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Many smaller CS departments in the US have no such a course in their curricula. There simply aren't enough professors to maintain that breadth of courses in th

Many smaller CS departments in the US have no such a course in their curricula. There simply aren't enough professors to maintain that breadth of courses in those departments.

saagarjha 7y ago
Really? That’s quite surprising; I would expect all of them to have some sort of “programming languages” course or similar…what classes do they have then?
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  AFAIK most or all of those curricula do include a sirvey course for programming languages. IIUC the GP was talking about courses that specifically focused on functional programmimg.
  - saagarjha 7y ago
    Fair, but I from the context of the top comment I was talking more about being able to recognize and use basic functional constructs.
- pianoben 7y ago
  My CS program (class of 2007) was mostly c++. There was one semester of Java, but it was optional. We learned fundamentals, discrete math, symbolic logic, and also "databases" (read: MS Access), object-oriented design, and I forget what else. With the benefit of hindsight, I feel like I overpaid for that education :)
  - chongli 7y ago
    I’m a math student minoring in CS and I covered all of that before I’d finished second year. I also covered functional programming in first year. I’m really surprised your CS degree didn’t cover operating systems, compilers, or algorithms. CS students at my school are required to take all of that stuff (and a lot more, including everything you’ve mentioned) before they even finish 3rd year. In 4th year they’ll be studying things like networking, real-time programming, computer graphics (physically-based rendering), machine learning, and computational math (for simulations, numerical solvers, linear and nonlinear optimization, etc).
    - pianoben 7y ago
      Ah yes, operating systems - file that under "I forget what else". Like I said, I feel that I overpaid for that education. The degree itself has paid for itself many times over, but I needed to learn basically everything important for a CS career on my own.

Many smaller CS departments in the US have no such a course in their curricula. There simply aren't enough professors to maintain that breadth of courses in those departments.

saagarjha 7y ago

Really? That’s quite surprising; I would expect all of them to have some sort of “programming languages” course or similar…what classes do they have then?

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
AFAIK most or all of those curricula do include a sirvey course for programming languages. IIUC the GP was talking about courses that specifically focused on functional programmimg.
- saagarjha 7y ago
  Fair, but I from the context of the top comment I was talking more about being able to recognize and use basic functional constructs.
pianoben 7y ago
My CS program (class of 2007) was mostly c++. There was one semester of Java, but it was optional. We learned fundamentals, discrete math, symbolic logic, and also "databases" (read: MS Access), object-oriented design, and I forget what else. With the benefit of hindsight, I feel like I overpaid for that education :)
- chongli 7y ago
  I’m a math student minoring in CS and I covered all of that before I’d finished second year. I also covered functional programming in first year. I’m really surprised your CS degree didn’t cover operating systems, compilers, or algorithms. CS students at my school are required to take all of that stuff (and a lot more, including everything you’ve mentioned) before they even finish 3rd year. In 4th year they’ll be studying things like networking, real-time programming, computer graphics (physically-based rendering), machine learning, and computational math (for simulations, numerical solvers, linear and nonlinear optimization, etc).
  - pianoben 7y ago
    Ah yes, operating systems - file that under "I forget what else". Like I said, I feel that I overpaid for that education. The degree itself has paid for itself many times over, but I needed to learn basically everything important for a CS career on my own.