Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

lazowska.cs.washington.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 201 posts

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

#81

Post by codesuela »

potatolicious wrote: post #47
dba7dba wrote: post #32

Totally unscientific opinion, but wouldn't increase in CS graduates and programmers mean lower salary for those newly minted graduates? Or will we never have enough programmers?

Increase in supply, yes, but the question is if the demand will grow more quickly than the supply. If it does then salaries will keep rising (though probably more slowly). If supply growth outpaces demand growth then salaries will drop. I don't think we really know enough about programming demand growth right now to make a call either way, we also don't know the scale of the CS graduate expansion. In any case, this i…

exactly on point in my humble opinion, people who are in it soley for the money will probably end up in these enterprise (Java comes to mind) jobs where it is not looked down uppon if you don't code in youre spare time.

And I don't mean to judge, the latter gtoup may have a healthier job-hobby-life relationship than me.

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

#82

Post by hershel »

kimdouglasmason wrote: post #42
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,…

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…

> a lot of badly-written toy programs.

That's not necessarily true.

On some panel about python, one of the participants who teaches python to science students said that after their relatively short amount of training, scientists can do useful stuff with python and that resonated well within the panel.

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

#83

Post by pakitan »

gohrt wrote: post #55
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…

> A society of part-time coders would do nothing but produce a lot of badly-written toy programs. What's the point? Maybe you are embarassed by the content of github, but many of us feel it is changing the word for the better. An Excel jockey writing macros -> better spreadsheets. A writer who can analyze and restructure their story, wihout laboriously poring and cutting and pasting -> better stories. There was a tim…

> There was a time when 'writing' was a specialist activity best left to professionals. Imagine if that never changed?

Writing = thoughts put on paper. When writing was a "specialist" activity it was due mostly to technical difficulties rather than people needing a whole new breed of skills. The anatomist analogy is a good one. But if we extend it to IT, it doesn't mean everybody should be able to program. Rather, everybody should know basic computer operation and how to use the most popular programs.

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

#84

Post by null_ptr »

hga wrote: post #49
withdavidli wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experienced engineers will still have an advantage in a job search. Few things to consider: - First job: Getting the first one is always the hardest, the whole needs experience, but where do I get experience if no one gives me the chance scenario. Luckily programmers can have highly visable projects. - Job markets do change: It's about supply and demand. US programmers makes more, especially in the SF Bay Area than a…

" First job " That's an outstanding point, especially in today's economy. It sucks that a conventional programming career generally ends at age 35-40, but for someone not wedded to a programming career, and who has a modicum of talent and interest in the field, yeah, that'll get them started. They will then have plenty of time to arrange their first transition into another career, and they will have learned a lot of…

What do you mean by transition into another career? Using your programming experience in a tangential field? Getting into management?

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

#85

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#86

Post by kimdouglasmason »

streptomycin wrote: post #79
kimdouglasmason wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

By no means. I believe that having GDP per worker be 4x median wage is socially and politically dangerous, and results in persistent high unemployment because of lack of demand.

The sweet spot is somewhere in the middle. Capital needs a return, but we've seen current levels of wealth inequality in the past and it means bad things for the average person.

Edit: Another way of stating my position is that I'm against extreme income inequality. That does not mean that I am in favour of perfect income equality.

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

#87

Post by [deleted] »

streptomycin wrote: post #79
kimdouglasmason wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#88

Post by enraged_camel »

kimdouglasmason wrote: post #68
gohrt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A society of part-time coders would do nothing but produce a lot of badly-written toy programs. What's the point? Maybe you are embarassed by the content of github, but many of us feel it is changing the word for the better. An Excel jockey writing macros -> better spreadsheets. A writer who can analyze and restructure their story, wihout laboriously poring and cutting and pasting -> better stories. There was a tim…

I didn't mention github, and don't see it as especially relevant. If you are an 'excel jockey', then your job involves coding. Of course knowing how to code to some degree will make you better. I don't see that as a good example. You should have used one of the many professions that currently involve no coding at all as an example. There was also a time when civil engineering was a specialist activity best left to pr…

>>You should have used one of the many professions that currently involve no coding at all as an example.

Okay, I'll bite.

My dad is an ophthalmologist in Turkey. He runs his own private practice. When he opened the clinic in the early 90s, he quickly realized that keeping track of patient records in paper format was not efficient. So he taught himself Microsoft Access (which came out in 1992!) and wrote his own patient record management software, which greatly increased his productivity and therefore income/leisure time.

Fast-forward to 2011. I was organizing an international conference and needed to send out some email blasts. The problem was, all the email addresses I needed were on a several hundred page PDF document with no clear format. So I had a choice: I could spend days manually copy-pasting and cleaning stuff up, or I could try to automate it. I ended up writing a Ruby script that grabbed the embedded text and pattern-matched email addresses and spat them out onto a text file. Still not perfect (my regex was rudimentary) but it got the job done a lot faster. Learning basic Ruby took me several hours, and I ran into some (silly) issues [1], but that's still better than the several days I would have spent doing the task manually.

You may be thinking, "well, we have specialists for that sort of thing today." Sure. But just like there are many rural areas in the US where it doesn't make economic sense for ISPs to lay out fiber, there are many personal tasks and errands where it doesn't make sense for professional developers to write software for. So there is a lot to be said for the need for individual empowerment through programming.

[1]http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6566884/rubys-file-open-g...

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

#89

Post by scotty79 »

pakitan wrote: post #83
gohrt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A society of part-time coders would do nothing but produce a lot of badly-written toy programs. What's the point? Maybe you are embarassed by the content of github, but many of us feel it is changing the word for the better. An Excel jockey writing macros -> better spreadsheets. A writer who can analyze and restructure their story, wihout laboriously poring and cutting and pasting -> better stories. There was a tim…

> There was a time when 'writing' was a specialist activity best left to professionals. Imagine if that never changed? Writing = thoughts put on paper. When writing was a "specialist" activity it was due mostly to technical difficulties rather than people needing a whole new breed of skills. The anatomist analogy is a good one. But if we extend it to IT, it doesn't mean everybody should be able to program. Rather, ev…

Programming = putting thoughts into computers in executable form.

I think all people should learn how to make computer do their bidding at a rate more than one click at a time.

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

#90

Post by VMG »

codesuela wrote: post #78
randomdata wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

and the Google Shuttle is an illustration of what a CS education is good for
Post reply on HN