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All I learned from this article is that the University of Maryland's computer science program is terrible compared to the University of Arizona program I gradua

All I learned from this article is that the University of Maryland's computer science program is terrible compared to the University of Arizona program I graduated from more than five years ago. Using version control, working in teams (using version control!), working with other people's code, and designing software to meet requirements (in teams!) were all part of the core curriculum. The curriculum even used Extreme Programming (which seems, in my experience, to differ very little from agile methodologies like Scrum) as the model for guiding group/team projects. Not to mention projects where we had to complete assignments on top of provided 'nightmare code' written by a professor. And pretty much every grad can still tell you the Big-O complexity of the major sort algorithms. Or anything else you'd expect from a "more academic" CS program. However, I believe the UA program very much tried to combine practitioner knowledge with academic knowledge. (And once again, my experiences were more than 5 years ago.)

cs_teacher 11y ago
+1 to this. I'm a lecturer at one of the top 3 and literally none of the observations made by the article apply here.
- qntty 11y ago
  I went to a private school with a reputation comparable to Maryland and none of the observations apply there either. Version control is a given for students who collaborate on projects. Maybe the problem is that larger state schools don't have as many project classes.
cafard 11y ago
A co-worker's kid is about to graduate from UMD with a B.S. in Computer Engineering. He has one very good job offer and is likely to have more. He worked on research projects steadily in the school and had internships during the summers. I don't suppose that he is a typical graduate of the program, but perhaps the one cited in the article isn't either.
- Glyptodon 11y ago
  Computer Engineering is also a different thing than Computer Science.
  - cafard 11y ago
    Quite. But I don't know how much overlap there is between the programs at UMD. Do you?
jghn 11y ago
None of your second paragraph is computer science though, why is that a better program?

cs_teacher 11y ago

+1 to this. I'm a lecturer at one of the top 3 and literally none of the observations made by the article apply here.

qntty 11y ago
I went to a private school with a reputation comparable to Maryland and none of the observations apply there either. Version control is a given for students who collaborate on projects. Maybe the problem is that larger state schools don't have as many project classes.

cafard 11y ago

A co-worker's kid is about to graduate from UMD with a B.S. in Computer Engineering. He has one very good job offer and is likely to have more. He worked on research projects steadily in the school and had internships during the summers. I don't suppose that he is a typical graduate of the program, but perhaps the one cited in the article isn't either.

Glyptodon 11y ago
Computer Engineering is also a different thing than Computer Science.
- cafard 11y ago
  Quite. But I don't know how much overlap there is between the programs at UMD. Do you?

jghn 11y ago

None of your second paragraph is computer science though, why is that a better program?