My path to CS and opinions on CS Education
lhao03.github.io
lhao03.github.io
What? I don't understand this on a bunch of levels.
* What's the difference between "front-end" and "frontend"?
* Woman-dominated? I have been interviewing for a bunch of "frontend" roles and I've gotten a grand total of one woman to apply. Some of that's on me for not recruiting in woman-friendlier places, but this is not my experience at all.
* Frontend has been "easier" for my ~20 years in the field. A lot fewer things can go wrong, with a lot lower stakes. Women entering "frontend" development aren't newly creating this sense, it's been there the whole time.
I definitely want to improve my recruitment pipeline to involve more women, but some of the stuff here just seems very different from my experiences. I also firmly disagree with discouraging people from pursuing an area of software dev they find interesting; if a woman wants to write code on the frontend, why on earth would anyone want to discourage that?!
What I meant regarding aspiring female engineers is that those going into the traditional CS route should not have their career choices be subtly influenced by existing industry trends and the tertiary education system should do everything it can to prevent that.
Why not the other way around? I think by far most of the problems that make development difficult are human problems. Why shouldn't we push all the CS students to study psych and writing first?
I can also say hiring for a frontend dev does not mean they can do backend work, whereas a backend dev (in my experience) is able to jump into the frontend with relatively little friction when needed.
YMMV of course, but this has been what I've see in in my ~20 years.
On the hand, you don't have any control at all for the frontend, especially for consumer products.
Modern web browsers have abstracted all of the resource management problems away from the app developer. The worst you can do is crash the browser, which is a pretty easy problem to avoid.
Do you work in HFT? I consider that basically a subspecialty of systems programming.
Did you peek at my comment history? How did you figure that out? Not HFT, but trading systems yes.
If the comparison is between teaching "CSS, HTML, and Javascript" and "writing CRUD apps in Python," sure, they're about equal.
I think people get their wires crossed a bit though with backend tasks where you might need to debug a race condition, or like, be a Linux expert. Since companies typically pay for backend resources, they're also more likely to assign engineers optimization tasks to reduce costs. These are basically Senior Backend SWE tasks, but people don't stop to consider what a comparable Senior Frontend task might be.
And thinking about it, they're the kind of thing you'd also need to be a Linux expert at. Like, half the problems YSlow flagged on my projects were things Sysadmins needed to handle, like slow DNS, or ETags. So they typically got foisted on me, rather than the frontend engineer.
> it’s a repeated trend that when women enter an industry, pay for that industry in particular goes down
Honestly, I have no idea how one disentangles supply and demand effects, from cultural and regional effects. One random HBR article suggests that comparing locations by woman partipicaton rate reverses the trend, to where more women _increases_ local median wages: https://hbr.org/2018/01/when-more-women-join-the-workforce-w...
Could this just simply be because women are increasing the labor supply, and thus driving down the cost of labor in that field?
It's just a style/proofreading issue. You knew that.
This makes absolutely no sense if "Front-end" is the same as "frontend" and you knew that.
> But computer science is also math; it's basically applied math, so we should also teach computer science in a similar way that math is taught.
Math education is horrible, idk why you would model anything off it. So many people seem to think they're not good at math, just because teachers and they way its taught isn't good.
I think comp sci and software engineering need to be separated some how, like physics and engineering. Also programming needs to be its own thing, separate from engineering. Like a life skill. I can use a hammer and some saws and make some simple things or do some repairs, but im not an engineer and definitely not a physicist. More people should be able to hack some thing together with python, without feeling like they need to be an engineer or a computer scientist.
This is a person that has an intrinsic interest in science and technology. This is an outlier among the general population. For children who are more attracted to less abstract concepts, or people who just want to find a better job, quick gratification and fast learning cycles are important, which is why front-end web development dominates the curriculum of the short-term courses mentioned in the article.
It's a good point though that the industry, by underselling the level of sophistication of CS, might be missing out on people who (like the author of this anecdote) could have the drive and talent to truly succeed, arguably the people who they most eagerly want to make replaceable.
>Another issue is that these programs (KodeWithKlossy and SheCodes) only teach "front-end" web development, which is quickly becoming a woman dominated field. Is that good? I don't think so. Historically, when women enter certain fields, it "lowers" the value of it. Front-end development is now seen as "easier" then backend or frontend.
There's a danger in seeing this too much from the lenses of gender problems. Frontend development has always been seen as easier than backend, probably only except during the dawn of GUIs, in games, or if you're building React.
But more than 10 years later and I'm doing just fine. Not only am I gainfully employed as a programmer, but I've had the pleasure of working on some pretty sophisticated systems. It just starts by trusting that you can (eventually) learn the material, and just work at it until you do.
That being said, I like Dr. Bob Harper's description of CMU's CS program as essentially and extension of algebra, and that it doesn't particularly favor students who have experience coding.
> This quote drives the point home that programs like KodeWithKlossy don't seem to really focus on helping those who are economically unable to seek out CS education, but those who have the money; as long as there are women/gender minorities in our program (who can pay), who cares if they actually need help accessing CS programs or are the groups of people that need the most help?
This seems consistent with the observation made by the journalist Douglas Murray that affirmative action-type programs invariably serve to benefit only the most privileged members of the target minority group.
You can usually purchase a second hand machine. Mac Minis are listed on EBay for < $400. Granted that’s still too high in much of the developing world, but to argue that any curriculum should focus on only the lowest common denominator seems short sighted.
> Another program I don't like is SheCodes which to me seems to prey on women trying to transition to a career in tech by teaching them web development (people specializing in web development is increasing quickly, and the field is becoming very inflated. Telling people that learning web development will get them a job or high salary may not be true in a few years. I also personally don't like web development). Oh, and it's not free.
I’d argue there’s a significant shortage of people who can actually problem solve and build the right solution. Tons of people have flocked towards web development or programming in general, but are they skilled enough to actually get hired? In my experience, no.
Learning React basics doesn’t mean you’re a quality hire.
And it’s also not clear why the author is mixing in their personal feelings on web development.
> For instance, one three-week KodeWithKlossy program cost 8795 USD.
Yeah that’s obscene. There are plenty of free or significantly cheaper alternatives online.
On their actual website, I see:
> Kode with Klossy’s flagship program provides the opportunity for young women and non-binary individuals across the country, ages 13-18, to attend free two week bootcamps that introduce them to key computer science concepts and skills.
Not sure where the $8K+ figure came from, but I thought this organization is a non profit
The author strikes me as a young student still trying to figure things out in undergrad. A lot of the post/article reads like a journal entry. I wouldn’t fault her for not having it all figured out yet.
I think you’re completely right about the shortage and skill gap. I think she’s more right than she knows about the predatory practices, and I think in that sense both your opinions coalesce.
I think if her prediction misses the mark it’ll likely be because she doesn’t have our experience of working in the field and seeing first-hand just how bad these candidates are relative to what we know it actually takes to succeed. Without that insight I could see how it looks like Web Dev is doomed to implode because of everyone flocking to it. Anyway, her choice of parentheses to make the statement makes it seems like she’s somewhat aware of this potential blindspot. That may or may not have been intentional.
Kind of an aside, but what's the consensus on this? It does seem like folks are swarming to web development nowadays (though it's felt like that for many years now, and market growth thus far seems to outpace the newcomers.)
Looking through recent HN Who's Hiring, there are very few postings for "embedded / STM32 / FreeRTOS", and tons for "React". The pay seems to be much better for webdev also!
Thats not to say that frontend is an easy skill. doing it well requires a certain skillset. the real danger of all this frontend focus is that its easy to do frontend good enough while being objectively bad. Makes it hard to find really exceptional developers.