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Debugging is a computer science fundamental in the same way that grinding lenses is an astronomy fundamental: it's really not. I did learn debugging in school.

Debugging is a computer science fundamental in the same way that grinding lenses is an astronomy fundamental: it's really not. I did learn debugging in school. I came to learn Computer Science and a left with a head full of Software Engineering instead. I wonder if I find one of these schools which doesn't teach debugging if they'll actually teach me some Computer Science.

sanderjd 3y ago
Most students at universities are not there to study computer science, they are there to study software engineering. A relatively small number of people are there to study academic computer science, and that's great too, it's just not the predominant interest. It's also good for the software engineering focused folks to learn some computer science and vice versa, but it's weird to focus on preparing people for a career in academic computer science research when their goal is to work at Facebook or whatever. This is not new. Mechanical engineers learn a bunch of physics, but their courses prepare them for a career as a mechanical engineer, not a career doing academic research into physics.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  Yes but those students are enrolled in a program called "mechanical engineering" so it makes sense that it would be the focus and not physics. I'm not sure how to encourage this change, but if we want educators to take software engineering seriously then I think we ought to disentangle it from computer science.
  - sanderjd 3y ago
    Yep, this is a very fair point. My opinion is really, "we're doing this all wrong", but I also don't have any idea how to redirect the ship. My university had the CS program under the engineering department, and I think it served me very well as someone planning on a career building software, but I doubt it served the people hoping to do actual computer science research nearly as well. And I doubt they would have known that when they signed up for the program. It was called "computer science", after all, so to your point, it seems reasonable to assume that's what it would prepare one for.

sanderjd 3y ago

Most students at universities are not there to study computer science, they are there to study software engineering. A relatively small number of people are there to study academic computer science, and that's great too, it's just not the predominant interest. It's also good for the software engineering focused folks to learn some computer science and vice versa, but it's weird to focus on preparing people for a career in academic computer science research when their goal is to work at Facebook or whatever. This is not new. Mechanical engineers learn a bunch of physics, but their courses prepare them for a career as a mechanical engineer, not a career doing academic research into physics.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
Yes but those students are enrolled in a program called "mechanical engineering" so it makes sense that it would be the focus and not physics. I'm not sure how to encourage this change, but if we want educators to take software engineering seriously then I think we ought to disentangle it from computer science.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  Yep, this is a very fair point. My opinion is really, "we're doing this all wrong", but I also don't have any idea how to redirect the ship. My university had the CS program under the engineering department, and I think it served me very well as someone planning on a career building software, but I doubt it served the people hoping to do actual computer science research nearly as well. And I doubt they would have known that when they signed up for the program. It was called "computer science", after all, so to your point, it seems reasonable to assume that's what it would prepare one for.