My Computer Science Degree Was Not Worth the Cost

The best thing about my college years was learning scientific methodology.

The next thing was a very deep dive into computer architecture, starting from flip-flops, to circuits, to microcode, to building operating systems.

I may be an outlier, but these two things really shaped my career.

Coincidentally, I went to my first parent / teacher conference last night for 10th grade.

They offer a class on C++, which was offered way back when I was in high school '94-98.

I couldn't help but think what a waste of time that would be. And I get it - their trying to teach logical thinking and problem solving more then starting someone down a career path - but wouldn't it make more sense to start these kids on web development or app development - pick a language - java, python, perl - hell - show them some PHP as a gateway drug / get Wordpress up and running and customized.

Worse is how many students don't have a programmer as a parent and wouldn't know otherwise? Going to start a kid / young adult down a path of C++ and they'll build what - video games? Operating systems? Graphic programs?

Again - the logical thinking and problem solving this class probably offers is very important in any kind of programming but the class is offered right next to automotive repair / body work (which is what he wants to do) which absolutely translates into a career path if the student chooses to go further.

I'm gonna push him in the direction of ECU programming and tuning - best of both worlds - a little programming and he can still work on cars while learning math and science.

Looking at the list of techs, his CS program was an academic CS program with a focus on algorithms- this is all about making more computer scientists, not software engineers. The two fields are somewhat disjoint.