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Comment by tropo | Hacker News Reader

People hit calculus, which is almost never needed in the job market, and they give up.

Lots of math and hard science is in the major. It's not an alternative to the humanities and liberal arts and languages. It's done in addition, which just isn't fair at all. Students take two or three semesters of calculus-based physics, three semesters of calculus, two semesters of discrete math, engineering statistics, linear algebra, differential equations, and often even more science.

A person majoring in education could skip all that, even if intending to be a math or science teacher.

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> People hit calculus, which is almost never needed in the job market, and they give up.

This is almost like saying, basketball players don't need to do pushups during the basketball match, so basketball training should skip push ups. The reason all engineers and scientists (computer or natural) should do calculus/differential equations/hard math courses is because these courses make students smarter.

They are a form of mental exercise that permanently increase your maximum brain capacity and your ability to do complex logical reasoning. It is possible you could replace these courses with some more job-relevant courses, but those courses would have to be just as brain wrinkling as these courses, if you wanted to maintain the current intellectual level of the industry.

Most developers are “dark matter developers” despite the HN/Silicon Valley bubble. The complexity in business/enterprise software isn’t the computer science it’s understanding the business.

I find most “computer science” people don’t want to actually worry about producing products that people want nor do they want to worry about the actual business domain.

There is a reason that despite all of the “smart people” that Google has, they have consistently failed at every product that isn’t advertising.

Sure. I won't disagree with that. But the university is offering a computer science degree, which is creating skill in computer science. If people want expertise in business, they should supplement with a business degree or on the job business training.

Or convince some university to create a "software business" major so they can streamline themselves into a management role at a software company.

So exactly what do graduates do with a degree of it isn’t to earn a living? Money comes from producing products that people want? All of the great “research divisions” that couldn’t productize died in favor of companies like Apple who focused research on products that people wanted.

Jobs famously killed Apple’s Advanced Technology Group that brought the world things like PowerTalk, OpenDoc, and QuickDraw GX. Microsoft’s Research division hasn’t done much better. I’ve already mentioned that Google has wasted untold millions on products that no one wanted.

But the bigger question is are the degrees actually preparing students for the real world outside of Silicon Valley where companies actually want people who can add business value? Will it prepare people to compete for jobs against cheaper foreign labor where they are more focused on actual “occupational training”?

>People hit calculus, which is almost never needed in the job market, and they give up.

This.

I tried going back to school for a CS degree at 26 after 5 years of professional experience in the bay area as a developer. The CS classes are trivially easy, but I simply could not do the math. I paid for tutors. I lived on Khan Academy all day long. I tried three semesters in a row to pass calculus and just couldn't do it. The vast majority of people simply cannot pass the math classes required for an engineering degree.

How many questions did you do with pen and paper, without access to any outside help (book/tutors/videos)? If you start with trivially easy questions (d(x^2)/dx = 2x) and do 1000-2000 questions with very minutely increasing difficulty level, I am sure you would ultimately pass the course.

Questions you do with others, or examples from the book are useful for conceptual clarity, but that clarity can only be guaranteed to be solidified if you successfully do questions without help.

People often think you don't need practice to master math, but don't bat an eye when they see professional football players passing the ball to each as warm up before a big game (after having played the game for 20 years and passed the ball 100k times already). Fundamentals are important. I just started learning drums, and my music teacher has been making me practice the same beat for the past 3 months over and over again till I absolutely master it. Me and every other student is happily doing it.

I had to come to grips with this when I entered university 45 years ago. I went to an extremely dumbed-down high school (especially in math), and had no idea how to make myself grind my way to competence in any subject that didn't come naturally. It took over a year to learn how to learn hard (for me) things. Fortunately, I was able to join a supportive peer tutoring network that helped me overcome the holes in my education and approach to learning. The light went on when I accepted if I wanted to succeed, I would have to spend 10 good hours working a 1 hour problem set. The majority of people just don't want to make a 10x effort to learn things that frustrate them. It's especially hard to grind when you feel surrounded by people who succeed seemingly effortlessly.

This. I think the problem is that schools need to have separate tracks, and now days some of them do, that differentiate between the archetypes of people that work with software. A computer scientist is different from a computer programmer - sure, there are times when the different areas may overlap, but some people want to work in discovery and others want to work in application.

And to some degree, isn't the job of science to make life easier for the rest of us? I know some people scoff at people that don't have CS degrees, but it's important to be realistic about science's role in industry: thanks to the combined output of a lot of very talented computer scientists, computer programming is getting easier and more approachable with every passing year. It's not uncommon now for people with very little knowledge of computer science to build all kinds of complex applications. I see that as a victory for computer science, not a setback. And I think the people that want to apply science are just as important to the success of our industry as those who want to develop it.

> A person majoring in education could skip all that, even if intending to be a math or science teacher.

A person majoring in education earns nowhere close to what STEM grads does even if intending to be a math or science teacher. Knowing those things is what makes you valuable, anyone can learn programming but not everyone will know how things works and you can't program stuff you don't understand.

>Lots of math and hard science is in the major.

How different is this from engineering more broadly, to say nothing about math or physics majors? (I can see CS being a bit more math-heavy than some other engineering disciplines because at many schools, it's been historically associated with the math department but I think the general point stands.)

To understand these numbers, I'd have to understand better how degrees roll up into Computer & information sciences vs. Engineering & engineering technologies. At many schools, "CS" is in the engineering school, often associated with electrical engineering.

So you’re likely more educated. What’s your argument?

CS majors come out of the gate making 100K, can change companies whenever they want, are mission-critical assets wherever they go, and work in ivory towers.

I got through the hazing ritual, so that works great for me personally. There is far less competition for my job.

For the benefit of society, or the country, or the world, or something like that... the situation is terrible. We're wasting years of human lives on unproductive education. We're excluding capable people from CS careers. We're driving up the cost of software.

If we trimmed out the non-CS stuff, people could do combined BS+MS degrees in the time that we currently spend on BS degrees. The extra CS education would be valuable to the people and to their employers.

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