22 ms·

Computer Science Education

369 points by dr_linux 10y ago

lineindc 10y ago
Instead of applauding this (oh, they are spreading knowledge), I'm going to point out that they just want cheaper labour.
- amrrs 10y ago
  In fact it's the opposite, they can get cheap labor - if the labor is ignorant - not with knowledge! Hypothesis failed!
  - eru 10y ago
    While I don't agree with lineindc, they are clearly talking about unit costs or something else that measures price per productivity.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- _fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
  What are you trying to say? You want education to be less accessible, so that poor people cannot compete with you?
  - lineindc 10y ago
    Computer science is like a self-devaluating industry. We have tons of websites dedicated to teaching our trade, most of them for free. We actively encourage everybody to learn to code, and tell them how easy it is, and how it makes you a better person. We say schools should teach everybody how to code. Do you imagine medics, attorneys, engineers, etc doing the same things about their own professions/skills? "Yes I'm an architect... yeah but you should learn the same skillset, this thing I do is super easy! Everybody could be an architect easily!" Of course corporations like this: more coders! Cheaper labour! For example I found this video disgusting while everybody else applauded the effort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc Do you really think your (our) skillset is worth 0?
    - BorgHunter 10y ago
      What I'm getting from your post is: When you teach other people, you devalue your own knowledge. Knowledge should be hoarded, guarded jealously, and others discouraged from learning the things you know. Because if knowledge is shared, that knowledge becomes less valuable, and so you are less valuable, and so can earn less money. Is this a fair statement of your views, or am I misinterpreting you?
      - ElysianEagle 10y ago
        I didn't interpret his post the same way as you did. I think he was suggesting that we, as programmers, tend to act in ways that are not necessarily conducive to maintaining our own job security. We often advocate (strongly even) for importing labor, making CS education and tools cheap/free etc. all of which while certainly making knowledge more accessible also increases the supply of coders. And it's true, you definitely don't see doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. acting in the same way. I'm not suggesting a grand conspiracy on their part, but the certifications (difficult to obtain), years of schooling etc do have the effect (intended or not) of limiting competition. It's hard to argue for better wages and treatment from employers on one hand, while simultaneously propagating the view that "anyone can do this". Well, if anyone can, then why should you get paid $150k/yr or more?
      - Traubenfuchs 10y ago
        From an individual & egoistical perspective, that is a very logical point of view.
- notgood 10y ago
  You know why we create software? To automate things, stuff that before required lot of accountants can be now down with software + one accountant. So we made accounting "cheaper" cutting a lot of jobs; should we stop making software because it makes labor cheaper? should we stop making robots because it makes labor cheaper? Fuck that; if socio-economics has a problem we need to find a solution that doesn't involve stopping how far and wide knowledge can be spread.
  - jraedisch 10y ago
    "Disrupting" is maybe the most popular reason for creating software. It is not the only reason though. There are others. Like enabling people to do/experience things that weren't possible before.
  - denzil_correa 10y ago
    The solution clearly isn't to stop making software but the solution also isn't to immediately replace all jobs by a machine. You have people who've worked towards a specialized skillet for most part of their life only to realize that this skill isn't needed anymore. In such situations, we need to come up with mechanisms to help people transition.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - YCode 10y ago
    I got into a discussion about this recently. It seems like most of the time new technology and automation inherently creates less jobs than it depreciates. Meanwhile, the population only goes up. Assuming those two statements are true in a given economy, then this is going to become a major problem for society as the number of people drastically outmatches the number of (skilled?) jobs that need performed. At a certain point we're going to have to find a new paradigm to replace our "compete for a job and you can earn a living" system or else find ourselves in a situation where the employer has all the power and the vast majority of people who can even find work endure terrible conditions.
    - 10y ago
- matt4077 10y ago
  I'll reserve my right to applaud at the end of the show, even if the singer was just being excellent for the sake of a pay check.
- dyukqu 10y ago
  I agree with you. Here is my thoughts: spreading knowledge and making it accessible is not a bad thing, of course. But, isn't it true that the current education system (form k-12 to academia) is built to produce a workforce for the industry(2.0)? Here is a quote from a recent HN thread: "Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs. We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13533759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13533759] Education for the sake of knowledge/science ended after Industry 2.0. Maybe that's why the world doesn't have great innovators & scientists and giant scientific leaps as got once until late 19th to early 20th century. So, it's true that all the current frantic efforts (bootcamps, online degrees, nanodegrees etc.) to teach youth to code are about pouring easy-accessible workforce into the market - towards the final phase of Industry 3.0. After the Industry 4.0 is arrived, millions of workforce will be left out, IMO.
- torrent-of-ions 10y ago
  I was wondering what their motivation is. Maybe this is it. It's so strange how so many programmers seem to want other people to learn to program. Why is this? I accepted a long time ago that probably less than 1% of the population have the ability to be a good programmer. And even if more had the ability, do we really need that many programmers? I can't imagine any other industry doing this. I don't go on to the website of 3M, for example, and see stuff teaching me how to make my own glue. When I speak to a lawyer they don't try to teach me how to be a lawyer. Why do so many programmers feel the need to do this?
  - rubber_duck 10y ago
    >Why is this? Because they like what they do and sharing knowledge helps you learn and network. Go on youtube and look for tons of drawing tutorials, music creation, sculpting, etc. pretty much anything creative and accessible will have people who will give away knowledge for free, sharing what they discovered or w/e. There's also selection bias, programmers create digital content so it's bound to be over-represented on the internet.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    > Why is this? Many of my hardest problems involve people in decision-making positions that don't have any idea about how computers or programs work. Getting the rest of the world to be more conversant in programming will allow for more meaningful work. For example, we know what an EKG and an APB are, but people don't know what a compiler is.
  - mej10 10y ago
    Programming is a very general skill that can be applied to almost anything and it has a low barrier to entry. In the view of those promoting programming education it is a skill that everyone should have the opportunity to learn -- more akin to reading or writing than specialized skills like making glue or regulated subjects like law. There is also a lot of room for creativity in programming, which means it probably has a higher chance of being adopted just for fun.
  - HeavenBanned 10y ago
0xFFC 10y ago
I don't want to be negative here, But I think anyone who can convince Berkeley guys to re-activate this[1] channel would make humanity much much more service. I am saying this because this channel changed my life, literally. I do live in third world country, I went to local college, where you will learn nothing after 4 year (not even writing a simple hello world, TBH). But after watching and learning from this channel and MIT opencourseware, right now I am working on internal of linux kernel (just think about not being able to write hello world after 4 year, and compare it with hacking linux kernel to get a feeling about how far I came) as hobby project, and I came this far only by watching various (from OS class to compiler, algorithm, etc) class and solving their assignments and writing their projects. I came this far by my own (only, without any help other than free material in resource I mentioned). I am 100% sure I will go further and further, because this is my thing, I may not be that smart, but I am resilient. So I am perfect/live example of how free educational material can change people lives, and I do live in very small city (indeed very small, which most people are not familiar with computer until 3,4 years ago). I did have 40kb connection, sometimes I spent a whole day waiting for downloading a lecture, to watch it, considering I had to use VPN, you can understand how hard it was to download a whole class from youtube. Right now I have better connection. [1] : https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley/videos
- wfunction 10y ago
  The issue was that people with disabilities across the country (i.e. non-Berkeley-students) were suing* Berkeley for not making their videos accessible. That's why you can't have nice things unfortunately. See here: http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-course-content-and-accessibility/ http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-co... Lectures up to 2015 are still there though? Do you consider their materials obsolete or something? *Edit: Specifically, the Attorney General was threatening to file a lawsuit pursuant to the ADA, and damages were ordered to be paid (I don't know if they actually were). Follow the link above to find the Department of Justice letter; the interesting bits are on the last two pages.
  - 0xFFC 10y ago
xiaoma 10y ago
Are they offering anything on the site for people who want CS education? From clicking around a bit it seemed like it was focused entirely on people teaching and learning in physical classrooms. I was pretty excited at first, thinking this was something like a Google-sponsored version of EdX or OpenCourseware that was laser focused on CS.
- Spare_account 10y ago
  From the linked page there is a section titled "Learn Computer Science" which contains a section titled "Student Learning" which contains a variety of learning resources that can be experienced through the browser. https://www.google.com/edu/cs/learn/student.html https://www.google.com/edu/cs/learn/student.html
  - m0nty 10y ago
    Looks great if you're Indian, Irish or female. Edit: Or AU/NZ, missed that one.
    - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      There's also a middle-school program. For those who didn't look there is a very short list of programmes mentioned which discriminate on sex, age, ethnicity.
      - dotancohen 10y ago
        A "short list" which is four of the five listed programmes. Id est, 80% of the programmes on the list discriminate.
        pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        Bad wording, my intention was to say they all discriminate, assuming "middle-school" is intended to refer to an age range. 5 is a short list, no. I assume it's the start of what may later become a directory of offerings. There are masses of MOOCs that aren't discriminating though.
bruceb 10y ago
We replicated a CS degree path which you can fill with free MOOCs: https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree Admittedly we have left our course list dormant for a while but we will be pushing an update in a few weeks.
- mrwebmaster 10y ago
  I like the idea. I want to start studying Software Design (economist here) and did some research and found the BEng Software Engineering from Edinburgh. I am currently trying to replicate it. If I had know about your page before, maybe I would have taken your suggested path. I've just started, but I can say that some courses (from this particular degree) are not available in a MOOC version, like "Functional Programming with Haskell" (1st semester) and "Computational Logic" (1st semester). But for CSCI particularly, I'm sure there are more MOOC courses available. In the "Math Segment" of your path, I would include "Linear Algebra". There is a good MOOC version in edX called "Linear Algebra Foundations to Frontiers" from U. of Austin TX.
  - bruceb 10y ago
    Thanks for feedback. We looked at the CS and management degrees/minors offered by a lot of universities. We did our best to craft a path that reflects requirements most have. That being said there are courses that might be required that we don't have in our requirements. Later we may add a public section were users can add in suggestions for courses to include in a learning path. We also need a major update in courses listings. That is coming.
- martalist 10y ago
  Nice work - just signed up. What criteria you use in selecting MOOCs for the degree path? How do you keep it up to date?
  - bruceb 10y ago
    Even before we had a degree path we set up a classification system. This means we assign a subject and level to every course similar to what is done at many leading universities. Courses that cover the same or similar material will have the same CourseBuffet subject and number. The goal of this system is for a user to be able to directly compare courses that cover similar material (liner algebra) , not just aggregate courses of same general subject (math). We only list courses that are roughly equivalent to a course that might be found on campus. We don't list say a 1 week on say Photoshop. While that material might be valuable it isn't a traditional university course. When creating the degree path we looked at dozens of US universities' CS and management degrees and their requirements. We tried mirror what they required using our classification system. For example you have to take intro to computer science (we list as CS 101), Algorithms (we list as CS 295), etc. All the courses we had previously classified as falling under say CS 101 then can be used in the degree path since we said CS 101 is a degree path requirement. The goal being a path that is provider neutral so one can pick and choose without having to be tied to only Coursera, edX, etc. It is in no way a perfect system. While courses grouped under a classification should cover roughly the same material they are not perfect substitutes. We encourage users to use their best judgement. As for keeping it up to date that is a huge challenge. If we were doing basic aggregation it would be a matter of just posting up new courses as they became available. But then users would have to take the time to sort through say all the math courses. With our classification systems they don't have to waste their time doing that. The problem with having a much better organization of courses than anyone else is it is harder to maintain. At the moment we are behind in listing new material and thats why in my first post I gave the disclaimer.
chillydawg 10y ago
I look at that page and all I see is icons for Word, Powerpoint, Access and Excel in a line. My brain has been hard-branded for so long. Google need to change that page a bit.
- KIFulgore 10y ago
  I see SNES buttons...
- sangnoir 10y ago
  Primary colors have been used in branding since forever, what brand it invokes is a Rorschach test. I'm personally reminded of the logo on our first color TV.
- torrent-of-ions 10y ago
  I don't. I just see colours.
- appelza 10y ago
  trust hacker news to have the webdevs complain about layout & missing the entire point
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  My punishment for reading the comments before clicking the link is that now I'll never know what I would have seen.
aimalsultani 10y ago
Hello I am ready to be student of Google Computer science (CS) education. Thanks ( aimal_sultani@gmail.com
aimalsultani 10y ago
Dear All. I am ready to be student of Google Computer science (CS) education. Thanks
derrickdirge 10y ago
I was really hoping this was going to provide some path to completing my CS degree. At least they're acknowledging the importance of education.
- randomdata 10y ago
  What is the importance of a CS education? I honestly don't feel like my exposure to CS has changed my life in any way outside of my career. If I imagine some future where I am retired, it is not obvious to me where I will use anything I have learned or how it will shape me into being a better person. It certainly has been useful to me in finding gainful employment, but if that is the only thing it brings to the table, one could argue that Google is only doing this in their self-serving interests. It is clear to see what benefits they would gain in having a larger labour pool available.
  - mcguire 10y ago
    Really? I find myself touching on some part of my CS education almost every day, and I'm not currently employed. But then, I got into CS because I enjoyed it, back when it wasn't the hot new job skill. It's as much part of who I am as bitter cynicism and an inordinate love of fried rice.
    - randomdata 10y ago
      As they say, it is difficult to appreciate something until it is gone. It may be that I fail to recognize the value it has brought to my life simply because I do not know a life without it. And it has been a part of almost my entire life, as I too enjoy it, and started my journey into the topic of CS when I was very young. How are you touching on some part of your CS education each day in an important way? I may not even realize how I use it in my own situation, outside of the obvious practical application of writing software. I look to my family and friends, many of whom know nothing about CS, and they have quite meaningful and fulfilling lives. It still doesn't seem all that important in the grand scheme of things.
  - Anm 10y ago
defnfoo 10y ago
Meanwhile, google discriminates against older people ("old" being pretty much anyone in their late 30s). They are so inclusive, and so diverse... as long as they get to decide what diversity and inclusivity are. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-loses-ruling-in-age-bias-lawsuit-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-loses-ruling-in-age-bi...
- NotSammyHagar 10y ago
  I was past 40 when I was hired at Google, worked there for almost 10 years, knew many other older devs. I disagree that they were discriminatory. At least in my experience, that was not an issue.
  - defnfoo 10y ago
    The experience of those filing the law suit differs from yours. You may have known some older devs, but the numbers are very clear: the average age of a google employee is 29. The US national average is 42. Google itself is not very diverse by most metrics. Maybe they should practice what they preach? http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/ http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
      That article is mostly about female to male ratios. Certainly we need more women programmers, but there aren't enough to hire. Every company I've ever worked at wanted more women, but there aren't enough graduates. At google, one way they were able to hire women devs was to pay for women were were stem students to go to the grace murray hopper conference who were cs students and then interview them and hire them on the spot. I know one very successful person at google who was found and hired by this strategy. You have to be faster than the other company to snap up those desirable hires. I didn't mean to be an apologist for them, but this is one area I have personal knowledge of. It's probably true that they aren't going out of their way to hire old programmers like me. I don't think they pay for old white guy devs who cost more in salary than a new grad (but we have more experience! :-)) to go to a special conference and try to hire them. Instead I had to pass the usual interview bar. It was really hard and I admit to being proud I passed it.
fillskills 10y ago
With all of Alphabet's resources, data, this is all they could manage on all of Computer Science? Whats the data/measurements behind this?
duderific 10y ago
> Computers are everywhere in our world today and being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science and its underlying problem-solving methodology of computational thinking. I know this is just some copywriter writing this, but this seems the height of Silicon Valley bubble thinking. Plenty of people do just fine in their lives barely interacting with computers at all. Sure, it's helpful to be able to use email and a web browser, but "being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science"? Come on.
- ng12 10y ago
  It's exactly like knowing how to diagnose and fix issues with your car. Is it helpful to know at least a little bit? Absolutely. Is it a necessity? Not by a long shot.
  - maolt 10y ago
    Did you mean like "knowing how to read and parse textual content for information?"
- jkaptur 10y ago
  Plenty of people "do just fine in their lives" without knowing how to read. This is discussing how to "be an educated citizen", a far higher bar. An educated citizen: * can have an informed opinion about the NSA's definition of "collecting" information [0]. * when told "we need to make sure that this list of 100,000 URLs are all valid websites", doesn't respond "wow, we'll need to hire a big team". * can reason about data-driven classification of documents (e.g. Facebook's news feed, Google search). [0] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect
  - xtreme 10y ago
    I disagree. That is like saying that an educated citizen must: * have an informed opinion on current Emission standards * be able to change oil on their own car * could describe how a 4-stroke engine works Replace the computer with a car and you will see that what you consider basic knowledge is not basic to most people. They rely on experts for advice, opinion, and guidance.
supergeek133 10y ago
I want to know when we have the conversation about how every developer doesn't need to be a college graduate.
zizzles 10y ago
I glimpsed at the content for 30 seconds. This does not look anything like a computer science education: "Pencil Code", "Blockly", "Coding Adventures", "Craft Small Projects in HTML/CSS". These are just glorified baby-games for 5 year old's; or at the very most a stupefied introduction of basic development for girls and malnourished Indian children.
AtomicOrbital 10y ago
People need to learn how to learn first ... the Trivium ... grammar, logic, and rhetoric ... after a successful baseline there then they can teach themselves CS or whatever ... too early exposure to CS just continues the trade school factory mentality prevalent in current pre college education
strathmeyer 10y ago
I graduated with a CS degree in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University and Google didn't give a shit about me until 2011 where they told me they would only hire me if I were working for another local company first. The other local companies didn't want to hire me, because they thought I would just go work for Google. Never met anyone at Google who cared that I was a good programmer or had devoted my life to it. They seemed focused on stealing workers from their competitors. If they want to hire computer scientists, then tell their employees to focus on that in the hiring process. If they have someone with a Computer Science degree who is a great programmer who wants to work with them, maybe they should find the time to speak with them or to explain how they could get a job in computer science or programming. My experience is that Google things a Computer Science degree is worthless. It can't get your foot in the door to speak to them, you have to be a race or gender they are looking for.
- poikniok 10y ago
  Just saying this because on the off chance it might help you, but I think likely the reason that Google has some reservations about you is because of your attitude. Bringing in race and gender out of nowhere does not signal good things.
- sputknick 10y ago
  I think what you are up against is that Google being Google, they can afford to commit a large number of Type 1 errors in hiring engineers (rejecting good engineers) and still remain the top company. It's nothing personal.
- sudosteph 10y ago
  Being the "right" gender (assume you mean female?) with a solid Computer Science degree wasn't enough to get my foot in the door to talk to anyone there either. They're picky, elitist, and unless someone already there recommends you they won't even talk to you. At least that was the case before I got Amazon on my resume. Now it feels like every company on the planet wants to recruit me, including Google. I know a lot of people at Amazon who didn't have connections and didn't have a degree from an elite school (or a degree in CS at all in some cases) and they were still great. I'm sure google would never give them the time of day. The one person I do know who works at Google is awful to be around (he is the "wrong" gender and race btw and went to the same school as me, but got referred). Google is all he talks about. I invited him to a party once and he actually started working on his laptop mid-party and snapped at me when I came over and asked him what he was up to ("It's confidential!" he said as he closed the screen and left). So feeling rejected sucks, but maybe you dodged a bullet there.
23443463453 10y ago
It's quite interesting how manipulative and abusive this whole conversation about CS education, employment, and immigration is. The core driver and source of America's problems in this field go back many years. If immigration were not a lucrative opportunity for companies to exploit with manipulations about how there is just not enough American talent and they had actually supported and pushed for quality education back in the 70s and 80s even, the education system would have been reformed and retuned to support the new digital economy and opened opportunities to the working and black communities of America. At the core of the CS and immigration issue is the fact that corporations, especially Google, MS, etc. back then, manipulated the government and policies and sold out society and America in order to make quick profits by devising those destructive H1B visas and outsourcing their development to foreign countries in order to convert wage and salary deltas into short term profits. We act as though the tech industry/sector is some magnanimous and benevolent force, when in reality they have been corroding society and avoiding their responsibly for decades now to the point where even the CEOs are now foreign nationals with all the interests one would expect of foreign national that are not American. When the CEOs object to the travel ban that doesn't even affect them, or the restrictions on H1B, and the risk of being held to account for selling out the USA by outsourcing their costs to foreign nations while basking in the benefits the USA bestows upon them, they are not interested in the USA or its people, the society that made their very corporation's existence and human advancement through the technology that was developed possible. It is the purest definition of exploitation and abuse. The duplicitous, abusive, and ulterior agendas and motivations that drive these companies, especially since so much good will and magnanimity is ascribed to them.
booleandilemma 10y ago
Computer Science will end up like Math. Lots of adults today learned geometry, trigonometry, and calculus in school. If you ask them how much of it they use on a daily basis most will tell you they don't.
secfirstmd 10y ago
Sweet, just started a course in CS, so anything that can help is welcome!
projektir 10y ago
I'm going to express an annoyance that I usually have with things like this. It's not really a Google problem, or a computer science problem. More of a society problem. Why is everything related to education always targeted at young people? My ability to synthesize new knowledge has increased substantially after I was already out of college for a few years. But once you are in that age range, educational resources suddenly dissipate. Well, it's not the only thing that dissipates... But, seriously, the amount of resources that were thrown at me while I was younger was ridiculous. Interestingly enough, I could hardly keep up with it. A bit odd that everyone acts as if they think that there's no chance of developing people further after the age of 25 or so. Do they really have a much higher demand for fresh grads, as opposed to people with experience? Is it that much harder to get a shallow understanding of computer science as opposed to a deep one?
theshire 10y ago
This is not what I was expecting. I was expecting something similar to Udacity or Edx but for computer science education instead just seems like a bunch of kid games or am I wrong, I expected more from Google on this topic.

369 points by dr_linux 10y ago

Instead of applauding this (oh, they are spreading knowledge), I'm going to point out that they just want cheaper labour.

amrrs 10y ago
In fact it's the opposite, they can get cheap labor - if the labor is ignorant - not with knowledge! Hypothesis failed!
- eru 10y ago
  While I don't agree with lineindc, they are clearly talking about unit costs or something else that measures price per productivity.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
_fizz_buzz_ 10y ago
What are you trying to say? You want education to be less accessible, so that poor people cannot compete with you?
- lineindc 10y ago
  Computer science is like a self-devaluating industry. We have tons of websites dedicated to teaching our trade, most of them for free. We actively encourage everybody to learn to code, and tell them how easy it is, and how it makes you a better person. We say schools should teach everybody how to code. Do you imagine medics, attorneys, engineers, etc doing the same things about their own professions/skills? "Yes I'm an architect... yeah but you should learn the same skillset, this thing I do is super easy! Everybody could be an architect easily!" Of course corporations like this: more coders! Cheaper labour! For example I found this video disgusting while everybody else applauded the effort: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKIu9yen5nc Do you really think your (our) skillset is worth 0?
  - BorgHunter 10y ago
    What I'm getting from your post is: When you teach other people, you devalue your own knowledge. Knowledge should be hoarded, guarded jealously, and others discouraged from learning the things you know. Because if knowledge is shared, that knowledge becomes less valuable, and so you are less valuable, and so can earn less money. Is this a fair statement of your views, or am I misinterpreting you?
    - ElysianEagle 10y ago
      I didn't interpret his post the same way as you did. I think he was suggesting that we, as programmers, tend to act in ways that are not necessarily conducive to maintaining our own job security. We often advocate (strongly even) for importing labor, making CS education and tools cheap/free etc. all of which while certainly making knowledge more accessible also increases the supply of coders. And it's true, you definitely don't see doctors, lawyers, accountants etc. acting in the same way. I'm not suggesting a grand conspiracy on their part, but the certifications (difficult to obtain), years of schooling etc do have the effect (intended or not) of limiting competition. It's hard to argue for better wages and treatment from employers on one hand, while simultaneously propagating the view that "anyone can do this". Well, if anyone can, then why should you get paid $150k/yr or more?
    - Traubenfuchs 10y ago
      From an individual & egoistical perspective, that is a very logical point of view.
notgood 10y ago
You know why we create software? To automate things, stuff that before required lot of accountants can be now down with software + one accountant. So we made accounting "cheaper" cutting a lot of jobs; should we stop making software because it makes labor cheaper? should we stop making robots because it makes labor cheaper? Fuck that; if socio-economics has a problem we need to find a solution that doesn't involve stopping how far and wide knowledge can be spread.
- jraedisch 10y ago
  "Disrupting" is maybe the most popular reason for creating software. It is not the only reason though. There are others. Like enabling people to do/experience things that weren't possible before.
- denzil_correa 10y ago
  The solution clearly isn't to stop making software but the solution also isn't to immediately replace all jobs by a machine. You have people who've worked towards a specialized skillet for most part of their life only to realize that this skill isn't needed anymore. In such situations, we need to come up with mechanisms to help people transition.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- YCode 10y ago
  I got into a discussion about this recently. It seems like most of the time new technology and automation inherently creates less jobs than it depreciates. Meanwhile, the population only goes up. Assuming those two statements are true in a given economy, then this is going to become a major problem for society as the number of people drastically outmatches the number of (skilled?) jobs that need performed. At a certain point we're going to have to find a new paradigm to replace our "compete for a job and you can earn a living" system or else find ourselves in a situation where the employer has all the power and the vast majority of people who can even find work endure terrible conditions.
  - 10y ago
matt4077 10y ago
I'll reserve my right to applaud at the end of the show, even if the singer was just being excellent for the sake of a pay check.
dyukqu 10y ago
I agree with you. Here is my thoughts: spreading knowledge and making it accessible is not a bad thing, of course. But, isn't it true that the current education system (form k-12 to academia) is built to produce a workforce for the industry(2.0)? Here is a quote from a recent HN thread: "Our current system is designed to produce factory workers for the industrial economy, which was adapted to produce knowledge workers for the information economy. But we are moving towards full automation of most of those jobs. We will need to prepare people to be adaptable in a fast changing automated world: more entrepreneurial type skills are needed." [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13533759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13533759] Education for the sake of knowledge/science ended after Industry 2.0. Maybe that's why the world doesn't have great innovators & scientists and giant scientific leaps as got once until late 19th to early 20th century. So, it's true that all the current frantic efforts (bootcamps, online degrees, nanodegrees etc.) to teach youth to code are about pouring easy-accessible workforce into the market - towards the final phase of Industry 3.0. After the Industry 4.0 is arrived, millions of workforce will be left out, IMO.
torrent-of-ions 10y ago
I was wondering what their motivation is. Maybe this is it. It's so strange how so many programmers seem to want other people to learn to program. Why is this? I accepted a long time ago that probably less than 1% of the population have the ability to be a good programmer. And even if more had the ability, do we really need that many programmers? I can't imagine any other industry doing this. I don't go on to the website of 3M, for example, and see stuff teaching me how to make my own glue. When I speak to a lawyer they don't try to teach me how to be a lawyer. Why do so many programmers feel the need to do this?
- rubber_duck 10y ago
  >Why is this? Because they like what they do and sharing knowledge helps you learn and network. Go on youtube and look for tons of drawing tutorials, music creation, sculpting, etc. pretty much anything creative and accessible will have people who will give away knowledge for free, sharing what they discovered or w/e. There's also selection bias, programmers create digital content so it's bound to be over-represented on the internet.
- humanrebar 10y ago
  > Why is this? Many of my hardest problems involve people in decision-making positions that don't have any idea about how computers or programs work. Getting the rest of the world to be more conversant in programming will allow for more meaningful work. For example, we know what an EKG and an APB are, but people don't know what a compiler is.
- mej10 10y ago
  Programming is a very general skill that can be applied to almost anything and it has a low barrier to entry. In the view of those promoting programming education it is a skill that everyone should have the opportunity to learn -- more akin to reading or writing than specialized skills like making glue or regulated subjects like law. There is also a lot of room for creativity in programming, which means it probably has a higher chance of being adopted just for fun.
- HeavenBanned 10y ago

0xFFC 10y ago

I don't want to be negative here, But I think anyone who can convince Berkeley guys to re-activate this[1] channel would make humanity much much more service. I am saying this because this channel changed my life, literally. I do live in third world country, I went to local college, where you will learn nothing after 4 year (not even writing a simple hello world, TBH). But after watching and learning from this channel and MIT opencourseware, right now I am working on internal of linux kernel (just think about not being able to write hello world after 4 year, and compare it with hacking linux kernel to get a feeling about how far I came) as hobby project, and I came this far only by watching various (from OS class to compiler, algorithm, etc) class and solving their assignments and writing their projects. I came this far by my own (only, without any help other than free material in resource I mentioned). I am 100% sure I will go further and further, because this is my thing, I may not be that smart, but I am resilient. So I am perfect/live example of how free educational material can change people lives, and I do live in very small city (indeed very small, which most people are not familiar with computer until 3,4 years ago). I did have 40kb connection, sometimes I spent a whole day waiting for downloading a lecture, to watch it, considering I had to use VPN, you can understand how hard it was to download a whole class from youtube. Right now I have better connection. [1] : https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/UCBerkeley/videos

wfunction 10y ago
The issue was that people with disabilities across the country (i.e. non-Berkeley-students) were suing* Berkeley for not making their videos accessible. That's why you can't have nice things unfortunately. See here: http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-course-content-and-accessibility/ http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/09/13/a-statement-on-online-co... Lectures up to 2015 are still there though? Do you consider their materials obsolete or something? *Edit: Specifically, the Attorney General was threatening to file a lawsuit pursuant to the ADA, and damages were ordered to be paid (I don't know if they actually were). Follow the link above to find the Department of Justice letter; the interesting bits are on the last two pages.
- 0xFFC 10y ago

xiaoma 10y ago

Are they offering anything on the site for people who want CS education? From clicking around a bit it seemed like it was focused entirely on people teaching and learning in physical classrooms. I was pretty excited at first, thinking this was something like a Google-sponsored version of EdX or OpenCourseware that was laser focused on CS.

Spare_account 10y ago
From the linked page there is a section titled "Learn Computer Science" which contains a section titled "Student Learning" which contains a variety of learning resources that can be experienced through the browser. https://www.google.com/edu/cs/learn/student.html https://www.google.com/edu/cs/learn/student.html
- m0nty 10y ago
  Looks great if you're Indian, Irish or female. Edit: Or AU/NZ, missed that one.
  - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
    There's also a middle-school program. For those who didn't look there is a very short list of programmes mentioned which discriminate on sex, age, ethnicity.
    - dotancohen 10y ago
      A "short list" which is four of the five listed programmes. Id est, 80% of the programmes on the list discriminate.
      - pbhjpbhj 10y ago
        Bad wording, my intention was to say they all discriminate, assuming "middle-school" is intended to refer to an age range. 5 is a short list, no. I assume it's the start of what may later become a directory of offerings. There are masses of MOOCs that aren't discriminating though.

bruceb 10y ago

We replicated a CS degree path which you can fill with free MOOCs: https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree https://www.coursebuffet.com/degree Admittedly we have left our course list dormant for a while but we will be pushing an update in a few weeks.

mrwebmaster 10y ago
I like the idea. I want to start studying Software Design (economist here) and did some research and found the BEng Software Engineering from Edinburgh. I am currently trying to replicate it. If I had know about your page before, maybe I would have taken your suggested path. I've just started, but I can say that some courses (from this particular degree) are not available in a MOOC version, like "Functional Programming with Haskell" (1st semester) and "Computational Logic" (1st semester). But for CSCI particularly, I'm sure there are more MOOC courses available. In the "Math Segment" of your path, I would include "Linear Algebra". There is a good MOOC version in edX called "Linear Algebra Foundations to Frontiers" from U. of Austin TX.
- bruceb 10y ago
  Thanks for feedback. We looked at the CS and management degrees/minors offered by a lot of universities. We did our best to craft a path that reflects requirements most have. That being said there are courses that might be required that we don't have in our requirements. Later we may add a public section were users can add in suggestions for courses to include in a learning path. We also need a major update in courses listings. That is coming.
martalist 10y ago
Nice work - just signed up. What criteria you use in selecting MOOCs for the degree path? How do you keep it up to date?
- bruceb 10y ago
  Even before we had a degree path we set up a classification system. This means we assign a subject and level to every course similar to what is done at many leading universities. Courses that cover the same or similar material will have the same CourseBuffet subject and number. The goal of this system is for a user to be able to directly compare courses that cover similar material (liner algebra) , not just aggregate courses of same general subject (math). We only list courses that are roughly equivalent to a course that might be found on campus. We don't list say a 1 week on say Photoshop. While that material might be valuable it isn't a traditional university course. When creating the degree path we looked at dozens of US universities' CS and management degrees and their requirements. We tried mirror what they required using our classification system. For example you have to take intro to computer science (we list as CS 101), Algorithms (we list as CS 295), etc. All the courses we had previously classified as falling under say CS 101 then can be used in the degree path since we said CS 101 is a degree path requirement. The goal being a path that is provider neutral so one can pick and choose without having to be tied to only Coursera, edX, etc. It is in no way a perfect system. While courses grouped under a classification should cover roughly the same material they are not perfect substitutes. We encourage users to use their best judgement. As for keeping it up to date that is a huge challenge. If we were doing basic aggregation it would be a matter of just posting up new courses as they became available. But then users would have to take the time to sort through say all the math courses. With our classification systems they don't have to waste their time doing that. The problem with having a much better organization of courses than anyone else is it is harder to maintain. At the moment we are behind in listing new material and thats why in my first post I gave the disclaimer.

chillydawg 10y ago

I look at that page and all I see is icons for Word, Powerpoint, Access and Excel in a line. My brain has been hard-branded for so long. Google need to change that page a bit.

KIFulgore 10y ago
I see SNES buttons...
sangnoir 10y ago
Primary colors have been used in branding since forever, what brand it invokes is a Rorschach test. I'm personally reminded of the logo on our first color TV.
torrent-of-ions 10y ago
I don't. I just see colours.
appelza 10y ago
trust hacker news to have the webdevs complain about layout & missing the entire point
marcoperaza 10y ago
My punishment for reading the comments before clicking the link is that now I'll never know what I would have seen.

aimalsultani 10y ago

Hello I am ready to be student of Google Computer science (CS) education. Thanks ( aimal_sultani@gmail.com

aimalsultani 10y ago

Dear All. I am ready to be student of Google Computer science (CS) education. Thanks

derrickdirge 10y ago

I was really hoping this was going to provide some path to completing my CS degree. At least they're acknowledging the importance of education.

randomdata 10y ago
What is the importance of a CS education? I honestly don't feel like my exposure to CS has changed my life in any way outside of my career. If I imagine some future where I am retired, it is not obvious to me where I will use anything I have learned or how it will shape me into being a better person. It certainly has been useful to me in finding gainful employment, but if that is the only thing it brings to the table, one could argue that Google is only doing this in their self-serving interests. It is clear to see what benefits they would gain in having a larger labour pool available.
- mcguire 10y ago
  Really? I find myself touching on some part of my CS education almost every day, and I'm not currently employed. But then, I got into CS because I enjoyed it, back when it wasn't the hot new job skill. It's as much part of who I am as bitter cynicism and an inordinate love of fried rice.
  - randomdata 10y ago
    As they say, it is difficult to appreciate something until it is gone. It may be that I fail to recognize the value it has brought to my life simply because I do not know a life without it. And it has been a part of almost my entire life, as I too enjoy it, and started my journey into the topic of CS when I was very young. How are you touching on some part of your CS education each day in an important way? I may not even realize how I use it in my own situation, outside of the obvious practical application of writing software. I look to my family and friends, many of whom know nothing about CS, and they have quite meaningful and fulfilling lives. It still doesn't seem all that important in the grand scheme of things.
- Anm 10y ago

defnfoo 10y ago

Meanwhile, google discriminates against older people ("old" being pretty much anyone in their late 30s). They are so inclusive, and so diverse... as long as they get to decide what diversity and inclusivity are. http://www.businessinsider.com/google-loses-ruling-in-age-bias-lawsuit-2016-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-loses-ruling-in-age-bi...

NotSammyHagar 10y ago
I was past 40 when I was hired at Google, worked there for almost 10 years, knew many other older devs. I disagree that they were discriminatory. At least in my experience, that was not an issue.
- defnfoo 10y ago
  The experience of those filing the law suit differs from yours. You may have known some older devs, but the numbers are very clear: the average age of a google employee is 29. The US national average is 42. Google itself is not very diverse by most metrics. Maybe they should practice what they preach? http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/ http://time.com/4391031/google-diversity-statistics-2016/
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - NotSammyHagar 10y ago
    That article is mostly about female to male ratios. Certainly we need more women programmers, but there aren't enough to hire. Every company I've ever worked at wanted more women, but there aren't enough graduates. At google, one way they were able to hire women devs was to pay for women were were stem students to go to the grace murray hopper conference who were cs students and then interview them and hire them on the spot. I know one very successful person at google who was found and hired by this strategy. You have to be faster than the other company to snap up those desirable hires. I didn't mean to be an apologist for them, but this is one area I have personal knowledge of. It's probably true that they aren't going out of their way to hire old programmers like me. I don't think they pay for old white guy devs who cost more in salary than a new grad (but we have more experience! :-)) to go to a special conference and try to hire them. Instead I had to pass the usual interview bar. It was really hard and I admit to being proud I passed it.

fillskills 10y ago

With all of Alphabet's resources, data, this is all they could manage on all of Computer Science? Whats the data/measurements behind this?

duderific 10y ago

> Computers are everywhere in our world today and being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science and its underlying problem-solving methodology of computational thinking. I know this is just some copywriter writing this, but this seems the height of Silicon Valley bubble thinking. Plenty of people do just fine in their lives barely interacting with computers at all. Sure, it's helpful to be able to use email and a web browser, but "being an educated citizen requires an understanding of the fundamentals of computer science"? Come on.

ng12 10y ago
It's exactly like knowing how to diagnose and fix issues with your car. Is it helpful to know at least a little bit? Absolutely. Is it a necessity? Not by a long shot.
- maolt 10y ago
  Did you mean like "knowing how to read and parse textual content for information?"
jkaptur 10y ago
Plenty of people "do just fine in their lives" without knowing how to read. This is discussing how to "be an educated citizen", a far higher bar. An educated citizen: * can have an informed opinion about the NSA's definition of "collecting" information [0]. * when told "we need to make sure that this list of 100,000 URLs are all valid websites", doesn't respond "wow, we'll need to hire a big team". * can reason about data-driven classification of documents (e.g. Facebook's news feed, Google search). [0] https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect https://www.eff.org/nsa-spying/wordgames#collect
- xtreme 10y ago
  I disagree. That is like saying that an educated citizen must: * have an informed opinion on current Emission standards * be able to change oil on their own car * could describe how a 4-stroke engine works Replace the computer with a car and you will see that what you consider basic knowledge is not basic to most people. They rely on experts for advice, opinion, and guidance.

supergeek133 10y ago

I want to know when we have the conversation about how every developer doesn't need to be a college graduate.

zizzles 10y ago

I glimpsed at the content for 30 seconds. This does not look anything like a computer science education: "Pencil Code", "Blockly", "Coding Adventures", "Craft Small Projects in HTML/CSS". These are just glorified baby-games for 5 year old's; or at the very most a stupefied introduction of basic development for girls and malnourished Indian children.

AtomicOrbital 10y ago

People need to learn how to learn first ... the Trivium ... grammar, logic, and rhetoric ... after a successful baseline there then they can teach themselves CS or whatever ... too early exposure to CS just continues the trade school factory mentality prevalent in current pre college education

strathmeyer 10y ago

I graduated with a CS degree in 2004 from Carnegie Mellon University and Google didn't give a shit about me until 2011 where they told me they would only hire me if I were working for another local company first. The other local companies didn't want to hire me, because they thought I would just go work for Google. Never met anyone at Google who cared that I was a good programmer or had devoted my life to it. They seemed focused on stealing workers from their competitors. If they want to hire computer scientists, then tell their employees to focus on that in the hiring process. If they have someone with a Computer Science degree who is a great programmer who wants to work with them, maybe they should find the time to speak with them or to explain how they could get a job in computer science or programming. My experience is that Google things a Computer Science degree is worthless. It can't get your foot in the door to speak to them, you have to be a race or gender they are looking for.

poikniok 10y ago
Just saying this because on the off chance it might help you, but I think likely the reason that Google has some reservations about you is because of your attitude. Bringing in race and gender out of nowhere does not signal good things.
sputknick 10y ago
I think what you are up against is that Google being Google, they can afford to commit a large number of Type 1 errors in hiring engineers (rejecting good engineers) and still remain the top company. It's nothing personal.
sudosteph 10y ago
Being the "right" gender (assume you mean female?) with a solid Computer Science degree wasn't enough to get my foot in the door to talk to anyone there either. They're picky, elitist, and unless someone already there recommends you they won't even talk to you. At least that was the case before I got Amazon on my resume. Now it feels like every company on the planet wants to recruit me, including Google. I know a lot of people at Amazon who didn't have connections and didn't have a degree from an elite school (or a degree in CS at all in some cases) and they were still great. I'm sure google would never give them the time of day. The one person I do know who works at Google is awful to be around (he is the "wrong" gender and race btw and went to the same school as me, but got referred). Google is all he talks about. I invited him to a party once and he actually started working on his laptop mid-party and snapped at me when I came over and asked him what he was up to ("It's confidential!" he said as he closed the screen and left). So feeling rejected sucks, but maybe you dodged a bullet there.

23443463453 10y ago

It's quite interesting how manipulative and abusive this whole conversation about CS education, employment, and immigration is. The core driver and source of America's problems in this field go back many years. If immigration were not a lucrative opportunity for companies to exploit with manipulations about how there is just not enough American talent and they had actually supported and pushed for quality education back in the 70s and 80s even, the education system would have been reformed and retuned to support the new digital economy and opened opportunities to the working and black communities of America. At the core of the CS and immigration issue is the fact that corporations, especially Google, MS, etc. back then, manipulated the government and policies and sold out society and America in order to make quick profits by devising those destructive H1B visas and outsourcing their development to foreign countries in order to convert wage and salary deltas into short term profits. We act as though the tech industry/sector is some magnanimous and benevolent force, when in reality they have been corroding society and avoiding their responsibly for decades now to the point where even the CEOs are now foreign nationals with all the interests one would expect of foreign national that are not American. When the CEOs object to the travel ban that doesn't even affect them, or the restrictions on H1B, and the risk of being held to account for selling out the USA by outsourcing their costs to foreign nations while basking in the benefits the USA bestows upon them, they are not interested in the USA or its people, the society that made their very corporation's existence and human advancement through the technology that was developed possible. It is the purest definition of exploitation and abuse. The duplicitous, abusive, and ulterior agendas and motivations that drive these companies, especially since so much good will and magnanimity is ascribed to them.

booleandilemma 10y ago

Computer Science will end up like Math. Lots of adults today learned geometry, trigonometry, and calculus in school. If you ask them how much of it they use on a daily basis most will tell you they don't.

secfirstmd 10y ago

Sweet, just started a course in CS, so anything that can help is welcome!

projektir 10y ago

I'm going to express an annoyance that I usually have with things like this. It's not really a Google problem, or a computer science problem. More of a society problem. Why is everything related to education always targeted at young people? My ability to synthesize new knowledge has increased substantially after I was already out of college for a few years. But once you are in that age range, educational resources suddenly dissipate. Well, it's not the only thing that dissipates... But, seriously, the amount of resources that were thrown at me while I was younger was ridiculous. Interestingly enough, I could hardly keep up with it. A bit odd that everyone acts as if they think that there's no chance of developing people further after the age of 25 or so. Do they really have a much higher demand for fresh grads, as opposed to people with experience? Is it that much harder to get a shallow understanding of computer science as opposed to a deep one?

theshire 10y ago

This is not what I was expecting. I was expecting something similar to Udacity or Edx but for computer science education instead just seems like a bunch of kid games or am I wrong, I expected more from Google on this topic.