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Comment by brundolf | Hacker News Reader

This seems highly focused on systems; I wouldn't call it representative of "Computer Science" as a whole. Only maybe 2-3 of the classes in my computer science degree were focused on this kind of stuff.

Still seems like a good resource, just perhaps mislabeled.

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Yeah it's basically an Operating Systems book like Tanenbaum's "Modern Operating Systems".

The introduction is a much better description:

> In a nutshell, what you are reading is intended to be a shop class for computer science. Young computer science students are taught to "drive" the computer; but where do you go to learn what is under the hood?

And “Shop Class For Computer Scientists” or “Systems Engineering From The Bottom Up” would have been better titles. It’s simply misleading to suggest a course comprehensively covers “computer science” without covering algorithms or complexity, among many other things.

> This seems highly focused on systems; I wouldn't call it representative of "Computer Science" as a whole.

I'd agree with this, but it fits with how a certain set of schools teaches their core. They will teach a set of related classes around the topics here: computer architecture, operating systems, and networking, because this is often central to their research interests. Others will scatter this information across a number of unrelated courses to check the box, or skip it entirely because their research doesn't touch as heavily on these topics.

Further research on the author suggests they are from New Zealand. I'm from the UK and live in the US. What I see taught in US CS degrees is somewhat different from what I saw in the UK, and heard about from friends in continental Europe. I imagine the author's experience is similar.

A further bias from the author, and I'm making big assumptions, is that see value here because they've worked in places that do lot of system programming. Mentions of VMware and Red Hat on https://www.wienand.org.

I was a math major (in the US) so I don’t recall exactly, but I think my university offered both BA and BS degrees in computer science, where the BA focused more algorithms and complexity (overlap with math majors) while the BS focused on operating systems and hardware (overlap with electrical engineering majors). For postgraduates there is an academic MS in computer science versus a more practical MEng in software/computer engineering.

I think this is a good system - and also indicates that we are speaking somewhat past each other on what a “computer science” education looks like.

I think it's good to offer more options, but the focus on BA/BS in the US is weird. In the UK, it was common circa-2000 for:

1. BSc, BEng, MSc monikers to be meaningless across universities, but to be used consistently at the establishment.

2. Multiple degree paths to be available that went from something advertised as computer science to computer engineering.

3. A straightforward path directly into master's level computer science education.

You couldn't make an assessment based on BS vs BA because the curriculum may be similar in both cases. Oxford used BA whereas Durham used BS with both producing solid graduates that can't be differentiated in most work (further research or industry.)

My experience in the US is that hiring has kind of perverted the nature of discussions like these. The focus is on a few select algorithms and maths courses whereas the folks who've done the systems work are arguably better prepared for many real world tech roles. The last half of your degree has to be more interesting and reflective of the individual, right?

So my experience in the US for employment is that nobody notices or cares if you have a BA or BS, except possibly in unusual cases (my school actually offered a “Bachelor of Science in Theater”). So I don’t think there’s much of a “focus” in the US. There’s a loose set of conventions which aren’t nearly as important as the actual major, and are mostly reflective of internal structures and programs at the university.

MA versus MS is different (I think similar to the difference between a M.Phil versus an M.Sc). But I’ve never seen anyone dwell much on BA/BS.

Years ago, systems was the general purpose CS degree. I guess it is/was classical CS. Today, there are many specialties (data, security, algorithms, etc.), but many top-ranked CS schools still offer a traditional systems degree.

The reason for the name seems to be because of its focus on systems. I do agree that the way it's labeled isn't the best, but it's not trying to be representative of all Computer Scionce.

In fact, it seems to specifically be trying to have a different focus than a cs degree:

> This book aims to move in completely the opposite direction, working from operating systems fundamentals through to how those applications are complied and executed.

"opposite direction" tends to imply "the same content, just with a different order/framing". Whereas the OP leaves out the majority (not all, but more than half) of what people tend to put under the term "computer science" completely

Yes, the same comment appears whenever this comes up on HN. Bottom-up would actually be something more like Nand2Tetris or Petzold's code.

I’m surprised you had that many. My CS program had nothing comparable that I can remember.

Definitely not computer science.

We had one called "Systems Programming" that was a whirlwind intro to everything Unix (6 weeks on bash, 6 weeks on C, 6 weeks on Perl, a mishmash of SSH and everything-is-a-file and Unix-philosophy, etc)

We had another called "Operating Systems" that focused on things like concurrency, building a really basic memory pager, etc (mix of C and Java I think)

And we had one other called "Networking" that was sort of along the same lines as "Operating Systems" but focused on, well, networking. Mostly Java; we wrote our own application-layer protocols, that sort of thing

But yeah pretty much everything else - including the more "concrete" programming courses like Data Structures and Algorithms - was fairly abstracted away from any specific system

Nice, and now that I think of it we did have an operating systems class. I know better than to trust 25-year-old memories.

My undergrad CS degree I don't think contained any sort of OS course, other than maybe a survey of them but there was a graduate level class that was required for any higher degree. I took it before I graduated with an undergrad because it was interesting, and it was quite extensive as I recall. That was well over 20 years ago, however.

That sounds a lot like part of the UofT CS program.

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