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Universities are supposed to teach academic skills - ie, things that are believed to be true by the academy. "How to program" isn't something the academy unders

by roenxi 3y ago

Universities are supposed to teach academic skills - ie, things that are believed to be true by the academy. "How to program" isn't something the academy understands, so they generally can't teach it [0]. By extension, they can't teach debugging either. People will need some sort of trade skill system to pick that stuff up. I'm tempted by both sides of the argument, but I think the professors have a point about leaving students to sink or swim. At the end of the day a professor generally has a lot of teaching experience and most of the younger ones I've seen seem go through a phase where they think they can teach every student. Very few (none?) of the older ones. I think that is an important clue. [0] Observe that teaching language semantics and syntax are different from learning how to program using that language. As far as I know among professors there is a strong consensus on what C is, and no consensus on how to use it to solve practical problems. EDIT Dear me, this sounds awful. Poor man. https://jakeseliger.com/2023/07/22/i-am-dying-of-squamous-cell-carcinoma-and-the-treatments-that-might-save-me-are-just-out-of-reach/ https://jakeseliger.com/2023/07/22/i-am-dying-of-squamous-ce...

sfink 3y ago
> [Younger profs] think they can teach every student. Very few (none?) of the older ones. I buy that argument, but I would ask: if they can only teach some of the students, then are they teaching the right ones? Bess's example in the article suggests the answer is "no". It is easy to "teach" only the students who don't need to be taught, and pat yourself on the back for your success. The students who sink are a mixture of people who are going to sink no matter what, and people who are only sinking because the teacher isn't giving them what they need. The students who swim are a mixture of people who have the right background to take advantage of what is being taught, and people who already know enough to not need to be taught (either by knowing the material already, or by being far enough along to pick it up along the way when working on the next step). It sounds like professors today only care about swimmers, not sinkers. They would produce more value by ignoring some of the swimmers and paying attention to some of the sinkers. (Not saying this is possible within the current system, just that it would be better.) If your goal is to fill up a bucket, you will fail if either the bucket has a hole in it, or if it's already full.
rcxdude 3y ago
In the case of debugging I would say that the academic side would benefit from the teaching of the fundamentals of debugging: this is because debugging at its core is just science, the process of measuring and perturbing a system to understand something about how it works. You can teach someone gdb but if they don't get the fundamentals then they will struggle to actually debug anything
- bborud 3y ago
  I think you are right when you frame debugging as a scientific process. It really is about observing and measuring while perturbing a system in some way to provoke it to provide you with observation. But as roenxi points out, academia doesn't see programming as something they are supposed to teach. Academia sees programming as a vocational skill. Something to be learned "on the job" - or done by "other people" (whoever they might be). They see it as their job to, mostly, teach you the math that is needed to model behaviors of software and systems. I think the closest I ever got to something that was practical was system design/modeling. And as to demonstrate how terrible academia is at keeping itself updated, the methods we learned were, without fail, known to be impractical, outdated and wasteful. Nobody who took that class would ever apply anything they had learned in that class later in life. Computer science is a bit odd. If you become an architect (the kind that draws houses) it is understood that you are not going to be actually building houses. You will probably never even touch a hammer in any professional capacity. You will work with someone who understands the mechanical bits, building code etc and together you produce a package of instructions that someone else has to realize. However, if you are a CS grad, it is fairly likely that you will be writing software. Which makes the whole thing a bit absurd. It is as if you expected architects (the house-designing kind) to build houses, but never even give them any training in how to nail two planks together.
  - jltsiren 3y ago
    The academia teaches practical programming. The CS department usually doesn't, as it's not their job. You can see the same situation with the mathematics department. They teach mathematics, not doing calculations. If another department has a need for more practical mathematical skills (physics is the usual example), they often teach their own classes. Like many other biases in the academia, this is mostly a matter of self-selection. If you want a career in software, the industry is clearly the better option. If you want a career specifically in CS, there are not that many good alternatives to the academia. Which means that CS departments are populated by people with no particular interest in software.
deleted 3y ago
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zachrose 3y ago
> "How to program" isn't something the academy understands, so they generally can't teach it This was my (limited) experience with (introductory) formal CS. Which is sort of amazing to me as art schools seem in broad agreement that “how to draw” can be taught, albeit in many different ways.
- paxys 3y ago
  There isn't a single fine arts program in the world that will teach you how to draw lines on a piece of paper. If that isn't something you have figured out how to do in the first 18 years of your life, you probably shouldn't be pursuing it at university.
LudwigNagasena 3y ago
> Universities are supposed to teach academic skills The passive voice does a lot of rhetorical heavy lifting in this sentence. Who supposes that?
- roenxi 3y ago
  The people who control the syllabus? The research staff? Adminsitrators? Take your pick. Universities teaching academic skills is not some novel innovation, these are traditions that have been ongoing for centuries. If they were interested in practical skills, entire departments would be removed immediately.

by roenxi 3y ago

sfink 3y ago

> [Younger profs] think they can teach every student. Very few (none?) of the older ones. I buy that argument, but I would ask: if they can only teach some of the students, then are they teaching the right ones? Bess's example in the article suggests the answer is "no". It is easy to "teach" only the students who don't need to be taught, and pat yourself on the back for your success. The students who sink are a mixture of people who are going to sink no matter what, and people who are only sinking because the teacher isn't giving them what they need. The students who swim are a mixture of people who have the right background to take advantage of what is being taught, and people who already know enough to not need to be taught (either by knowing the material already, or by being far enough along to pick it up along the way when working on the next step). It sounds like professors today only care about swimmers, not sinkers. They would produce more value by ignoring some of the swimmers and paying attention to some of the sinkers. (Not saying this is possible within the current system, just that it would be better.) If your goal is to fill up a bucket, you will fail if either the bucket has a hole in it, or if it's already full.

rcxdude 3y ago

In the case of debugging I would say that the academic side would benefit from the teaching of the fundamentals of debugging: this is because debugging at its core is just science, the process of measuring and perturbing a system to understand something about how it works. You can teach someone gdb but if they don't get the fundamentals then they will struggle to actually debug anything

bborud 3y ago
I think you are right when you frame debugging as a scientific process. It really is about observing and measuring while perturbing a system in some way to provoke it to provide you with observation. But as roenxi points out, academia doesn't see programming as something they are supposed to teach. Academia sees programming as a vocational skill. Something to be learned "on the job" - or done by "other people" (whoever they might be). They see it as their job to, mostly, teach you the math that is needed to model behaviors of software and systems. I think the closest I ever got to something that was practical was system design/modeling. And as to demonstrate how terrible academia is at keeping itself updated, the methods we learned were, without fail, known to be impractical, outdated and wasteful. Nobody who took that class would ever apply anything they had learned in that class later in life. Computer science is a bit odd. If you become an architect (the kind that draws houses) it is understood that you are not going to be actually building houses. You will probably never even touch a hammer in any professional capacity. You will work with someone who understands the mechanical bits, building code etc and together you produce a package of instructions that someone else has to realize. However, if you are a CS grad, it is fairly likely that you will be writing software. Which makes the whole thing a bit absurd. It is as if you expected architects (the house-designing kind) to build houses, but never even give them any training in how to nail two planks together.
- jltsiren 3y ago
  The academia teaches practical programming. The CS department usually doesn't, as it's not their job. You can see the same situation with the mathematics department. They teach mathematics, not doing calculations. If another department has a need for more practical mathematical skills (physics is the usual example), they often teach their own classes. Like many other biases in the academia, this is mostly a matter of self-selection. If you want a career in software, the industry is clearly the better option. If you want a career specifically in CS, there are not that many good alternatives to the academia. Which means that CS departments are populated by people with no particular interest in software.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

zachrose 3y ago

> "How to program" isn't something the academy understands, so they generally can't teach it This was my (limited) experience with (introductory) formal CS. Which is sort of amazing to me as art schools seem in broad agreement that “how to draw” can be taught, albeit in many different ways.

paxys 3y ago
There isn't a single fine arts program in the world that will teach you how to draw lines on a piece of paper. If that isn't something you have figured out how to do in the first 18 years of your life, you probably shouldn't be pursuing it at university.

LudwigNagasena 3y ago

> Universities are supposed to teach academic skills The passive voice does a lot of rhetorical heavy lifting in this sentence. Who supposes that?

roenxi 3y ago
The people who control the syllabus? The research staff? Adminsitrators? Take your pick. Universities teaching academic skills is not some novel innovation, these are traditions that have been ongoing for centuries. If they were interested in practical skills, entire departments would be removed immediately.