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Honestly, the CS degree is weird. Some classes are super basic and some classes are nintendo hard. The classes that are in the middle of the road are very few

Honestly, the CS degree is weird. Some classes are super basic and some classes are nintendo hard. The classes that are in the middle of the road are very few but those are the ones that are most useful. Operating Systems, Data Structures, Parallel Computing and Software Engineering II (Basic Project Management) were notable for being interesting, difficult enough to make not slack and endlessly applicable for programmers. The CS degree isn't for programmers as my old professor once pointed out in a high level class: "Computer Science is about Programming like Biology is about pretty girls and microscopes". Those looking to go into research can take the CS coursework and probably get more use out of it.

acemarke 6y ago
I've always felt that a CS degree (at least based on the curriculum I went through) is really three separate and only partly related areas of study crammed together: - Teaching people how to program for the first time. Most of us had never actually programmed before, so you've got to have the intro classes that both teach _how_ to think through breaking a problem down into steps, and also the specific syntax of expressing those steps in a specific programming language, moving on to the typical concepts like OOP and classes and whatnot. - Actual CS. Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Compilers, and the various more math-ish / "fundamentals" content. - Software Engineering. The practical, hands-on work of actually writing meaningful code, working as part of a team, requirements, using version control, testing, etc. Some classes like specific web dev topics or something probably fit into here too. Granted, I was going through this almost 20 years ago, and I only have my own experience to base this on, but it seems like this is a reasonable broad description of what a CS degree is trying to cover. I feel like that gave me a good fundamental background, but at the same time 99% of what I do on a daily basis now is all stuff that I either learned on the job, or in my own free time.
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  > I was going through this almost 20 years ago 10 here.... your comment holds up.

acemarke 6y ago

I've always felt that a CS degree (at least based on the curriculum I went through) is really three separate and only partly related areas of study crammed together: - Teaching people how to program for the first time. Most of us had never actually programmed before, so you've got to have the intro classes that both teach _how_ to think through breaking a problem down into steps, and also the specific syntax of expressing those steps in a specific programming language, moving on to the typical concepts like OOP and classes and whatnot. - Actual CS. Data Structures, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Compilers, and the various more math-ish / "fundamentals" content. - Software Engineering. The practical, hands-on work of actually writing meaningful code, working as part of a team, requirements, using version control, testing, etc. Some classes like specific web dev topics or something probably fit into here too. Granted, I was going through this almost 20 years ago, and I only have my own experience to base this on, but it seems like this is a reasonable broad description of what a CS degree is trying to cover. I feel like that gave me a good fundamental background, but at the same time 99% of what I do on a daily basis now is all stuff that I either learned on the job, or in my own free time.

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
> I was going through this almost 20 years ago 10 here.... your comment holds up.