4 ms·

Seems like these are more subjects for "software engineering" or some other kind of pre-professional major, as opposed to CS. Obviously not every program makes

by jgwil2 5y ago

Seems like these are more subjects for "software engineering" or some other kind of pre-professional major, as opposed to CS. Obviously not every program makes that distinction, but personally I like the idea of CS being primarily academic.

SkyMarshal 5y ago
Don’t Computer Scientists still need to use computers efficiently and effectively to run research projects or test new concepts on them?
- jgwil2 5y ago
  Yes, that is a good point. But by analogy, should an English major receive credit towards their major for a course in word processing, or is it just something that they should be expected to pick up along the way?
  - munchbunny 5y ago
    If word processing were as complex to use as a shell, I’d probably suggest a tutorial on word processing early in the major. I don’t have to regularly look up how to bold text even in Markdown, but I do have to regularly look up various Bash-isms.
  - necrotic_comp 5y ago
    It wouldn't be a bad idea to teach kids how to create a professional environment on their computer, but at the same time, the tooling around programming environments is much more complicated than a word processor and it's extremely valuable to teach the basics for credit.
  - meristem 5y ago
    There might be issues of access. It may be possible to go through school without ever having to break out of a GUI to do CLI commands, whereas it may be impossible to graduate from high school without ever typing an essay on word/docs/etc etc.
  - shirakawasuna 5y ago
    But CS students aren't really expected to pick these things up on the way - and they have other things to be doing if it's not required coursework. It's like an English major who can read and analyze the classics and nothing else - and cannot write at all outside of abstract poetry.
arethuza 5y ago
I don't think the emphasis of something like this is about writing code in a work environment but to help productivity for CS students when they write code in an academic environment - I would imagine that even highly theoretical/maths oriented courses CS courses still involve a lot of coding - mine certainly did. The only thing that seems missing is document preparation - presumably using LaTeX (we had to use troff, which was 'fun').
- lanstin 5y ago
  roff et al are about the only thing I don't miss about early Unix. I had a job in the late 80s doing document editing/preparation for a CS professor, and some was TeX and fun and some was nroff or some such and not fun. Even had some special transforms you had to hook into the generate output pipeline.
fishtoaster 5y ago
That'd be a great distinction to make, but as far as I can tell, 90%+ of colleges offer and treat CS and "the degree you take to become a professional programmer." I feel it does a disservice to both CS as a fascinating academic discipline and Software Engineering as an important career-oriented discipline, but until more places start offering both, I think CS programs can really benefit from more SE content like this.
- jgwil2 5y ago
  Good point. I think it is pretty common for schools (particularly community colleges or regional universities that primarily serve commuters) to offer programs in "Information Technology," but these may be substantially less rigorous than what might be required for a career as a programmer. It would be great to have more programs to serve the gap between IT and academic, research-focused CS. Right now this seems to be filled by master's degrees that come after a CS education and focus on pre-professional skills (based on the resumes I see).
blacktriangle 5y ago
The CS vs Software Engineering distinction make sense, but we're at a point where even the most hard-core academic theoretical CS types are writing large quantities of code. I've worked with professors who desperately needed to take this kind of course, let alone undergrads.

by jgwil2 5y ago

SkyMarshal 5y ago

Don’t Computer Scientists still need to use computers efficiently and effectively to run research projects or test new concepts on them?

jgwil2 5y ago
Yes, that is a good point. But by analogy, should an English major receive credit towards their major for a course in word processing, or is it just something that they should be expected to pick up along the way?
- munchbunny 5y ago
  If word processing were as complex to use as a shell, I’d probably suggest a tutorial on word processing early in the major. I don’t have to regularly look up how to bold text even in Markdown, but I do have to regularly look up various Bash-isms.
- necrotic_comp 5y ago
  It wouldn't be a bad idea to teach kids how to create a professional environment on their computer, but at the same time, the tooling around programming environments is much more complicated than a word processor and it's extremely valuable to teach the basics for credit.
- meristem 5y ago
  There might be issues of access. It may be possible to go through school without ever having to break out of a GUI to do CLI commands, whereas it may be impossible to graduate from high school without ever typing an essay on word/docs/etc etc.
- shirakawasuna 5y ago
  But CS students aren't really expected to pick these things up on the way - and they have other things to be doing if it's not required coursework. It's like an English major who can read and analyze the classics and nothing else - and cannot write at all outside of abstract poetry.

arethuza 5y ago

I don't think the emphasis of something like this is about writing code in a work environment but to help productivity for CS students when they write code in an academic environment - I would imagine that even highly theoretical/maths oriented courses CS courses still involve a lot of coding - mine certainly did. The only thing that seems missing is document preparation - presumably using LaTeX (we had to use troff, which was 'fun').

lanstin 5y ago
roff et al are about the only thing I don't miss about early Unix. I had a job in the late 80s doing document editing/preparation for a CS professor, and some was TeX and fun and some was nroff or some such and not fun. Even had some special transforms you had to hook into the generate output pipeline.

fishtoaster 5y ago

That'd be a great distinction to make, but as far as I can tell, 90%+ of colleges offer and treat CS and "the degree you take to become a professional programmer." I feel it does a disservice to both CS as a fascinating academic discipline and Software Engineering as an important career-oriented discipline, but until more places start offering both, I think CS programs can really benefit from more SE content like this.

jgwil2 5y ago
Good point. I think it is pretty common for schools (particularly community colleges or regional universities that primarily serve commuters) to offer programs in "Information Technology," but these may be substantially less rigorous than what might be required for a career as a programmer. It would be great to have more programs to serve the gap between IT and academic, research-focused CS. Right now this seems to be filled by master's degrees that come after a CS education and focus on pre-professional skills (based on the resumes I see).

blacktriangle 5y ago

The CS vs Software Engineering distinction make sense, but we're at a point where even the most hard-core academic theoretical CS types are writing large quantities of code. I've worked with professors who desperately needed to take this kind of course, let alone undergrads.