3 ms·

This list was surprisingly sane and almost exactly the programme of my 5-year degree.

meuk 7y ago
I can't help but think that you can only do a very shallow treatment of everything in this list in a CS program. It seems like the author basically put down his own CS program as a requirements list. The style the author uses reinforces this thought, since the sections are very shallow and very closely match what I would expect from someone who did an introductory course on every subject in the list. And I'll be damned if the 11(!) programming languages "every CS major should know" aren't exactly the programming languages that the author happens to know. It would be a surprising achievement to even know just C and C++. This post may be influenced a little by the irritation that after seven years of study and two years of work experience (and many time spent on this stuff as a hobby in my free time), I still don't match nearly 50% of the 'requirements' in this list. But hey, these lists should be taken with a lot of salt. It's pretty fun to make one and reflect on all the things you've learned. In my list, there would be more numerical analysis and less languages.
glangdale 7y ago
Then either you're a genius who has worked exceptionally hard, or you don't know all that much about most of the items on the list beyond a 'whirlwind tour' type intro. I don't doubt that someone could touch on most of this stuff, especially in a degree that is heavily specialized to turn out someone exactly like the author or the author's idea of a 'computer science major'. But I'm very sceptical that this enormous list constitutes a reasonable knowledge base for a "computer science major" who is also meant to know some other subjects; we're talking "major", not "quadruple super-specialized CS major". One might even know subjects that aren't just existing as early feed-in service courses for the CS (i.e. the way he discusses physics, maths and statistics). I certainly can't imagine someone meeting this guys list and uttering the phrase "I majored in CS and biology" or "I majored in CS and economics" or something like that.

meuk 7y ago

I can't help but think that you can only do a very shallow treatment of everything in this list in a CS program. It seems like the author basically put down his own CS program as a requirements list. The style the author uses reinforces this thought, since the sections are very shallow and very closely match what I would expect from someone who did an introductory course on every subject in the list. And I'll be damned if the 11(!) programming languages "every CS major should know" aren't exactly the programming languages that the author happens to know. It would be a surprising achievement to even know just C and C++. This post may be influenced a little by the irritation that after seven years of study and two years of work experience (and many time spent on this stuff as a hobby in my free time), I still don't match nearly 50% of the 'requirements' in this list. But hey, these lists should be taken with a lot of salt. It's pretty fun to make one and reflect on all the things you've learned. In my list, there would be more numerical analysis and less languages.

glangdale 7y ago

Then either you're a genius who has worked exceptionally hard, or you don't know all that much about most of the items on the list beyond a 'whirlwind tour' type intro. I don't doubt that someone could touch on most of this stuff, especially in a degree that is heavily specialized to turn out someone exactly like the author or the author's idea of a 'computer science major'. But I'm very sceptical that this enormous list constitutes a reasonable knowledge base for a "computer science major" who is also meant to know some other subjects; we're talking "major", not "quadruple super-specialized CS major". One might even know subjects that aren't just existing as early feed-in service courses for the CS (i.e. the way he discusses physics, maths and statistics). I certainly can't imagine someone meeting this guys list and uttering the phrase "I majored in CS and biology" or "I majored in CS and economics" or something like that.