3 ms·

In that case, I admire (from the outside looking in) RIT's program because my own college conflated CS and SWE together. We did get into theory, but it was larg

In that case, I admire (from the outside looking in) RIT's program because my own college conflated CS and SWE together. We did get into theory, but it was largely rooted in writing code and SWE.

jandrese 6y ago
When I went there were two tracks. CS or CE. CE was taught out of the engineering department and was more focused on people who were going to write device drivers or FPGAs. It overlapped considerably with EE. CS was quite math heavy. In fact you only needed 1 extra elective to get a math minor. That said there was a fair bit of practical developer classes as well, like Networking and Graphics (this was before GPUs so the graphics class was mostly about matrix math).
norswap 6y ago
Is it really admirable though? If you remove the tether of software engineering, then CS is just math. I think what I like most in CS is when theory comes in support of SWE. Having something that is elegant and practically useful. (And I don't know about RIT, but overwhelming, schools don't teach pure CS theory, but rather CS/SWE.)
- lykr0n 6y ago
  At RIT, this statement holds true: "You don't learn how to write software in CS, you just learn it by proxy." The CS course is focused on concepts, involving writing assembly programs to understand how stuff works. And yeah, it turns into heavy mathematics towards the end, which is why I gave it up after the first year. It turned into applied theory. If the course was in Networking (for example), you would spend your time learning the theory behind it while implementing something to apply the theory. My friend did a whole bunch of this stuff in C++/Java. He never learned how to write practical software, just enough to complete the assignments. Most people move to Software Engineering- the first two years of the CS/SWE program are virtually the same. You fairly quickly figure out which side of the fall you want to fall onto.
perl4ever 6y ago
I didn't exactly take a full normal CS curriculum, but I did get the impression, back in the 90s, that there tends to be a cultural bias against any language you would use in industry. If there's any excuse not to use something practical, they won't. Knuth and (M)MIX is the extreme example. My college did all assembly language in MIPS.

In that case, I admire (from the outside looking in) RIT's program because my own college conflated CS and SWE together. We did get into theory, but it was largely rooted in writing code and SWE.

jandrese 6y ago

When I went there were two tracks. CS or CE. CE was taught out of the engineering department and was more focused on people who were going to write device drivers or FPGAs. It overlapped considerably with EE. CS was quite math heavy. In fact you only needed 1 extra elective to get a math minor. That said there was a fair bit of practical developer classes as well, like Networking and Graphics (this was before GPUs so the graphics class was mostly about matrix math).

norswap 6y ago

Is it really admirable though? If you remove the tether of software engineering, then CS is just math. I think what I like most in CS is when theory comes in support of SWE. Having something that is elegant and practically useful. (And I don't know about RIT, but overwhelming, schools don't teach pure CS theory, but rather CS/SWE.)

lykr0n 6y ago
At RIT, this statement holds true: "You don't learn how to write software in CS, you just learn it by proxy." The CS course is focused on concepts, involving writing assembly programs to understand how stuff works. And yeah, it turns into heavy mathematics towards the end, which is why I gave it up after the first year. It turned into applied theory. If the course was in Networking (for example), you would spend your time learning the theory behind it while implementing something to apply the theory. My friend did a whole bunch of this stuff in C++/Java. He never learned how to write practical software, just enough to complete the assignments. Most people move to Software Engineering- the first two years of the CS/SWE program are virtually the same. You fairly quickly figure out which side of the fall you want to fall onto.

perl4ever 6y ago

I didn't exactly take a full normal CS curriculum, but I did get the impression, back in the 90s, that there tends to be a cultural bias against any language you would use in industry. If there's any excuse not to use something practical, they won't. Knuth and (M)MIX is the extreme example. My college did all assembly language in MIPS.