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The grad assistant in my computer structures (programming hardware in assembler) class suggested that every CS student should take a semester of microeconomics

The grad assistant in my computer structures (programming hardware in assembler) class suggested that every CS student should take a semester of microeconomics to understand trade-offs. He was right. EDIT: Made microeconomics more explicit.

leokun 13y ago
What is "micro"?
- johnchristopher 13y ago
  Micro-economics, I'd guess.
  - huherto 13y ago
    micro-processors?
  - mathattack 13y ago
    Yes - micro-economics. It's mostly about tradeoffs, referenced in the OP.
arethuza 13y ago
"Should"? I'm slightly surprised that CS courses don't have at least an introduction to hardware/low-level level design as a compulsory component. Then again, I'm probably showing my age...
- mathattack 13y ago
  Microeconomics, not micro-processors. I'll correct the original. It was in the context of tradeoffs.
- th0br0 13y ago
  Depends on your country actually, the University-level ones (all) do in Germany.
  - jan3er 13y ago
    well, aachen does not.
    - th0br0 13y ago
      Really? Thanks for correcting me then... thought some basic EE courses were part of the curriculum in at least most places...
    - dignati 13y ago
      CS in Aachen has at least basic introductions to EE and hard ware.
- bovermyer 13y ago
  My CS education at South Dakota State University included a class on digital systems design. I had to build a circuit to control a pop machine as part of it. Said education also included a class on macro- and microeconomics, incidentally.
- kandrea 13y ago
  I certainly would support both microeconomics and some form of introductory systems course (low-level programming/architecture) for any CS program. Unfortunately, the other end of this CS guarantee is that there are not enough credit hours to provide a foundation that everyone would agree with. University restrictions prevent 'high-unit' majors from exceeding the credit hour requirement for a degree. We just went through a long process that ultimately resulted in adding a requirement for CS students to take a course which involves concurrent programming. Unfortunately, this came at the cost of removing a requirement for numerical analysis. Even with this update, you can still graduate without ever hearing the term 'OSI Model' or ever being exposed to anything dealing with the interwebs. There are, however, amazingly good opportunities to expand the horizon outside of the department that also nicely tie into general education requirements, if students are made aware of them. In addition to economics, philosophy is another rather nice area to take courses in. Our philosophy department has a rather nice course in symbolic logic. It's all about the tradeoffs though.
  - arethuza 13y ago
    I should explain - I'm in the UK and, at least when I was at University, there was very little that was optional in CS course I did (at least for 3 years of the 4). So the class given by the Electrical Engineering department on mucking about with stuff like UARTs was as required as the Lambda Calculus course - all CS students had to pass both. [Amusingly, networking was one of the optional 4th year classes - but in the pre-intraweb days nobody seem to regard it as very important...]
  - eloff 13y ago
    I did all kinds of crap related to physics, chemistry, calculus, and the arts. I'd much rather have done those kinds of courses than the (almost completely) useless things. There is definitely credit room, just a wrong focus. Also being able to skip early level courses for more advanced ones would have been nice (I challenged a few anyway, but they were expensive and still consumed some time.) Then maybe I would have enjoyed CS and not dropped out.
    - kandrea 13y ago
codemonkeymike 13y ago
The one thing that micro and macro taught me was that I didn't want to be a Business major.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Accounting is what did it for me. :-) I disliked how overly simplified micro and macro 101 were. The models were counter to what I knew was obviously true, so I didn't go any deeper until graduate school. Once I took some advanced courses, I realized how valuable the topics were. Being an econ major is also very different from being a business major. I view it as analogous to being a math major versus being mechanical engineering. One is more theory, the other is more practical. Neither is better or worse in an absolute sense.
  - antimagic 13y ago
    This is a bit of topic, but your comment brings up a point that I often see talked about on HN, but doesn't match my own personal experience. You say:" I view it as analogous to being a math major versus being mechanical engineering. One is more theory, the other is more practical." Now here's the thing. I have a degree in electrical engineering, and to get that degree, I had to do a full unit load of maths, physics and computer science. By full unit load, I mean that I had to do as many units in these subjects as a maths major / physics major / CS major would do in their respective courses. And these weren't 'lite' versions of the units, they were the same - we had maths / physics / CS majors in the lecture hall with us, and we did the same exams. The only real difference was that we didn't get to choose which units we did in these subjects - whereas the subject majors got to choose from a wider range of curricula, we were simply told that we would be studying statistics, or quantum mechanics, or operating system design. Was my university a special case, or is the oft-repeated claim that engineering is less theory and more practice actually just a false generalisation? I should of course note that after graduation the stereotype probably does hold true - engineers spend much less time worrying about formal proofs, or highly-accurate physics calculations, approximations are generally fine for what we do. But that is not the case whilst studying, at least not in my experience.
otikik 13y ago
I'm better at macro, that's why I play Zerg.
josh_rosenblum 13y ago
Liked this point. The notion of a budget frontier and the boundary it defines is really helpful for design decisions of any sort. There are always limits, whether that's time, money, CPU cycles, IO bandwidth, or any other resource. I remember that one of my early econ instructors defined economics as the study of decision-making under limited resources. (Of course, many other disciplines could be defined similarly!)
- mathattack 13y ago
  Exactly. Much of the academic world (humanities?) operates thinking that there are no constraints. I felt economics was refreshing in forcing tradeoffs. I assume these would be equally relevant to engineering too.
saosebastiao 13y ago
They should also take a cooking class to understand project management. Seriously.
- mathattack 13y ago
  Yes. Cooking multiple dishes simultaneously for multiple people.

leokun 13y ago

What is "micro"?

johnchristopher 13y ago
Micro-economics, I'd guess.
- huherto 13y ago
  micro-processors?
- mathattack 13y ago
  Yes - micro-economics. It's mostly about tradeoffs, referenced in the OP.

arethuza 13y ago

"Should"? I'm slightly surprised that CS courses don't have at least an introduction to hardware/low-level level design as a compulsory component. Then again, I'm probably showing my age...

mathattack 13y ago
Microeconomics, not micro-processors. I'll correct the original. It was in the context of tradeoffs.
th0br0 13y ago
Depends on your country actually, the University-level ones (all) do in Germany.
- jan3er 13y ago
  well, aachen does not.
  - th0br0 13y ago
    Really? Thanks for correcting me then... thought some basic EE courses were part of the curriculum in at least most places...
  - dignati 13y ago
    CS in Aachen has at least basic introductions to EE and hard ware.
bovermyer 13y ago
My CS education at South Dakota State University included a class on digital systems design. I had to build a circuit to control a pop machine as part of it. Said education also included a class on macro- and microeconomics, incidentally.
kandrea 13y ago
I certainly would support both microeconomics and some form of introductory systems course (low-level programming/architecture) for any CS program. Unfortunately, the other end of this CS guarantee is that there are not enough credit hours to provide a foundation that everyone would agree with. University restrictions prevent 'high-unit' majors from exceeding the credit hour requirement for a degree. We just went through a long process that ultimately resulted in adding a requirement for CS students to take a course which involves concurrent programming. Unfortunately, this came at the cost of removing a requirement for numerical analysis. Even with this update, you can still graduate without ever hearing the term 'OSI Model' or ever being exposed to anything dealing with the interwebs. There are, however, amazingly good opportunities to expand the horizon outside of the department that also nicely tie into general education requirements, if students are made aware of them. In addition to economics, philosophy is another rather nice area to take courses in. Our philosophy department has a rather nice course in symbolic logic. It's all about the tradeoffs though.
- arethuza 13y ago
  I should explain - I'm in the UK and, at least when I was at University, there was very little that was optional in CS course I did (at least for 3 years of the 4). So the class given by the Electrical Engineering department on mucking about with stuff like UARTs was as required as the Lambda Calculus course - all CS students had to pass both. [Amusingly, networking was one of the optional 4th year classes - but in the pre-intraweb days nobody seem to regard it as very important...]
- eloff 13y ago
  I did all kinds of crap related to physics, chemistry, calculus, and the arts. I'd much rather have done those kinds of courses than the (almost completely) useless things. There is definitely credit room, just a wrong focus. Also being able to skip early level courses for more advanced ones would have been nice (I challenged a few anyway, but they were expensive and still consumed some time.) Then maybe I would have enjoyed CS and not dropped out.
  - kandrea 13y ago

codemonkeymike 13y ago

The one thing that micro and macro taught me was that I didn't want to be a Business major.

mathattack 13y ago
Accounting is what did it for me. :-) I disliked how overly simplified micro and macro 101 were. The models were counter to what I knew was obviously true, so I didn't go any deeper until graduate school. Once I took some advanced courses, I realized how valuable the topics were. Being an econ major is also very different from being a business major. I view it as analogous to being a math major versus being mechanical engineering. One is more theory, the other is more practical. Neither is better or worse in an absolute sense.
- antimagic 13y ago
  This is a bit of topic, but your comment brings up a point that I often see talked about on HN, but doesn't match my own personal experience. You say:" I view it as analogous to being a math major versus being mechanical engineering. One is more theory, the other is more practical." Now here's the thing. I have a degree in electrical engineering, and to get that degree, I had to do a full unit load of maths, physics and computer science. By full unit load, I mean that I had to do as many units in these subjects as a maths major / physics major / CS major would do in their respective courses. And these weren't 'lite' versions of the units, they were the same - we had maths / physics / CS majors in the lecture hall with us, and we did the same exams. The only real difference was that we didn't get to choose which units we did in these subjects - whereas the subject majors got to choose from a wider range of curricula, we were simply told that we would be studying statistics, or quantum mechanics, or operating system design. Was my university a special case, or is the oft-repeated claim that engineering is less theory and more practice actually just a false generalisation? I should of course note that after graduation the stereotype probably does hold true - engineers spend much less time worrying about formal proofs, or highly-accurate physics calculations, approximations are generally fine for what we do. But that is not the case whilst studying, at least not in my experience.

otikik 13y ago

I'm better at macro, that's why I play Zerg.

josh_rosenblum 13y ago

Liked this point. The notion of a budget frontier and the boundary it defines is really helpful for design decisions of any sort. There are always limits, whether that's time, money, CPU cycles, IO bandwidth, or any other resource. I remember that one of my early econ instructors defined economics as the study of decision-making under limited resources. (Of course, many other disciplines could be defined similarly!)

mathattack 13y ago
Exactly. Much of the academic world (humanities?) operates thinking that there are no constraints. I felt economics was refreshing in forcing tradeoffs. I assume these would be equally relevant to engineering too.

saosebastiao 13y ago

They should also take a cooking class to understand project management. Seriously.

mathattack 13y ago
Yes. Cooking multiple dishes simultaneously for multiple people.