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Surprised not to read anything about offering classes to people who choose to live in these remote-work communities. That's the only reason it would appeal to m
by qntty 5y ago
Surprised not to read anything about offering classes to people who choose to live in these remote-work communities. That's the only reason it would appeal to me personally. I think a lot of people would like to take some graduate classes while working, maybe even get a degree out of it.
Our education system for things like computer science seem to be out of sync with the way that people actually learn. Not because they are too theoretical, but because there are some things, like computer science, where it's really impossible to internalize the practical lessons of learning about different kinds of software systems if you don't have some experience building software systems yourself. And this kind of experience takes years of working to develop.
- politician 5y agoComputer Science is not Software Engineering. That’s my conclusion after the degree and two decades of professional work.
- baq 5y agoabsolutely, my alma mater even has separate tracks for them (also for at least two decades, even if I only graduated a a bit over a decade ago)
- NikolaeVarius 5y agoFamously, computer science isn't a science, nor is it about computers.
- andorov 5y agocomputer science is applied math, and software engineering is applied philosophy
- giovannibonetti 5y agoFollowing that reasoning, wouldn't any type of engineering be applied philosophy?
- dehrmann 5y agoHence doctors of philosophy.
- refactor_master 5y agoIf what you’re doing isn’t research it isn’t technically philosophy. The more applied a field is, the less philosophical it is, because a general “way” of doing things has been established. That’s why you can have an entire undergraduate about “solved problems”, and only after that do you start advancing the field by tackling unsolved problems.
- _wldu 5y agoIs math a science? My CS education was largely math classes. Algorithms are definitely math.
- weaksauce 5y agoI would say no. STEM is science, technology, engineering, math. compsci is a math degree.
- _wldu 5y agoMaybe math is a tool/framework used by scientists? Physics is another example that is largely math.
- nicky0 5y agoMath is both a philosophical enquiry (pure math) and a tool (applied math & statistics). Physics as a science uses math as a modelling and analysis tool.
- disgruntledphd2 5y agoI've always parsed mathematics more as a language than a science, because it's not necessarily empirical.
- nicky0 5y agoPerhaps as a language combined with rules to operate upon that language, transforming true statements into other true statements.
- phone8675309 5y agoPhysics : Engineering :: Computer Science : Software Engineering
- mbrudd 5y agoPursuing this question is quite the rabbit hole, but doing research in mathematics makes me believe that math is a science: you have questions, you collect evidence by exploring examples (i.e., conducting experiments), and you formulate hypotheses as conjectures. If you're lucky, your conjectures are correct and you prove them! Proofs are even better than the accumulated evidence on which theories in other sciences depend, in that proven theorems are immune to falsifiability within the axiomatic system in use.
- kongolongo 5y agoI guess not a physical science (although there was some crossover last year between some results in quantum computing and physics, there's probably lots other examples that I'm not familiar with too) [1] but it fits squarely in the formal sciences (which includes math, logic, etc). And it doesn't concern any particular physical computer, but it does have topics on what an idealized/ theoretical computer could do haha [1] https://www.quantamagazine.org/landmark-computer-science-proof-cascades-through-physics-and-math-20200304/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/landmark-computer-science-pro...
- vladTheInhaler 5y agoWhat would be a better term for it? Maybe "the mathematics of computation"?
- giobox 5y agoSome UK institutions (including some pretty respected ones) adopted the term "School of Informatics" and confer Informatics degrees instead of using the term Computer Science. I suspect the university marketing teams will eventually change this to Computer Science much like "Natural Philosophy" evolved into "Physics" at many places though... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatics https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics https://www.ed.ac.uk/informatics
- waterfowl 5y agoKCL was Informatics and it was broadly classed w/ maths/'natural sciences' when I was there 10 years ago - according to a younger colleague they have since rebranded to CS.
- onorton 5y agoIn the UK, the A level I took was called "Computing". My university called it that as well and treated it as an MEng rather than an MSc, but most UK universities still call it Computer Science I think.
- havocsupreme 5y agoAlgorithmic Engineers? CS is essentially the study of automatic algorithmic processes that scale, so something along those lines.
- shagie 5y agoPhilosophy of Computer Science [pdf] ( https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/phics.pdf https://cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/phics.pdf ) And the HN post about it - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20912718 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20912718 There more than a few thoughts in there about what computer science is and isn't.
- ldiracdelta 5y agoWeightlifting isn't football. But if you get huge enough, your size from weightlifting predicts success in football. Even if CS doesn't directly translate, if you can jump through the mental hoops, it likely predicts success in software engineering. You will likely do well in S/W Engineering if you have a high IQ and you have attention to detail. Since it is illegal to filter people by IQ in the USA, you have to jump through an expensive hoop to prove you have a high IQ, which also happens to vet for attention to detail and ability to focus on tasks. There is no reason that s/w engineering couldn't be taught using an apprenticeship model after doing an IQ test, but the later is illegal.
- novok 5y agoA lot of software writing jobs don’t require a degree although in the the usa.
- Mastermindy2g 5y agoThose tend to be primarily web development roles (i.e HTML/CSS) or doing some basic scripting not for "full stack" devs creating complex web applications. I do agree though that somebody wanting to enter a software development role might as well skip the CS degree and learn the basics to enter these 'entry level' dev jobs while learning the more complex stuff in parallel to level up
- dml2135 5y agoI'm not aware of it being illegal to use IQ as criteria in hiring in the USA, do you have a source for that? I'm sure the reason it's not done is because it would be an extremely bad predictor of success in a job, not because it isn't legal.
- bumbledraven 5y agohttps://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-just-civil-rights https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/woke-institutions-is-j... : > … in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) [1], … the Supreme Court ruled that intelligence tests, because they were not shown to be directly related to job performance, could not be used in hiring since blacks scored lower on them, and it did not matter whether there was any intent to discriminate. > [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co.
- qntty 5y agoMy point is that the current system isn't even that great at teaching academic CS. Even learning a version of CS which doesn't pretend to be SE well requires developing practical skills which many students don't have the opportunity to acquire until after they graduate. This isn't a flaw that's specific to CS, it's true of many disciplines. In fact, in some ways CS is less guilty of it than others.
- jrumbut 5y agoSome of the online CS master's programs allow you to take in person classes if you want, so when work is busy you can make progress online and you can pick the in person classes that really interest you. The program you're talking about exists, though it may not be marketed that way. I did this a few years ago and highly recommend it.
- seanmcdirmid 5y agoDoes it matter? If remote working is completely viable, I don't see why remote part time formal education wouldn't be. I'm not sure why someone who preferred WFH full time would otherwise decide that in person classes were important.
- lordnacho 5y agoVery good point. This is similar to stiff you do in business school, where you sure can talk about why BetaMax, but you can't experience it. Similarly you can be told that it's a good idea to think about your abstractions when coding, but if you don't get enough time to build a ball of spaghetti, you might not get it straight away. I think a lot of uni stuff is like this actually.