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I am a professional production programmer who writes computer software under constraints of both time and money for money paid by someone who will probably not use the software. Note that I draw a distinction between a professional production programmer and systems, research, hobbyist, or other types of programmer.
I am one of those people who hold academia in high regard, at least with respect to most subjects other than computer "science." I believe that what are being churned out are ill-equipped graduates who do not know the fundamentals of their chosen field. This criticism is levied toward computer software oriented subjects; I am not qualified to address computer hardware oriented subjects.
The small liberal arts college from which I graduated offered only four Bachelor of Science degrees: biology, chemistry, mathematics, and physics. Perhaps to some that was extremely limiting. I felt that way until I asked my undergraduate mentor why we were not offering a degree in nuclear engineering. His response was simple - "We offer a basic, in depth, science curricula. If you want more specialized material, wait until graduate school." Of course, he was right. I found that my studies in physics allowed me to program the solution to almost any problem. And, when I was unable to understand the underlying mathematics, or chemistry, or biology, there were resources that I could tap.
My personal experience has convinced me that the current offerings of most US undergraduate programs miss the point. If a student requires an advanced education in computer science, let that training wait until graduate school. Otherwise, have the student obtain a basic education in accounting, biology, chemistry, economics, English, finance, fine arts, history, mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology, or sociology. For then, the student is educated in fields upon which computer programming can be applied. I have never heard the requirement, in the production environment, to solve a problem in computer science. Rather, throughout my career, I have encountered the need to program solutions to problems in accounting, biology, chemistry, economics, English, finance, fine arts, history, mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology, and/or sociology.
I am not saying that the study of computer science is not important. I am only saying that it is premature to teach it at the undergraduate level.
I am reminded of a young man who worked as an intern at the same laboratory where I was a contractor. My client asked me to provide the intern with a project to be accomplished during the summer. I asked the intern if he wanted a trivial problem that would have no real lasting value or a highly complex problem that had been troubling me for some time. He chose the later and performed brilliantly. I do not use "brilliantly" very often, but to this young man it certainly applied.
During the summer, he came to me to ask my opinion. He had been accepted to well known and highly regarded university and wanted to know what he should choose as a major. He had indicated that he wanted to major in computer science. Because he was so bright, I suggested that he major in physics or math. If he wanted to take some computer science courses, he should take them as electives. At the end of the summer, he left for school.
The following summer, he returned on another internship. Again, he wanted a difficult challenge. Again, the problem was highly complex. Again, he performed brilliantly. About half way through the summer, he came to me and asked why I hadn't talked about his university choices. I told him that his decisions were his and although I was interested, I figured that he would tell me when he was ready. He told me that he had followed my advice. He was taking a double major, physics and mathematics, and taking a minor in computer science. What floored me more was that he was returning as a junior, skipping his sophomore year. He went on to a successful career.
What has happened to today's students? I think they are looking for the easy way to big dollars. I'm sorry but that does not exist, nor has it ever existed. What is worse is that many of our colleges and universities in the US have become businesses, responding to the whims and desires of potential students. They are now more interested in money and are less interested in education. I communicated with an influential professor (who will remain unnamed) who claimed that mathematics need not be taught in a computer science curriculum. Considering the views of E. W. Dijkstra, this professor has totally missed the point of a science education. Without mathematics, how can anyone determine order statistics? How can anyone program anything other than the more trivial problems facing the real world?
What is the result of the money oriented colleges and universities? A group of poorly educated graduates who cannot program without a large investment mentoring them in accounting, biology, chemistry, economics, English, finance, fine arts, history, mathematics, philosophy, physics, psychology, and sociology.
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gggustafson wrote: What has happened to today's students?
gggustafson wrote: I think they are looking for the easy way to big dollars.
gggustafson wrote: They are now more interested in money and are less interested in education.
typical "what's wrong with kids these days" attitude.
also, if you walk around most high schools in the US you will see a huge plethora of brochures and flyers promoting the difference in income levels of people with varying levels of degrees. we motivate students to continue on to college for money and jobs.
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I guess what I said could be interpreted as a "what's wrong with kids these days" attitude. But it's not. It's far worse.
I do not cast any blame upon today's students. But I do think that they are being motivated, in large part, by money. Misguided motivation at that. When a student is lured into a computer science (especially) program, that student is wholly unaware of what is facing him after five to ten years in the workforce. Programming, except for the very talented, is a dead-end career. Ask any programmer over 35 how their career path is going. If they are honest, they will tell you "uncertain." Why? They now cost too much. The very same incentive that brought the student into a programming career is now driving him out. Unless programmers move into management (something they are not well trained for), they may loose their jobs as their income increases. Or the programmer may be forced to take a cut in salary to protect his job. None of this reaches our students.
And the talent that we loose is affecting our national security. If all programming was web oriented, I would not have much of a concern. But weapons systems, telecommunications systems, air traffic control systems, electric power grid control systems, and so forth are not web pages. They are highly complex systems of software, firmware, and hardware that go well beyond the current computer science curricula. And as such, require a different orientation than that offered by our colleges and universities.
I don't view everything as a national security issue. But failing to prepare the next generation to protect our nation is a failure to insure national security. I want our nation to remain a "first world" nation. And I see us slipping. Too many practitioners of the programming craft are just that - technicians. I would personally rather see more expert automobile mechanics than more ill-equipped computer science graduates.
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gggustafson wrote: I guess what I said could be interpreted as a "what's wrong with kids these days" attitude. But it's not.
"What has happened to today's students? I think they are looking for the easy way to big dollars."
gggustafson wrote: I do not cast any blame upon today's students.
because today's students are the product of the generation before them.
and programmers can make upward of $400k a year.
1). Aleynikov had reportedly told colleagues he was about to take a job with another firm for three times his current $400,000 annual pay.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/07/whats_the_deal_with_that_goldm.html[^]
modified on Monday, December 6, 2010 1:58 PM
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What is wrong with "looking for the easy way to big dollars?" I am not personally motivated by money. It is ancillary and a means to an end. Not an end. Today's students are not worldly enough to recognize a sales pitch. I will tell you that I've made more money in my career than most. But that's not what should be important. And it is not to me.
Have you ever discussed your salary with colleagues? If you have, and believe what they said, then perhaps a little more skepticism is in order. I don't trust people who claim to have made large amounts of money, and who talk about it. I for sure do not trust a criminal such as Aleynikov. He may in fact have made the amount that he claims, but in prison, he will be very limited in where he can spend it.
So when some college or university suggests that, with a degree, you will earn one to two million dollars more than someone who doesn't go to college, they are overstating a point. I know a number of college graduates who are tending bar, or cleaning fish tanks, or other less glamorous jobs. Maybe they are not earning as much as they could, but most are happy with their position in life. When I graduated from college, my father expected me to become a teacher, a lawyer, or a bar tender. He never expected a short military career followed by a long (and continuing) programming career. But as long as did as well as I could, he was pleased. I only wish my father could counsel today's students.
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gggustafson wrote: Today's students are not worldly enough to recognize a sales pitch.
the majority of students at ANY time are/were never worldly enought to recognize a sales pitch.
gggustafson wrote: What is wrong with "looking for the easy way to big dollars?"
did not say anything was wrong. you did.
gggustafson wrote: What has happened to today's students? I think they are looking for the easy way to big dollars. I'm sorry but that does not exist, nor has it ever existed. What is worse is that many of our colleges and universities in the US have become businesses, responding to the whims and desires of potential students. They are now more interested in money and are less interested in education.
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Are you lonely? I have nothing further to say to you, specifically. I have a feeling that you are trolling and will report my feelings to the appropriate site authorities.
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I'm too young (and Australian) to answer your question specifically, but given I've just posted on a thread about computer science degrees, I'll have a go.
I have worked with engineering/cs graduates from Australian universities before (and still), with varying commercial experience from 0 - 3 years, and it doesn't seem to correlate to competence or dedication, the real skills. I have good friends who performed very well in school (OP 1 students, that's Queensland's top 3 percentiles, if I remember correctly) who have gone on to do mechatronic engineering (and a smattering of other very specific fields of engineering I hadn't heard of until the University reps came to our highschool).
In my opinion, I think these guys have taken these subjects because that's what their scores led them to, and not for the actual interest and enjoyment necessary to drive a successful career, which is a shame (although creating robots does sound cool to a 17 year old geek  ).
I have worked in commercial software development for 3 years now since the end of my high school education, with no interest whatsoever in tertiary education. When these guys take their software subjects (close to 50% of the course material) I am bombarded with phone calls asking for assistance. This usually takes the form of "fix this for me, I don't care, I just want to pass".
If you don't care, why are you doing the course? Furthermore, it may be just me, but although "mechatronic engineer" sounds like a distinguished title, I have never seen a job asking for such a degree, nor any job remotely related to the field. I love programming and, more generally, problem solving, enough to teach myself to the point where I secured full time work straight out of high school without a degree or experience.
IMO, I think you are right about students being "sold" their degrees, but a University is a business too, right? From older people I've spoken to, colleagues, family, friends, I have heard the same thing many times: "University makes people good at knowing what they need to know to pass [and nothing more]". Which, as anyone worth their salt would know, just doesn't cut it in the real world - especially the world of software.
In the end, I'd hazard a guess that this has always been the case - what of sons and daughters who took up the family business because it's all they knew? Is that really much different to this - being "sold" into a career path? At that age (and I'm not much older now, really) I could barely decide what to eat for breakfast let alone what career I wanted.
I think you just have to take the leap of faith, but if you don't enjoy it, bail.
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Thank you for your comments.
In the original posting, I limited my comments to the US undergraduate computer science programs. I do not presume to address undergraduate computer science programs throughout the world. Furthermore, with the exception of programmers from India, I have not met programmers from other nations. I have no opinion regarding their undergraduate computer science programs.
There is no doubt that some students are drawn to their majors by their life experiences. But what I am saying is that computer science should only be an elective. There is no demand for programmers who can program computer science programs. And programmers who studied computer science have no background in the real world subjects. They could have if they had majored in a BS, BA, or BFA program.
I am self-taught as well. I speak six languages (C#, C, Ada, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL) all of which I taught myself. I can say that a college education in these languages would be a waste. The problem with US companies is their requirement for a college degree. That young man (18 at the time I met him) could program around most programmers that I know. He did not need to go to college to learn how to program. He needed to go to college to learn physics. Then he went on to program problems in physics.
I find it interesting that, of all the majors I have encountered during my career, I have found that Music majors are some of the best programmers.
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Wow... brilliantly stated...
You should run for president ... or at least try to rectify the crappy school system of this country
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Thank you for your comment.
I am a computer programmer. I love to program. I find programming to be one of the most intellectually challenging experiences of my life. Without programming, I would find myself adrift.
If I were nominated, I would not accept.
But seriously, when you mention a fix to the education system, I believe that the only way that will happen (for the software related subjects) is by organizing programmers. Not professors. Not leaders of industry. But programmers. The last time I mentioned a computer programmer "union" to one of my managers, I thought he would collapse. Can you imagine the power of uniting all US programmers under a banner they could accept. A journeyman/tradesman organization. Apprentices learning from mentors. Remember Dune? But time is short so I am not up to that challenge. Maybe one or two of our readers.
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Well put.
Knowing the problem area is always more important than the programming element. Languages and technology move so fast that by the time you have done a programming degree your knowledge is out of date anyway.
We took on some new programmers a while back, all with degrees, some masters degrees and MS qualified to the hilt. They were useless to a man. They could program (well, some of them) but as they never understood the problem area any code produced failed to solve the problems. They have all since left, and we remain with those of us who understood the problem area in the first place, and learn't the coding bits from these so called experts.
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Thank you for your comment.
I fear this is what happens more often than not. One exception is web pages. As I like to point out, producing web pages is assembly, not programming. Making things worse is Microsoft’s continued release of frameworks, each of which is another level of abstraction that hides the basic underlying algorithmic structure.
I would prefer to teach someone to program in some domain (finance, chemistry, and the like) than to be faced with someone who knows only the tradecraft of programming and who thinks he can program.
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but majored in Management, focused in Entrepreneurship.
That sound so Internet-Bubble era.
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B.S. in Zoology with Chemistry Minor.
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Had to work hard to forget all the math and physics I learned at University 
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Have you succeeded yet? 
--
Kein Mitleid Für Die Mehrheit
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I have a Bachelor's of Science degree in Computer Engineering (Wright State University[^], class of 1984). My academic training was a mix of software and hardware classes. Graduates in the program had a somewhat broader spectrum of career choices than the traditional computer science or electrical engineering major.
The truth was, at the time, neither the computer science program nor the electrical engineering program particularly wanted us. We weren't interested in the compiler design classes, nor did we care about learning the mysteries of transistor amplifiers. We were all excited over this odd new thing: the microprocessor[^].
My career has been primarily spent developing software, including a lot of data acquisition and process control applications. My computer engineering degree has helped me know how to deal realistically with hardware, which never follows the 'perfect' model that computer science majors think it does. It's also helped me interact with hardware engineers, who often have some odd notions on just what might be easy (or not) to do in software.
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I can think of a fair few people I know that would put themselves into either
I write software and I have a computer science degree
I write software and I do not have a computer science degree
but in reality they woud be firmly in
I do not write software and I have a computer science degree
I do not write software and I do not have a computer science degree
in their programming jobs.. lol
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Yeah, they call themselves managers right?
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Me too... 1 from six, not half bad.
Anyway, I'm not in programming, but information security.
AE
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When I started programming, there wasn’t such a thing as a computer science degree. Computers were built by Electrical Engineers and programmed by Industrial Engineers. They were programmed either with patch boards or flipping switches. Once you got a subroutine written and tested you burned it into ROM and memorized the start address. 2Kilo bytes of static memory and 16K of ROM, paradise. Now even “scientists” can program, not that they understand the scientific method or have ever run an experiment. I suspect very few of them even get taught the second law of thermodynamics. With all the graphics and such they ought to call it a “computer art” degree. They don’t even plan their effort anymore. Pathetic, they expect their testing to find their errors. It won’t be long till it becomes a minimum wage job.
Although, with the information wars starting up, the trend might reset. But probably not within the US, too many conservatives pushing for it to be cheapened into an “art”.
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My two favorite hobbies.
I have a degree in Mining Engineering, but after 5 years and 7 jobs, I was looking for something a little more predictable.
Chris Meech
I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
posting about Crystal Reports here is like discussing gay marriage on a catholic church’s website.[Nishant Sivakumar]
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Chris Meech wrote: Drilling and Blasting
That's just reorganising a different kind of "bit", isn't it?
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