Science Education

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Re: Computer Science Education

#81

Post by Yizahi »

atmosx wrote: post #17
0xFFC wrote: post #3

I don't want to be negative here, But I think anyone who can convince Berkeley guys to re-activate this[1] channel would make humanity much much more service. I am saying this because this channel changed my life, literally. I do live in third world country, I went to local college, where you will learn nothing after 4 year (not even writing a simple hello world, TBH). But after watching and learning from this channe…

I would like you to make an AMA or a blog post about your story with details. It is pretty inspiring.

I remember a story about Google doing some optimization on YouTube page to make it load faster. They done it, tested and then deployed changes to main site. After that they had seen that average page load time increased despite that page definitely loaded faster with fix. In the end they realized that lots of people from 3rd world could now load YouTube not in say 20-30 seconds but in 5-10 seconds (don't remember exact values) and so it changed from unreasonably long to acceptable. And so massive influx of slow clients dropped average time of page load.

That was a few years ago, so we can see that there are still maybe millions of people with very slow Internet connection out there.

Re: Computer Science Education

#82

Post by hackermailman »

0xFFC wrote: post #3

I don't want to be negative here, But I think anyone who can convince Berkeley guys to re-activate this[1] channel would make humanity much much more service. I am saying this because this channel changed my life, literally. I do live in third world country, I went to local college, where you will learn nothing after 4 year (not even writing a simple hello world, TBH). But after watching and learning from this channe…

There's also this list of MOOCs https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/comments/4rimxf/he...

What I do is find a university and look at their course public page where often in the calendar/schedule you can find lecture notes, slides and sometimes the lectures. If you find the lectures immediately grab them with some browser plugin to archive because they tend to disappear.

TU/e in NL has a lot of open english taught courses I've found, like this one with lecture videos http://www.hyperelliptic.org/tanja/teaching/crypto16/

Re: Computer Science Education

#83

Post by rubber_duck »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #62
lineindc wrote: post #2

Instead of applauding this (oh, they are spreading knowledge), I'm going to point out that they just want cheaper labour.

I was wondering what their motivation is. Maybe this is it. It's so strange how so many programmers seem to want other people to learn to program. Why is this? I accepted a long time ago that probably less than 1% of the population have the ability to be a good programmer. And even if more had the ability, do we really need that many programmers? I can't imagine any other industry doing this. I don't go on to the web…

>Why is this?

Because they like what they do and sharing knowledge helps you learn and network. Go on youtube and look for tons of drawing tutorials, music creation, sculpting, etc. pretty much anything creative and accessible will have people who will give away knowledge for free, sharing what they discovered or w/e.

There's also selection bias, programmers create digital content so it's bound to be over-represented on the internet.

Re: Computer Science Education

#84

Post by Lawtonfogle »

pliptvo wrote: post #73
m0nty wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks great if you're Indian, Irish or female. Edit: Or AU/NZ, missed that one.

Problem: There's a massive gender imbalance in CS and amongst the coding community. There are loads of men and hardly any women. Most of half the population would never consider working for us or our partners. Solution: Make a website which specifically encourages young girls to see themselves as coders. Problem: We have invested loads of money into our Irish, Indian, Australian/NZ offices, but we could increase our…

The problem? Because those actions are discrimination. Using discrimination to fight discrimination largely targets the under privileged members of the privileged groups.

It's basically a call for equity instead of equality, except it is limited equity which automatically assume some do not need equitable help. It is also limited in how it's applied.

Find the actual problems causing any modern day biases and fix those. Personally I work with some kids to help them love math. In my (admittingly anecdotal experience) there is a bias noticeable in middle school for all kids to not like math that evolves into a gender bias but to some extent hurts both genders' ability and desire to learn. Identifying and remedying the cause of this would do more to help both girls and boys than targeted aid in high-school or college.

Re: Computer Science Education

#85

Post by reitanqild »

pliptvo wrote: post #73
m0nty wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks great if you're Indian, Irish or female. Edit: Or AU/NZ, missed that one.

Problem: There's a massive gender imbalance in CS and amongst the coding community. There are loads of men and hardly any women. Most of half the population would never consider working for us or our partners. Solution: Make a website which specifically encourages young girls to see themselves as coders. Problem: We have invested loads of money into our Irish, Indian, Australian/NZ offices, but we could increase our…

No problem for you. And I have learned to live with it but as a young boy it was extremely frustrating to see girls getting advantages throughout the whole school system just for being girls.

Now I am fully aware that I have certain advantages ("privileges") as well but as I said: when you are young this can be extremely frustrating.

Re: Computer Science Education

#86

Post by reitanqild »

hdctambien wrote: post #52
titraprutr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees And here is the problem - diversity has become a goal rather than a natural consequence of everyone having equal chances. It's not the lack of diversity that those companies should focus on - much more important is an elimination of any kind of discrimination based on gender/race/religion etc.

I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. As it stands right now, it is intimidating for a girl to sign up for her first computer science class knowing that it will be full of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier ag…

of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier age.

YMMW but IIRC my experience has been a bit different :-/

Edit: added IIRC

Re: Computer Science Education

#87

Post by humanrebar »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #62
lineindc wrote: post #2

Instead of applauding this (oh, they are spreading knowledge), I'm going to point out that they just want cheaper labour.

I was wondering what their motivation is. Maybe this is it. It's so strange how so many programmers seem to want other people to learn to program. Why is this? I accepted a long time ago that probably less than 1% of the population have the ability to be a good programmer. And even if more had the ability, do we really need that many programmers? I can't imagine any other industry doing this. I don't go on to the web…

> Why is this?

Many of my hardest problems involve people in decision-making positions that don't have any idea about how computers or programs work. Getting the rest of the world to be more conversant in programming will allow for more meaningful work. For example, we know what an EKG and an APB are, but people don't know what a compiler is.

Re: Computer Science Education

#88

Post by notheguyouthink »

reitanqild wrote: post #85
pliptvo wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Problem: There's a massive gender imbalance in CS and amongst the coding community. There are loads of men and hardly any women. Most of half the population would never consider working for us or our partners. Solution: Make a website which specifically encourages young girls to see themselves as coders. Problem: We have invested loads of money into our Irish, Indian, Australian/NZ offices, but we could increase our…

No problem for you. And I have learned to live with it but as a young boy it was extremely frustrating to see girls getting advantages throughout the whole school system just for being girls. Now I am fully aware that I have certain advantages ("privileges") as well but as I said: when you are young this can be extremely frustrating.

I mean, it's frustrating at any age. It's not a popular opinion, but just because you know "some" things are easier for you than say, "girls", doesn't make it any less frustrating.

Sure, they're frustrated too i'm sure - i'm not denying that or putting anyone down, to be clear. It has always just seemed like the wrong approach to a problem, or possibly projection of a problem where a problem doesn't exist.

Re: Computer Science Education

#89

Post by mej10 »

torrent-of-ions wrote: post #62
lineindc wrote: post #2

Instead of applauding this (oh, they are spreading knowledge), I'm going to point out that they just want cheaper labour.

I was wondering what their motivation is. Maybe this is it. It's so strange how so many programmers seem to want other people to learn to program. Why is this? I accepted a long time ago that probably less than 1% of the population have the ability to be a good programmer. And even if more had the ability, do we really need that many programmers? I can't imagine any other industry doing this. I don't go on to the web…

Programming is a very general skill that can be applied to almost anything and it has a low barrier to entry.

In the view of those promoting programming education it is a skill that everyone should have the opportunity to learn -- more akin to reading or writing than specialized skills like making glue or regulated subjects like law.

There is also a lot of room for creativity in programming, which means it probably has a higher chance of being adopted just for fun.

Re: Computer Science Education

#90

Post by wolfgke »

hdctambien wrote: post #52
titraprutr wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Large companies are judged by the diversity of their employees And here is the problem - diversity has become a goal rather than a natural consequence of everyone having equal chances. It's not the lack of diversity that those companies should focus on - much more important is an elimination of any kind of discrimination based on gender/race/religion etc.

I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases. In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this. As it stands right now, it is intimidating for a girl to sign up for her first computer science class knowing that it will be full of boys that have been encouraged to do computer sciencey things from an earlier ag…

> I see it as more of a temporary compensation for earlier gender based biases.

So you tolerate that a complete sex shall be punished for former sins. Clearly not my sense of justice.

> In a world where boys and girls are given the same opportunities at (even) younger ages, you wouldn't need something like this.

Everybody can use the internet to learn coding. But at least to me it seems that mostly boys (with few exceptions) seem to love doing this - in particular from young age on.

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