5 ms·

I would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I mean like 95%) of developers will neve

by uwuemu 5y ago

I would argue exactly otherwise... with the advent of the web platform and frameworks like .net, the vast majority (and I mean like 95%) of developers will never touch anything ML related in their careers. I mean, I get that this is MIT and many of their students will end up working with ML, but applying that globally to CS is nonsense. Back when I was studying CS (cze) more than a decade ago, we had to pass linear algebra, graph theory and calculus, but honestly, that was like in the first year and a half and then it completely tapered off (later years were all about projects, algorithmization, i.e. "doing the work" and very little about hardcore theory) and guess what, I never needed it again. A bit of statistics and some graph theory here and there, but that's about it. Contrary to popular belief, there are NOT that many ML jobs out there and the ones that are there are more about data science and messing with model zoo type of shit than actually coding useful programs. Most programmers will be lucky if they get to integrate inference of a prepared model into the apps they work on.

paxys 5y ago
This is exactly why so many people (myself included) advocate for a pure "software engineering" degree at more universities. Let people who are interested study graph theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, advanced probability and statistics and whatever else. For the rest, provide a path to be ready for an industry job building websites and applications, which is what 90% of graduates will end up doing. Every other discipline out there has a clear separation of pure from applied science. Why can't we do the same for software? What we end up with is borderline fraudulent coding bootcamps to fill in the gap.
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Software engineering is based on applied mathematics too. You'll need at least some basic calculus to make sense of O(n) analysis, and Calc II as a prereq for probability. Then add plenty of logic, discrete mathematics (needed for algorithms and data structures), models of computation and concurrency, category theory (which is becoming a shared language of everything "compositional"), topology etc. etc. If you really want a "math free" intro to tech, look into Business Information Systems. That tends to be more ad hoc, at least for now. At some point, people will start to care about software assurance even in that context, and the standards will rise accordingly.
  - TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
    Not to mention relational calculus for a deeper understanding of databases.
    - naniwaduni 5y ago
      The relational calculus has very little to do with the calculus of infinitesimals.
  - david38 5y ago
    You don’t. I’ve never been asked a O() that requires calculus. The vast majority is just understanding if it’s log(n), n, nlog(n), n^2, etc. Discrete, sure, but Calc? Not for most.
    - fantod 5y ago
      You don't really need to know calculus (derivatives and such) but it's true that big O notation requires some sort of "asymptotic thinking" which is probably only explicitly taught in a calculus course.
      - Retric 5y ago
        That’s part of Pre-Calculus or general mathematics coursework at most US high schools. Beyond that it’s a very simple idea you can cover at the same time as your doing Big O notation in the first place.
  - jahewson 5y ago
    Discrete probability is probably adequate for most software engineering. Almost everything we encounter in our jobs is discrete. One thing I do think we need more of is linear algebra.
  - vidarh 5y ago
    The thing is people with a maths heavy background tend to think you need a much deeper understanding of math for this than you actually do. You need very little beyond high school level math for most CS. Some areas, sure. I've done things in my career that touches on a lot of different areas of math. But the number of times I've regretted not having taken more math have been pretty much non-existent. I wish I remembered a bit more of my trig, mostly. Most software engineers come into contact with far less CS subjects where math matters than I do. I don't have an issue with a place like MIT insisting on lots of math, but this notion that you need to understand so much math for software engineering is deeply flawed - you don't need much even for a lot of theoretical computer science.
- arcticfox 5y ago
  While I spend 99% of my time doing pure "software engineering", I'm pretty grateful to have the advanced probability / graph theory / combinatorics etc. background because it helps me envision possibilities I wouldn't otherwise be able to. That being said, there are probably lighter ways of teaching that instinct than full-depth classes. I try to listen to podcasts these days as a way of expanding my horizons.
  - xxxtentachyon 5y ago
    Any recommendations for good podcasts in that vein?
- justsocrateasin 5y ago
  I think this line of thinking fails to recognize what a general math background does for your critical thinking skills. I'm sure you and I both took plenty of math classes, and therefore we won't ever really know what our computer science skills would be like without a rigorous math background. Even if I never touch anything more complex than algebra II again, taking ~30 credits of applied math allows me to think in a way that I wouldn't otherwise without that background.
- cwp 5y ago
  If all you're interested in is getting a good job, you don't need a degree at all. The information is available for free in a variety of presentations and formats. The source code to just about all the software you'll use is available for free as are all the tools. You don't even need a bootcamp, just time and energy.
  - u2077 5y ago
    You may not need a degree to learn the material, but as someone new to the field, there are plenty of jobs that list a 2 year or 4 year degree as a requirement. Having that degree will open more doors than just learning on your own simply because that’s what they’re looking for.
  - paxys 5y ago
    Sure, but in the same vein everything you will ever learn at MIT can be found for free online as well. Ultimately a 4-year degree does have value, whether just for the brand, or as a forcing function to learn, or the constant help from teachers and peers or whatever else.
- bob1029 5y ago
  I have been saying for years that we need to treat software developers like jedi when it comes to training. Practical, industry expert-led coursework has been by far the most outstanding education I have ever received. My DSP professor was (is still) an adjunct to the university I attended and works a normal job 9-5 during the day at some engineering firm. He was easily the best educator I have ever experienced because he brought reality into the classroom every day. I still vividly recall the 20–30-minute lecture/rant about making power point presentations that don't suck. It's all the little things for me... The nuanced details like "why are you holding it that way?" are impossible to discover until you have a customer complaining at you for a while or have someone who experienced it themselves giving you a heads-up. For me, the future of practical software engineering education looks a lot more like a machine shop than it does a university campus.
- mywittyname 5y ago
  I don't think a "pure" software engineering degree really needs to be four years. What you're talking about sounds an awful lot like the program I went into initially at a community college. They taught you some coding in a few popular languages, some database concepts and sent you on your way. I dropped out after a year and found a job. I ended up going to a four year program after a while. Turns out, a lot of the good jobs in software engineering require understanding those peaky abstract fundamentals.
londons_explore 5y ago
If you just want to be a great web developer, MIT may not be the best place for you. MIT best prepares people for those less well defined roles, such as designing the next era of web browsers. For that, you can never know exactly which skills will be needed, so it's probably best to have as many neighbouring skills as possible so you don't hit problems you can't solve merely because the knowledge required to see the best solution was in that topic your course didn't cover. Who knows, maybe the next era of web browsers will browse the web for you, and then condense everything they learned from thousands of resources into a single paragraph for the user to see. And for that, they might need ML.
- adamsmith143 5y ago
  Of course if I browse linkedin MIT EECS grads, most are probably just doing bug fixing at FAANG or the latest unicorn and some small fraction are doing anything revolutionary. It's also likely that they would have done so without an MIT education. See e.g the Collison brothers.
  - pishpash 5y ago
    Learning about those things aren't necessary for those jobs but they prove that you're capable of learning something, and as such is a part of the FAANG acceptance process.
- whynotminot 5y ago
  Hmm I’m not sure I really agree with this. Does MIT (or any university) teach the creativity needed to envision the kind of thing you’re talking about? Or like most universities, is it just teaching some foundational skills coupled with whatever has condensed into “required reading” from industry over the last couple decades? Just with a higher pedigree and ostensibly better prepared student body.
  - fn-mote 5y ago
    > Does MIT [...] teach the creativity needed to envision the kind of thing you’re talking about? Absolutely. Explicitly. I have just been a bystander, but it's clear. I don't think that MIT grads are in this thread wasting their breath, though. Which I think is a good decision. [1] https://lemelson.mit.edu/ https://lemelson.mit.edu/ [2] https://innovation.mit.edu/resources/ https://innovation.mit.edu/resources/
NikolaNovak 5y ago
I remember finding myself in 3rd year Calculus in a Computer Science degree, and realizing: I don't have to be here! (only two years were mandatory) I've always enjoyed math and kept enrolling into it out of habit, until it became so esoteric, and my actual interests more solid and practical. I find a lot of my university career was fascinating and... useless. Not just from "I will never use this directly perspective", but also largely from "this will give me broader understanding and framework and enable me to learn faster" perspective. We can have wonderful philosophical discussion on what University should be for - job prep or educational enhancement for the sake of it - but truth of the matter was that I envied those in Engineering fields who had fun AND learned AND were doing practical things AND were going to apply some of it. Whereas my 3rd and 4th year maths were just maths for the sake of maths. I may be hanging out with uninteresting crowds, but same experience is broadly true for my friends and co-workers - Java developer, VMWare architect, Database Administrator, ERP developer, etc. We all value education and love learning and will go on our vacation with couple of technical books - but university Computer Science degree seems very mistailored, or at least, sold wrong.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  interesting, I think almost the complete opposite. I am happy where I'm at, but I most certainly would have preferred doing a math/cs double major rather than all the BS busy work of an engineering degree I went through. I wouldn't call 60 hours a week of symbol manipulation practical...
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Good luck deriving matrix identities without Calc III.
- matwood 5y ago
  > I find a lot of my university career was fascinating and... useless. I was in college long ago and for my CS undergrad and masters took the usual CS and math courses. When I needed electives though I took courses like economics, finance and accounting. Many years later, those electives ended up being the most useful. The CS and math courses I wouldn't consider useless though. I'm sure I lean on theory I learned without realizing. But, at the time I couldn't have predicted working in small companies or startups and how important basic finance and accounting would end up.
rcpt 5y ago
Calculus was the first time in mathematics education where I actually had to understand systems and how to derive results from first principles. Prior to that everything was just memorizing: "this is what logarithm is", "socatoah", multiplication tables, etc etc. I straight up hated math until calculus (now I have a math PhD). I'm sure the same could be accomplished with other fields of math but I don't feel it's necessary to switch. Would be extremely hard to find good teachers and course materials for combinatorics or graph theory to.
blip54321 5y ago
If your goal is to be a code monkey writing database-backed web applications, MIT is probably a very expensive way to get there. The goal of the degree is to prepare people for data analysis, machine vision, 3d graphics, ML, signal processing, and similar. If you're not into that, going to MIT is wasteful for everyone involved. That's not elitism talking; that's just the nature of MIT. Other schools aren't like that. For example, if you want to do a startup around a database-backed web application, Stanford is a fine choice. I'm not arguing Stanford is either better or worse; it's just a little bit less academic and little bit more entrepreneurial. There are other schools which emphasize other things. Harvard or Yale will move you more into the class of powerful people. Etc.
SamBam 5y ago
You don't need to go to MIT to be a regular-ol' front end javascript or .net programmer.

by uwuemu 5y ago

paxys 5y ago

This is exactly why so many people (myself included) advocate for a pure "software engineering" degree at more universities. Let people who are interested study graph theory, combinatorics, linear algebra, advanced probability and statistics and whatever else. For the rest, provide a path to be ready for an industry job building websites and applications, which is what 90% of graduates will end up doing. Every other discipline out there has a clear separation of pure from applied science. Why can't we do the same for software? What we end up with is borderline fraudulent coding bootcamps to fill in the gap.

zozbot234 5y ago
Software engineering is based on applied mathematics too. You'll need at least some basic calculus to make sense of O(n) analysis, and Calc II as a prereq for probability. Then add plenty of logic, discrete mathematics (needed for algorithms and data structures), models of computation and concurrency, category theory (which is becoming a shared language of everything "compositional"), topology etc. etc. If you really want a "math free" intro to tech, look into Business Information Systems. That tends to be more ad hoc, at least for now. At some point, people will start to care about software assurance even in that context, and the standards will rise accordingly.
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  Not to mention relational calculus for a deeper understanding of databases.
  - naniwaduni 5y ago
    The relational calculus has very little to do with the calculus of infinitesimals.
- david38 5y ago
  You don’t. I’ve never been asked a O() that requires calculus. The vast majority is just understanding if it’s log(n), n, nlog(n), n^2, etc. Discrete, sure, but Calc? Not for most.
  - fantod 5y ago
    You don't really need to know calculus (derivatives and such) but it's true that big O notation requires some sort of "asymptotic thinking" which is probably only explicitly taught in a calculus course.
    - Retric 5y ago
      That’s part of Pre-Calculus or general mathematics coursework at most US high schools. Beyond that it’s a very simple idea you can cover at the same time as your doing Big O notation in the first place.
- jahewson 5y ago
  Discrete probability is probably adequate for most software engineering. Almost everything we encounter in our jobs is discrete. One thing I do think we need more of is linear algebra.
- vidarh 5y ago
  The thing is people with a maths heavy background tend to think you need a much deeper understanding of math for this than you actually do. You need very little beyond high school level math for most CS. Some areas, sure. I've done things in my career that touches on a lot of different areas of math. But the number of times I've regretted not having taken more math have been pretty much non-existent. I wish I remembered a bit more of my trig, mostly. Most software engineers come into contact with far less CS subjects where math matters than I do. I don't have an issue with a place like MIT insisting on lots of math, but this notion that you need to understand so much math for software engineering is deeply flawed - you don't need much even for a lot of theoretical computer science.
arcticfox 5y ago
While I spend 99% of my time doing pure "software engineering", I'm pretty grateful to have the advanced probability / graph theory / combinatorics etc. background because it helps me envision possibilities I wouldn't otherwise be able to. That being said, there are probably lighter ways of teaching that instinct than full-depth classes. I try to listen to podcasts these days as a way of expanding my horizons.
- xxxtentachyon 5y ago
  Any recommendations for good podcasts in that vein?
justsocrateasin 5y ago
I think this line of thinking fails to recognize what a general math background does for your critical thinking skills. I'm sure you and I both took plenty of math classes, and therefore we won't ever really know what our computer science skills would be like without a rigorous math background. Even if I never touch anything more complex than algebra II again, taking ~30 credits of applied math allows me to think in a way that I wouldn't otherwise without that background.
cwp 5y ago
If all you're interested in is getting a good job, you don't need a degree at all. The information is available for free in a variety of presentations and formats. The source code to just about all the software you'll use is available for free as are all the tools. You don't even need a bootcamp, just time and energy.
- u2077 5y ago
  You may not need a degree to learn the material, but as someone new to the field, there are plenty of jobs that list a 2 year or 4 year degree as a requirement. Having that degree will open more doors than just learning on your own simply because that’s what they’re looking for.
- paxys 5y ago
  Sure, but in the same vein everything you will ever learn at MIT can be found for free online as well. Ultimately a 4-year degree does have value, whether just for the brand, or as a forcing function to learn, or the constant help from teachers and peers or whatever else.
bob1029 5y ago
I have been saying for years that we need to treat software developers like jedi when it comes to training. Practical, industry expert-led coursework has been by far the most outstanding education I have ever received. My DSP professor was (is still) an adjunct to the university I attended and works a normal job 9-5 during the day at some engineering firm. He was easily the best educator I have ever experienced because he brought reality into the classroom every day. I still vividly recall the 20–30-minute lecture/rant about making power point presentations that don't suck. It's all the little things for me... The nuanced details like "why are you holding it that way?" are impossible to discover until you have a customer complaining at you for a while or have someone who experienced it themselves giving you a heads-up. For me, the future of practical software engineering education looks a lot more like a machine shop than it does a university campus.
mywittyname 5y ago
I don't think a "pure" software engineering degree really needs to be four years. What you're talking about sounds an awful lot like the program I went into initially at a community college. They taught you some coding in a few popular languages, some database concepts and sent you on your way. I dropped out after a year and found a job. I ended up going to a four year program after a while. Turns out, a lot of the good jobs in software engineering require understanding those peaky abstract fundamentals.

londons_explore 5y ago

If you just want to be a great web developer, MIT may not be the best place for you. MIT best prepares people for those less well defined roles, such as designing the next era of web browsers. For that, you can never know exactly which skills will be needed, so it's probably best to have as many neighbouring skills as possible so you don't hit problems you can't solve merely because the knowledge required to see the best solution was in that topic your course didn't cover. Who knows, maybe the next era of web browsers will browse the web for you, and then condense everything they learned from thousands of resources into a single paragraph for the user to see. And for that, they might need ML.

adamsmith143 5y ago
Of course if I browse linkedin MIT EECS grads, most are probably just doing bug fixing at FAANG or the latest unicorn and some small fraction are doing anything revolutionary. It's also likely that they would have done so without an MIT education. See e.g the Collison brothers.
- pishpash 5y ago
  Learning about those things aren't necessary for those jobs but they prove that you're capable of learning something, and as such is a part of the FAANG acceptance process.
whynotminot 5y ago
Hmm I’m not sure I really agree with this. Does MIT (or any university) teach the creativity needed to envision the kind of thing you’re talking about? Or like most universities, is it just teaching some foundational skills coupled with whatever has condensed into “required reading” from industry over the last couple decades? Just with a higher pedigree and ostensibly better prepared student body.
- fn-mote 5y ago
  > Does MIT [...] teach the creativity needed to envision the kind of thing you’re talking about? Absolutely. Explicitly. I have just been a bystander, but it's clear. I don't think that MIT grads are in this thread wasting their breath, though. Which I think is a good decision. [1] https://lemelson.mit.edu/ https://lemelson.mit.edu/ [2] https://innovation.mit.edu/resources/ https://innovation.mit.edu/resources/

NikolaNovak 5y ago

I remember finding myself in 3rd year Calculus in a Computer Science degree, and realizing: I don't have to be here! (only two years were mandatory) I've always enjoyed math and kept enrolling into it out of habit, until it became so esoteric, and my actual interests more solid and practical. I find a lot of my university career was fascinating and... useless. Not just from "I will never use this directly perspective", but also largely from "this will give me broader understanding and framework and enable me to learn faster" perspective. We can have wonderful philosophical discussion on what University should be for - job prep or educational enhancement for the sake of it - but truth of the matter was that I envied those in Engineering fields who had fun AND learned AND were doing practical things AND were going to apply some of it. Whereas my 3rd and 4th year maths were just maths for the sake of maths. I may be hanging out with uninteresting crowds, but same experience is broadly true for my friends and co-workers - Java developer, VMWare architect, Database Administrator, ERP developer, etc. We all value education and love learning and will go on our vacation with couple of technical books - but university Computer Science degree seems very mistailored, or at least, sold wrong.

gmadsen 5y ago
interesting, I think almost the complete opposite. I am happy where I'm at, but I most certainly would have preferred doing a math/cs double major rather than all the BS busy work of an engineering degree I went through. I wouldn't call 60 hours a week of symbol manipulation practical...
selimthegrim 5y ago
Good luck deriving matrix identities without Calc III.
matwood 5y ago
> I find a lot of my university career was fascinating and... useless. I was in college long ago and for my CS undergrad and masters took the usual CS and math courses. When I needed electives though I took courses like economics, finance and accounting. Many years later, those electives ended up being the most useful. The CS and math courses I wouldn't consider useless though. I'm sure I lean on theory I learned without realizing. But, at the time I couldn't have predicted working in small companies or startups and how important basic finance and accounting would end up.

rcpt 5y ago

Calculus was the first time in mathematics education where I actually had to understand systems and how to derive results from first principles. Prior to that everything was just memorizing: "this is what logarithm is", "socatoah", multiplication tables, etc etc. I straight up hated math until calculus (now I have a math PhD). I'm sure the same could be accomplished with other fields of math but I don't feel it's necessary to switch. Would be extremely hard to find good teachers and course materials for combinatorics or graph theory to.

blip54321 5y ago

If your goal is to be a code monkey writing database-backed web applications, MIT is probably a very expensive way to get there. The goal of the degree is to prepare people for data analysis, machine vision, 3d graphics, ML, signal processing, and similar. If you're not into that, going to MIT is wasteful for everyone involved. That's not elitism talking; that's just the nature of MIT. Other schools aren't like that. For example, if you want to do a startup around a database-backed web application, Stanford is a fine choice. I'm not arguing Stanford is either better or worse; it's just a little bit less academic and little bit more entrepreneurial. There are other schools which emphasize other things. Harvard or Yale will move you more into the class of powerful people. Etc.

SamBam 5y ago

You don't need to go to MIT to be a regular-ol' front end javascript or .net programmer.