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I understand YMMV for all statements, but I'd love to understand why CS is needed for.. 80% of programming jobs. We mostly write CRUD apps to fulfill some sort

I understand YMMV for all statements, but I'd love to understand why CS is needed for.. 80% of programming jobs. We mostly write CRUD apps to fulfill some sort of business or project function. If we're not doing that, we're trying to make two or twenty different systems work together. If we're not doing that, we're developing CRUD interfaces for our databases with some business or project related logic that can be executed programatically.. None of this requires a CS degree. Design and architecture doesn't. Testing doesn't. Implementation doesn't. I don't write embedded firmware for IoT blockchain roundhouse kicks.. I write Java/.NET/PHP/JavaScript/Python code to make CRUD happen faster.

GuiA 7y ago
One of my first senior engineering roles was making what was at first a CRUD app to support user studies and data collection. At some point the project blew up, and requirements grew many fold in complexity. My CS background let me view the problem space from a broader perspective, and I ended up building what was essentially a spreadsheet based DSL so that user study designers could define what were, under the hood, state machines that covered pretty much any scenario they could come up with. The workload increased by 50x, but the system I built only needed a couple engineers to maintain and add features to. I hate to sound cocky, but I think any engineer without a formal CS background would have attempted to solve each case on an ad hoc basis, either greatly delaying the project at best, or fucking it up irremediably at worst. I have many examples like that. Perhaps in all of the examples you cited, you’ve inadvertently cost the company 10 times the time or the money that a more methodical engineer with a theoretical background would have. You don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s the difference between an engineer and a technician (a distinction that the US doesn’t tend to make, but some other countries do).
Double_a_92 7y ago
I can't really point out what exctaly it is, but it did make a difference for me. I did a did a 4year apprenticeship in IT and Programming before deciding to go to college. It was all fine, could do real coding for a good company. I knew the syntax of a few languages, database design, uml, some basics of how webservers work,... But it didn't feel proper. It was more like a lot of things, but only superficially. College on the other hand felt much more in-depth. I was really given the time to properly understand the things I was doing. Even the "maths" bits helped. E.g. vector maths changed the way how I reason about little unrelated things sometimes.
apersona 7y ago
I don't get why the justification for not needing to understand CS is that 80% of the programming jobs are CRUD apps. That's such a weak justification in my opinion. Why would you want to work on CRUD apps over more interesting stuff?

GuiA 7y ago

One of my first senior engineering roles was making what was at first a CRUD app to support user studies and data collection. At some point the project blew up, and requirements grew many fold in complexity. My CS background let me view the problem space from a broader perspective, and I ended up building what was essentially a spreadsheet based DSL so that user study designers could define what were, under the hood, state machines that covered pretty much any scenario they could come up with. The workload increased by 50x, but the system I built only needed a couple engineers to maintain and add features to. I hate to sound cocky, but I think any engineer without a formal CS background would have attempted to solve each case on an ad hoc basis, either greatly delaying the project at best, or fucking it up irremediably at worst. I have many examples like that. Perhaps in all of the examples you cited, you’ve inadvertently cost the company 10 times the time or the money that a more methodical engineer with a theoretical background would have. You don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s the difference between an engineer and a technician (a distinction that the US doesn’t tend to make, but some other countries do).

Double_a_92 7y ago

I can't really point out what exctaly it is, but it did make a difference for me. I did a did a 4year apprenticeship in IT and Programming before deciding to go to college. It was all fine, could do real coding for a good company. I knew the syntax of a few languages, database design, uml, some basics of how webservers work,... But it didn't feel proper. It was more like a lot of things, but only superficially. College on the other hand felt much more in-depth. I was really given the time to properly understand the things I was doing. Even the "maths" bits helped. E.g. vector maths changed the way how I reason about little unrelated things sometimes.

apersona 7y ago

I don't get why the justification for not needing to understand CS is that 80% of the programming jobs are CRUD apps. That's such a weak justification in my opinion. Why would you want to work on CRUD apps over more interesting stuff?