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There is far more to writing correct code than knowing the contents of undergraduate computer science inside and out; there is an entire world of software engin

There is far more to writing correct code than knowing the contents of undergraduate computer science inside and out; there is an entire world of software engineering where undergraduate computer science theory is damn near meaningless. I mean, I worked at a medium sized medical device company (10,000+ people) (who was considered the gold standard of their industry in many respects) where you would be hard pressed to find a single person that wrote a lot of code who had anything but a Physics, EE or CpE degree; I honestly can't remember a single person who had a CS degree despite being on an algorithms team. I can't even remember a single person at the scientific device company I worked at where their algorithms team had anything but PhDs in Physics.

arethuza 6y ago
In my experience embedded or control system software is more about the thing being controlled than anything else so that would seem natural?
sn41 6y ago
I agree with the first paragraph. The second and third paragraphs are alarming. Anti-elitism is never a good thing in actual technical fields. Of course, the lead may be from outside CS, but to say that there is not a single CS person or an expert in embedded systems and OS, who was involved in the design and testing of a pacemaker is not very confidence-building.
- bonoboTP 6y ago
  > Anti-elitism is never a good thing in actual technical fields I think it's not anti-elitism but just elitism. Outside the CS bubble, being a PhD physicist has more prestige and status than being a PhD computer scientist. A physicist is universally recognized as a scientist, nobody would ever question that. A "computer scientist" is not universally regarded as such. I'm not arguing whether it should be, but it's clearly not universally like that in people's perceptions.
  - AcademicHamster 6y ago
    > Outside the CS bubble, being a PhD physicist has more prestige and status than being a PhD computer scientist. I disagree with this take. Just as there is more “applied” physics and “theoretical” physics there is similarly “theoretical” computer science and more “applied” computer science. The former camp are similar to the theoretical physicist as many of them are mathematicians with a computer science bent. Even within the “applied” CS camp you have experts in number theory and algebra that apply their skills to cryptography, whereas in the “theoretical” camp you may find theorist using mathematics like homotopy type theory, category theory and the like in their research. Number theory, graph theory, combinatorics, abstract algebra, category theory and the like can get really hardcore in the pure math world. Similarly, theoretical physicist also have to know a lot of mathematics. I think your optics of what a computer scientist is and does is a bit removed from reality and that PhDs in CS are highly respected (I didn’t even mention the folks working in AI or quantum computing or the other important areas of the field).
    - bonoboTP 6y ago
      I'm talking about the perception by general people like business managers and HR etc. I think it's silly that there's this purity contest or practicality contest going on. I studied CS but at a more engineering focused university, so the curriculum was closer to electrical engineering than to math and physics. Many engineering profs had a weird distaste for physicists/natural scientists and vice versa. They were both "elitist" just from a different view of the world. I like Feynman's take on this kind of bickering among fields: https://youtu.be/f61KMw5zVhg?t=137 https://youtu.be/f61KMw5zVhg?t=137
      - ghaff 6y ago
        CS is a bit weird in that, partly for historical reasons, it straddles science and engineering more than most university majors. So at some schools, it's closely tied to the math department while at others it's associated with electrical engineering. Which unsurprisingly affects the curriculum in various ways. (And, of course, there's also the matter of how applied the curriculum is--i.e. software development vs. underlying theory.)
- watwut 6y ago
  When rather large company employs either everyone with the degree or everyone without degree cs degree, good working hypothesis that bias is going on in hiring.
username90 6y ago
I don't got a computer science degree either. However I do know computer science fundamentals better than most people with computer science degrees. A degree is neither evidence of skill nor evidence of absence of skill.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

arethuza 6y ago

In my experience embedded or control system software is more about the thing being controlled than anything else so that would seem natural?

sn41 6y ago

I agree with the first paragraph. The second and third paragraphs are alarming. Anti-elitism is never a good thing in actual technical fields. Of course, the lead may be from outside CS, but to say that there is not a single CS person or an expert in embedded systems and OS, who was involved in the design and testing of a pacemaker is not very confidence-building.

bonoboTP 6y ago
> Anti-elitism is never a good thing in actual technical fields I think it's not anti-elitism but just elitism. Outside the CS bubble, being a PhD physicist has more prestige and status than being a PhD computer scientist. A physicist is universally recognized as a scientist, nobody would ever question that. A "computer scientist" is not universally regarded as such. I'm not arguing whether it should be, but it's clearly not universally like that in people's perceptions.
- AcademicHamster 6y ago
  > Outside the CS bubble, being a PhD physicist has more prestige and status than being a PhD computer scientist. I disagree with this take. Just as there is more “applied” physics and “theoretical” physics there is similarly “theoretical” computer science and more “applied” computer science. The former camp are similar to the theoretical physicist as many of them are mathematicians with a computer science bent. Even within the “applied” CS camp you have experts in number theory and algebra that apply their skills to cryptography, whereas in the “theoretical” camp you may find theorist using mathematics like homotopy type theory, category theory and the like in their research. Number theory, graph theory, combinatorics, abstract algebra, category theory and the like can get really hardcore in the pure math world. Similarly, theoretical physicist also have to know a lot of mathematics. I think your optics of what a computer scientist is and does is a bit removed from reality and that PhDs in CS are highly respected (I didn’t even mention the folks working in AI or quantum computing or the other important areas of the field).
  - bonoboTP 6y ago
    I'm talking about the perception by general people like business managers and HR etc. I think it's silly that there's this purity contest or practicality contest going on. I studied CS but at a more engineering focused university, so the curriculum was closer to electrical engineering than to math and physics. Many engineering profs had a weird distaste for physicists/natural scientists and vice versa. They were both "elitist" just from a different view of the world. I like Feynman's take on this kind of bickering among fields: https://youtu.be/f61KMw5zVhg?t=137 https://youtu.be/f61KMw5zVhg?t=137
    - ghaff 6y ago
      CS is a bit weird in that, partly for historical reasons, it straddles science and engineering more than most university majors. So at some schools, it's closely tied to the math department while at others it's associated with electrical engineering. Which unsurprisingly affects the curriculum in various ways. (And, of course, there's also the matter of how applied the curriculum is--i.e. software development vs. underlying theory.)
watwut 6y ago
When rather large company employs either everyone with the degree or everyone without degree cs degree, good working hypothesis that bias is going on in hiring.

username90 6y ago

I don't got a computer science degree either. However I do know computer science fundamentals better than most people with computer science degrees. A degree is neither evidence of skill nor evidence of absence of skill.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]