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Alternately, it means that 95% of the CS students are in the wrong department. I'm always confused when a well-respected university is criticized for not deliv

Alternately, it means that 95% of the CS students are in the wrong department. I'm always confused when a well-respected university is criticized for not delivering a vocational education. How did people think that the university became respected in the first place? Hand-holding dummies through the other majors' equivalents of paint-by-numbers web application frameworks?

AnimalMuppet 11y ago
I'm not criticizing them for that. But how many CS departments give the students any preparation for having to maintain and modify an application for a decade? How many of them teach how to structure code so that a million line application is maintainable? How many of them teach application security in any usable form? If, say, chemical engineering were taught without any instruction on how to make a process ready for actual industrial use, we'd criticize them for just teaching chemistry, not actual chemical engineering...
- chadgeidel 11y ago
  At the university I attended, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering were two separate degrees with different focuses. I think the same could be said for Computer Science and Software Engineering.
- toothbrush 11y ago
  > How many CS departments give the students any preparation for having to maintain and modify an application for a decade? I'm not convinced that your example(s) fall under the category ‘science’ — what is the research aspect of maintenance coding, and where does the scientific method come into play when structuring million-line programs? You mention CS (== Computer Science) after all. I guess this discussion is off-topic though, since the headline asks about college in general, not CS. I side with the sibling post that argues for a distinction between CS and SE programs.
  - AnimalMuppet 11y ago
    That's fine. I've got no problem with making that distinction. But if we do, then 95% of the people who are currently taking CS should be in SE programs. Note: 95% is a number pulled from absolutely nowhere, but I think it's of about the right order. It expresses the idea that most people are not going to go on to academic CS careers, and therefore need different training.
    - toothbrush 11y ago
      Now that's a statement i'm willing to agree with :)
    - jghn 11y ago
      Exactly. The more people who come to this conclusion and start to put up a fuss like the GP did the sooner we'll solve this whole conundrum. CS != SE and people trying to shoehorn the latter into the former are going to be disappointed. That said, I'm personally glad that my education was heavy on the CS. Nearly 20 years later (yuck) I attribute it to providing me an ability to stay flexible and learn new technologies rapidly.

AnimalMuppet 11y ago

I'm not criticizing them for that. But how many CS departments give the students any preparation for having to maintain and modify an application for a decade? How many of them teach how to structure code so that a million line application is maintainable? How many of them teach application security in any usable form? If, say, chemical engineering were taught without any instruction on how to make a process ready for actual industrial use, we'd criticize them for just teaching chemistry, not actual chemical engineering...

chadgeidel 11y ago
At the university I attended, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering were two separate degrees with different focuses. I think the same could be said for Computer Science and Software Engineering.
toothbrush 11y ago
> How many CS departments give the students any preparation for having to maintain and modify an application for a decade? I'm not convinced that your example(s) fall under the category ‘science’ — what is the research aspect of maintenance coding, and where does the scientific method come into play when structuring million-line programs? You mention CS (== Computer Science) after all. I guess this discussion is off-topic though, since the headline asks about college in general, not CS. I side with the sibling post that argues for a distinction between CS and SE programs.
- AnimalMuppet 11y ago
  That's fine. I've got no problem with making that distinction. But if we do, then 95% of the people who are currently taking CS should be in SE programs. Note: 95% is a number pulled from absolutely nowhere, but I think it's of about the right order. It expresses the idea that most people are not going to go on to academic CS careers, and therefore need different training.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    Now that's a statement i'm willing to agree with :)
  - jghn 11y ago
    Exactly. The more people who come to this conclusion and start to put up a fuss like the GP did the sooner we'll solve this whole conundrum. CS != SE and people trying to shoehorn the latter into the former are going to be disappointed. That said, I'm personally glad that my education was heavy on the CS. Nearly 20 years later (yuck) I attribute it to providing me an ability to stay flexible and learn new technologies rapidly.