3 ms·
> Wilfra mentions “disdain for people who don’t have a BS CS who want to get an MS CS.” It was certainly not my intent to express disdain for people who follow
by bootsz 9y ago
> Wilfra mentions “disdain for people who don’t have a BS CS who want to get an MS CS.” It was certainly not my intent to express disdain for people who follow this path! Many people pull it off admirably. However, it is a difficult path to follow because it skips all of the introductory programming classes
As someone who went this path, I'm troubled by the amount of assumptions and generalization being made here.
To my knowledge any legitimate MS program will require that you have completed an appropriate amount of foundational CS courses before starting the program. I obtained an MSCS after getting a bachelor's in a different field, and I had to take 6 CS classes to satisfy the prerequisites. Including the MS the total amount of coursework I completed was slightly greater than the requirements of the university's Bachelor's degree, plus some graduate-level research.
Granted, this is not as much coursework as someone who obtained both a BS and and MS, but from my understanding if you're not planning to pursue a PhD (or need it for immigration purposes) getting both is usually not a good use of time anyway.
It seems he is trying to specifically criticize programs that fall far short of what I went through, which seems valid. But it would be nice to make that distinction instead of writing us all off as inferior.
- commandlinefan 9y ago> require that you have completed an appropriate amount of foundational CS courses In fact, I went back for an MSCS degree ten years after finishing a BSCS, and even then I was required to take a couple of foundational undergraduate courses before they let me start my graduate coursework, since there had been enough advances in CS theory since I graduated a decade ago that they felt (correctly) that I needed to catch up.