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"Isn’t it reasonable to expect that people with an aptitude for math, physics, and engineering will also have an aptitude for CS?" You would expect that but it

"Isn’t it reasonable to expect that people with an aptitude for math, physics, and engineering will also have an aptitude for CS?" You would expect that but it is not the reality. I've seen many students that were excellent at math, but just could not get their head around CS. I'm not sure why this is and having asked some of them, they also couldn't explain it. They just couldn't 'see' it, and found creating the programs very hard. Meanwhile they breezed through math classes that most CS minded students failed or found extremely hard (over here in the old days CS was a specialization of a Math degree before it became a degree in its own, so the CS undergraduate curricullum was very heavy on math)

JCharante 3y ago
I think this is because of too many abstractions. I think CS education should begin with assembly language and automata theory.
msluyter 3y ago
I'd be really curious to see a non-anecdotal exploration of this thesis. (My own anecdata points in the opposite direction.) I ran across this study via random googling: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318649651_Correlation_of_Mathematical_Ability_and_Programming_Ability_of_the_Computer_Science_Students/link/59753e63a6fdcc83488e8b13/download https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318649651_Correlati... Concluding paragraph: "Therefore, the data tabulated is sufficient to allow this study to draw several conclusions and inferences. First, it is reasonable to conclude that Mathematical ability of the students could be the basis of admissions for BSCS program. Second, students who performed well in math can, therefore, performed (sic) well in programming courses. Third, the Mathematical ability could be a predictor of student performance in programming courses." Of course, it'd be nice to see some other studies confirming/disconfirming this conclusion.

JCharante 3y ago

I think this is because of too many abstractions. I think CS education should begin with assembly language and automata theory.

msluyter 3y ago

I'd be really curious to see a non-anecdotal exploration of this thesis. (My own anecdata points in the opposite direction.) I ran across this study via random googling: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318649651_Correlation_of_Mathematical_Ability_and_Programming_Ability_of_the_Computer_Science_Students/link/59753e63a6fdcc83488e8b13/download https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318649651_Correlati... Concluding paragraph: "Therefore, the data tabulated is sufficient to allow this study to draw several conclusions and inferences. First, it is reasonable to conclude that Mathematical ability of the students could be the basis of admissions for BSCS program. Second, students who performed well in math can, therefore, performed (sic) well in programming courses. Third, the Mathematical ability could be a predictor of student performance in programming courses." Of course, it'd be nice to see some other studies confirming/disconfirming this conclusion.