More Universities Should Shut Down Their Computer Science Programs

Looks like ye olde blog is a bit slammed at the moment, apologies. (If only my university CS program taught me how to be a Wordpress sysadmin!)

I think you're missing the entire point of what a Computer Science program is.

It's not to teach programming. It's to teach computing theory, algorithm design, etc. That's the reason that the top-level university programs are so heavy on theory. That just happens to fit with systems programmers(who somehow aren't software engineers... curious). It also fits with game programmers, which is where I think a lot of CS students want to go after they graduate.

I also disagree that there is any real good way to teach software engineering at this point in time. Unlike other disciplines such as Mechanical or even Electrical engineering with decades, even centuries of practical knowledge that has resulted in a lot of very strict best practices. Software engineering doesn't have that. Everything in the domain is extraordinarily fluid. Processes are changing rapidly. Tools as well. Even the end product we produce is vastly different from what it was 10 years ago. There simply isn't any good way to teach this subject in this environment short of on the job training. It's compounded with the fact that every software development house is different. Nobody has the exact same process, or uses the exact same tools. So teaching SE as a discipline really doesn't make much sense.

did you actually read the post? i actually pre-rebutted both of your arguments.

i understand quite well what a CS program is, since (as i pointed out in the post) i've been a student in three university CS programs and taught coding at a fourth.

i'm saying that most of what goes on in academic CS departments is not what we need as a society and it's not what most undergrads hope to get into when they enroll. most undergrads get into CS to write software, not to learn "theory" or "compiler design" (although, again, as i pointed out in the post, if this happens to be your bag, more power to you -- but this isn't really about you, it's about the mismatch between what university CS programs do and what people and society really want or need.)

software engineering is obviously teachable (i've been doing it for 20 years) and that's true even if you personally didn't have any good software engineering instructors or mentors. it looks like you and i are in agreement that rapid change in software engineering makes universities not the optimal place to teach software engineering (that was the point of my post). but it doesn't follow that because universities are bad at this, that software engineering is "not teachable".

There's no engineering without a solid theoretical background. You want to do civil engineering, they'll make sure you thoroughly understand Newton's laws; electrical, Kirchhoff's. And that's just the start. In fact, you're much better prepared to build big bridges if all you've studied is theoretical physics than if you had personally built a crossing over every ditch on campus.

Maybe try this introduction to web publishing with wordpress [1].

Google cache of the blog post: Also, http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...

[1] http://codelesson.com/courses/view/introduction-to-web-publi...