I looked over her shoulder as my wife was doing a CS degree, and I realised there's a bunch of these little things that make life a lot easier if you know them.
This is more or less unique among college majors outside of some arts disciplines like music. Yes, there's a requirement for some secondary school algebra and some basic science but an electrical engineering major could basically have never assembled a circuit before attending college and probably wouldn't be at any particular disadvantage.
And, per the original post, MIT is certainly one of the institutions that does this. The 6.001 MOOC(s)--basically intro to algorithms--teaches a bit of Python on the side but clearly you're intended to mostly learn it on your own.
(By contrast, back in the day, I took a FORTRAN course as part of a non-CS engineering major. The assumption was that you had never touched a computer before.)
I see it more as a trade. There can certainly be some beauty to it. I’m sure coal miners hold some of their own in special regard too.
Meanwhile I agree with you, software engineering jobs are a trade 90% of the time. It’s why so many highly educated folks are being laid-off right now, while the doers keep-on building and making bank.
It’s spelled Doerr
Computer science is a pathway for those that want to delve deeper, and that necessitates rigorous fundamentals in applied mathematics and information theory.
I dare say that one can go through a whole career as a software engineer without spending a single semester learning about algorithms, in the sense that you just start learning about them in a JIT fashion if/when they become an issue, which is rarely.
Some of the O(X) trivia so much sought after in some interviewing circles is even fundamentally wrong when real world aspects such as problem size or CPU architecture come into play.
When I started doing job interviews it was a little bewildering how much some companies focused on this. I ended up taking a job whose interviews focused on more practical skills and also stressed a good culture fit and understanding of development practices. It feels like a place I'll be happier.
I think you're right about the JIT aspect to this sort of thing--that's really what being an engineer is about in my experience. When you encounter a problem, figure out how to do it better. If my filter/sort/whatever is too slow for a specific application, I'll do some research and implement something more appropriate.
I can't complain, since I was introduced to Emacs along the way, which I still use heavily to this day. And while I don't really use Scheme anymore, it made Elisp trivial to figure out.
When I hear people starting their CS degree with C++ or Java, it makes me cringe.
Your point about engineering is exactly right. I built a working radio in my first term, having never done anything like it before, save for acing some physics exams with minimal electricity sections. When we came to coding, I had mucked about a bit with a computer, but I also found other students who'd worked at Microsoft. Wide wide range, and a lot of people of course ended up getting that fellow to email them the solution.
It seems completely reasonable to expect someone to be comfortable finding their way around a computer if they’ve chosen to major in computer science.
I’d also expect an entering electrical engineering major has studied more math than just “some secondary school algebra”. They’ve probably already studied some calculus or at the very least are ready to as soon as they start their first semester.
It’s a bit of a red flag to have no foundations in a subject you’ve decided to focus on for the next four years. That said, sufficiently motivated individuals can catch up and overcome their initial lack of preparation.
At that time in your life your entire world has been school, and everything you did in school led to another thing in school. Why wouldn't you assume you'd get taught programming when you applied for a CS course, whose prereq was math that you did in school?
Doesn't mean you'll be a great programmer or archtect or planner or teacher. Right? you might drop it and go into something else.
Same is actually true of a management degree, everything they teach has been well thought out and is applicable to managing a company. Doesn't mean you'll be any good at it or work in all those departments. It is not a useless degree, though many useless people might pursue it.
This was my "back in the day" experience as well, though I had a choice between C and Pascal. There was no expectation that anyone had any programming experience. I only had a touch of C64 BASIC knowledge going in.
> I have this feeling that the kids who appear better at uni are the ones who happened to pick up certain not-quite-programming skills before they started. Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing.
This one really stood out to me and highlights a change in things since then. That describes ALL of the CS kids during my time. We were the ones who a) had computers and b) did weird things like rebuilding kernals or futz around forever trying to get remote X sessions running.
A fact that blew my mind a few years ago was that, of the 13 software engineers on my team, only 3-4 actually owned a computer other than the work-provided one.
I mean, yes, this was me. I came in knowing most/all of this. I knew six (or more?) programming languages, had at least played with CVS/SVN, had installed Linux (read: fought with the Linux bootloader to get my AMD CPU to boot without crashing), had dipped my toe in a few open source communities.
But I was a tutor in college and I interacted with a bunch of people who didn't come in with any of this experience. Many of those people struggled, but I also know a bunch of people who came into CS knowing nothing, loved it, and went from zero-to-sixty faster than even the people who came in knowing a lot.
I'm still not sure I can identify what the ingredient was, but experience alone is not enough to explain it.
One of the later assignments they gave us this "bomb" executable and we had to use gdb to pick it apart and modify the instructions or find ROP gadgets or something to make the code not "explode". He was my partner in the assignment and I spent most of the time trying to teach him what I was doing in gdb. And trying to express that, sincerely, he wasn't stupid GDB is just really hard and he didn't have the background knowledge to make learning it easier.
um yea thats my job dude and i fought for it so other people should too these people waltzing in not knowing shot should not get into CS
But they also knew the precise formula for college entrance, and were laser focused on getting into an "elite" school. Any activity that didn't contribute to that process was eschewed.
It's not like how it was when I was growing up. We spent $2000 on a Gateway PC that I had full admin access to, and unfiltered internet. Now that kind of money is being spent on cellphones in the household. Because I had that kind of access I was bricking the OS (and reinstalling it), Mailbombing people's AOL inboxes, putting Sub7 on Kaza and Limewire and remotely messing with peoples computers.
The computers at school were only networked my senior year. Even then they were basically wide open.
Me and my friends effectively operated a screwdriver shop out of whoever's house we happened to be at. We were trying to host game servers on whatever we could cobble together.
None of our families had cellphones because they were still only used by businessmen. Computing priorities were way different and how you were exposed to them was different as a result.
None of those opportunities are anywhere near as common now. Kids get devices in schools but they're basically bricks that log everything you do. Computer Labs are rare and their access is fully locked down. Most students first personal computing device is a cellphone, and more likely than not it's an iPhone. All phones are super locked down but apple's even more so.
The market has changed. The days of open computing are now relegated to the back of the line or for those who can afford it.
So it's no wonder a class like this exists. We see similar issues in middle school where students don't understand what folders are or where their files are stored. Phones and tablets make it so easy you never have to think about it. This also extends to collage as well.
Okay then dont.