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Some people are more inclined to theoretical concepts, some people are more practical. Both have an understanding on how things work and/or an intuition, either

Some people are more inclined to theoretical concepts, some people are more practical. Both have an understanding on how things work and/or an intuition, either by studying theoretical concepts or via practical, hands on experience. My issue with this, and this is mostly my own personal opinion, is not whether or not this subject is important and that we need to defend it, but whether teaching it to students of that level is the 'right' thing. Imagine a student that doesnt even know how to program yet, doesn't know any algorithms, or higher level paradigms, heck doesnt even know any computer architecture stuff yet, but has to go through this block of theory and get examined on it.. Is it the right move to motivate more people into this field?

bachmeier 6y ago
> My issue with this, and this is mostly my own personal opinion, is not whether or not this subject is important and that we need to defend it, but whether teaching it to students of that level is the 'right' thing. Teaching it to which students? If someone enrolls in a computer science class, it's reasonable to teach them computer science. If instead they want a mechanical introduction to programming, CS probably isn't the right material.
cycrutchfield 6y ago
Yeah! And why come we gots to teach kid how to plus and minus if theys just gonna be a plummer?
- zelphirkalt 6y ago
  I think you are not addressing the point, which the GP tried to make. It's not about teaching or not teaching, but about the time when stuff is taught. Surely all these things have their time and place. Perhaps there are gentler introductions to some of these topics available?
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    If you can't teach theoretical computer science to undergraduate computer science students, you will have to shift it to the graduate level. Which means you won't really every have anyone earning a true masters in computer science because they'll need so much grounding to be able to complete the work they won't have time to do anything novel.
- tzs 6y ago
  You aren't being serious, but that was once actually a fairly widespread sentiment. In colonial times in America, for instance, arithmetic was generally not taught in elementary school. It was something you would learn on the job if needed. Amusingly, when it did start getting routinely taught at the end of the 18th century there were complaints from businessmen to the school boards that the methods taught in school were producing students totally unprepared for business. For more on this, see the essay "What is Mathematics For?" by Underwood Dudley from the May 2010 Notices of the AMS [1]. (A more accurate title, he notes in the first paragraph, would be "What is mathematics education for?"). He makes some interesting points about the usual justifications that elementary and high school math are useful in your career are not really accurate. [1] http://www.ams.org/notices/201005/rtx100500608p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201005/rtx100500608p.pdf
foepys 6y ago
If you want people to write mostly CRUD apps, sure. If you want people to develop programming languages, algorithms, models etc., not really. Computer Science is a subfield of math and trying to "lure" people into the field with flashy graphics and instant gratification will only frustrate them when it gets to the basics. In theory you can complete a Computer Science degree without ever programming a physical computer. To complete my Masters in CS I only had to take an introductionary course for Java, everything else programming related was optional.
czbond 6y ago
Agree. I loved the theoretical side of CompSci (automata, programming language at the meta level, algorithms). Practical was boring to me and I lost interest in the day to day (7 hours of typing in an IDE!? joy). The problems of the practical are a let down if you start theoretical. Can you handle 1M concurrent in Go to replace a java load distributor? Sure! Crud apps..... oh brain hurts will never finish.
sigstoat 6y ago
> Both have an understanding on how things work and/or an intuition, either by studying theoretical concepts or via practical, hands on experience. hands on experience with regular expressions manages to fail a lot of people with practical problems. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...
ookdatnog 6y ago
There are schools which just teach you programming and computer skills and do a good job at it. But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one. The degree is used as no more than an intelligence filter. This relegates anyone who has a practically oriented degree to being regarded as a second class programmer, the perception being that you would have studied CS instead if you had the ability. This completely sucks for practically inclined people who are forced to trudge through a theoretical degree that doesn't interest them, and where 90% of the material they will never use, just to prove that they're smart enough. They then tend to blame academia for being out of touch, ivory tower, etc. But academia is not at fault here, they are teaching what they claim to teach: computer science. There are good pratically minded degrees which prepare you just fine for the average programming job, it's employers who constantly signal that they value CS degrees more.
- scarface74 6y ago
  But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one. I haven’t seen any corporate dev jobs that care about formal computer science during an interview. I only see that from BigTech and BigTech wannabes that think they need “smart people” (tm).
Vervious 6y ago
> whether teaching it to students of that level is the 'right' thing I strongly doubt that any university or educator is teaching so much theory of computation to any level of computer science student who will not be focused on theory of computation. Notice that the OP's video seems targeted towards incoming CS theory Masters/PhD students who will explicitly be working on CS theory and doing research.

bachmeier 6y ago

> My issue with this, and this is mostly my own personal opinion, is not whether or not this subject is important and that we need to defend it, but whether teaching it to students of that level is the 'right' thing. Teaching it to which students? If someone enrolls in a computer science class, it's reasonable to teach them computer science. If instead they want a mechanical introduction to programming, CS probably isn't the right material.

cycrutchfield 6y ago

Yeah! And why come we gots to teach kid how to plus and minus if theys just gonna be a plummer?

zelphirkalt 6y ago
I think you are not addressing the point, which the GP tried to make. It's not about teaching or not teaching, but about the time when stuff is taught. Surely all these things have their time and place. Perhaps there are gentler introductions to some of these topics available?
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  If you can't teach theoretical computer science to undergraduate computer science students, you will have to shift it to the graduate level. Which means you won't really every have anyone earning a true masters in computer science because they'll need so much grounding to be able to complete the work they won't have time to do anything novel.
tzs 6y ago
You aren't being serious, but that was once actually a fairly widespread sentiment. In colonial times in America, for instance, arithmetic was generally not taught in elementary school. It was something you would learn on the job if needed. Amusingly, when it did start getting routinely taught at the end of the 18th century there were complaints from businessmen to the school boards that the methods taught in school were producing students totally unprepared for business. For more on this, see the essay "What is Mathematics For?" by Underwood Dudley from the May 2010 Notices of the AMS [1]. (A more accurate title, he notes in the first paragraph, would be "What is mathematics education for?"). He makes some interesting points about the usual justifications that elementary and high school math are useful in your career are not really accurate. [1] http://www.ams.org/notices/201005/rtx100500608p.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/201005/rtx100500608p.pdf

foepys 6y ago

If you want people to write mostly CRUD apps, sure. If you want people to develop programming languages, algorithms, models etc., not really. Computer Science is a subfield of math and trying to "lure" people into the field with flashy graphics and instant gratification will only frustrate them when it gets to the basics. In theory you can complete a Computer Science degree without ever programming a physical computer. To complete my Masters in CS I only had to take an introductionary course for Java, everything else programming related was optional.

czbond 6y ago

Agree. I loved the theoretical side of CompSci (automata, programming language at the meta level, algorithms). Practical was boring to me and I lost interest in the day to day (7 hours of typing in an IDE!? joy). The problems of the practical are a let down if you start theoretical. Can you handle 1M concurrent in Go to replace a java load distributor? Sure! Crud apps..... oh brain hurts will never finish.

sigstoat 6y ago

> Both have an understanding on how things work and/or an intuition, either by studying theoretical concepts or via practical, hands on experience. hands on experience with regular expressions manages to fail a lot of people with practical problems. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open-tags-except-xhtml-self-contained-tags/1732454 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1732348/regex-match-open...

ookdatnog 6y ago

There are schools which just teach you programming and computer skills and do a good job at it. But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one. The degree is used as no more than an intelligence filter. This relegates anyone who has a practically oriented degree to being regarded as a second class programmer, the perception being that you would have studied CS instead if you had the ability. This completely sucks for practically inclined people who are forced to trudge through a theoretical degree that doesn't interest them, and where 90% of the material they will never use, just to prove that they're smart enough. They then tend to blame academia for being out of touch, ivory tower, etc. But academia is not at fault here, they are teaching what they claim to teach: computer science. There are good pratically minded degrees which prepare you just fine for the average programming job, it's employers who constantly signal that they value CS degrees more.

scarface74 6y ago
But companies will still prefer candidates with computer science degrees, or even outright require a CS degree, even for simple programming jobs that really don't need one. I haven’t seen any corporate dev jobs that care about formal computer science during an interview. I only see that from BigTech and BigTech wannabes that think they need “smart people” (tm).

Vervious 6y ago

> whether teaching it to students of that level is the 'right' thing I strongly doubt that any university or educator is teaching so much theory of computation to any level of computer science student who will not be focused on theory of computation. Notice that the OP's video seems targeted towards incoming CS theory Masters/PhD students who will explicitly be working on CS theory and doing research.