8 ms·

I never knew this was a problem in EE, but I know for a fact it's a huge issue in CS. They don't want to teach any "tools" b/c CS professors find teaching peop

I never knew this was a problem in EE, but I know for a fact it's a huge issue in CS. They don't want to teach any "tools" b/c CS professors find teaching people how to be good developers as beneath them. They honest to god think CS is an actually hard science on par with math and physics. You can sum up their attitude with: "It's not an associates degree goddamnit!" (even though it should be) Another source of reluctance is that by the time we'd graduate it will be sort of outdated. I remember we learned subversion and Apache Ant. Everyone now uses git and I'm not even sure if anyone uses Ant 95% of students used std::cout for debugging and 95% of students never set up an IDE. If I had spent a couple weekend properly learning to use Visual Studio, all of my programming assignment for those 4 long years would have been 10x easier.

wging 13y ago
Plenty of people still use ant. It's the path of least resistance where I work since we have a lot of tooling and preexisting code that use it.
- grayarea 13y ago
  On that note plenty of people still use svn for the same reasons.
- lstamour 13y ago
  As an update Gradle's easier to use Maven is gradually replacing Ant and has its sights on Make next. See Android for example.
jiggy2011 13y ago
The purpose of a CS course is not necessarily to teach people to become developers. Indeed it would be interesting to know what % of CS grads even work as programmers post graduation, probably less than HN would imply. Based on the people I keep in touch with from my graduation class, I would put it somewhere near 30%.
- socillion 13y ago
  I'm curious - what do the remaining 70% do?
  - jiggy2011 13y ago
    Various things, a common aspiration was to try and fast track to a management position at a consultancy or blue chip where things were are more about spreadsheets than code. Others do technical work, but not strictly development like Q&A or technical support. Some went into academia and some did other things altogether, I know at least one person who became a tree surgeon and another who is a session musician.
    - cema 13y ago
      If Q&A is QA then it should be considered development, in a specialized domain.
      - Datsundere 13y ago
        except you just click things on a GUI there.
        redblacktree 13y ago
        I'm fond of developer-QA folks that automate most of their pointing and clicking. There is, absolutely, a skill in finding bugs by exploratory testing, but someone who can combine that with automating previous tests (thus building up a regression suite) in a way that's maintainable is a real keeper.
        bcbrown 13y ago
        Unless you're writing test automation.
        cema 13y ago
        I think you mean "except when..." As others said, QA automation is a serious endeavor, and an important one.
ygra 13y ago
We didn't even learn what source control is, let alone a tool like Subversion. We used it because some of us were familiar with it, but tools in general weren't taught.
- mnw21cam 13y ago
  I was taught version control. In fact, university made very sure to emphasise proper source control in our second year group project, even to the extent of making one person in each group the "code librarian", responsible for making sure the code of the various members fitted together, was properly controlled, and safely backed up (which was me). And of course the nightmare situation occurred. The project manager (read: no !*&^£ clue) "accidentally" deleted the entire source control repository. Reconstructed from backups from three hours previously, plus changes from peoples' working copies within half an hour.
Mvandenbergh 13y ago
It also gives a huge advantage to students who've been coding for a few years, especially if they've been involved in open source projects. I used source control tools for my programming classes at uni (not a CS major) and it made me 50% more productive, easily.
m_mueller 13y ago
The debugger should be a concept to be taught, just like the compiler, linker, interpreter, assembler and so on. There should be at least a few lab hours where students are given existing programs and need to go for a bug hunt. This should include strace and valgrind, two essential tools that will probably not be outdated for quite a while. Now, where I disagree is the IDE part. I have nothing against IDEs per se and I think everyone should be able to choose the tools he can work with best once (s)he starts a professional career. (hence why I like the concept behind cmake btw.). But I think it's a bad idea to start off with this as a student. An IDE comes along as an non separatable entity and it's hard to distinguish between the essential components behind it if that's the only thing you practice developing with. Students should learn what those components do from scratch and that's easier when you can see them as Lego bricks in front of you. IMO it's also a more satisfying learning experience than having MS, the Eclipse Foundation or anyone else holding the hand for you when you do your baby steps.
- blah32497 13y ago
  I think it's important to hit the ground running using the best tools available. "Students should learn what those components do from scratch" Yeah, they will eventually. When they take a compilers class, they'll understand how the compiler works. It's okay to have that be "magic" in the mean time. They should be focusing on learning about OO principles, and data structures, and algorithms and not futzing with command line tools.
- vitd 13y ago
  I see this as completely backwards. Tools like cmake are often worse for beginners because they have no idea how to understand them, and it involves learning another new language in addition to whatever programming language they're learning. Looking at something like Xcode or Visual Studio or Eclipse, where they can see "these are the source files that comprise my project," is much easier. I do agree that learning the difference between the editor, compiler, the linker, and various other pieces is important, but I think there are better ways to do it than trying to understand the unix build tools right off the bat. FWIW, my first exposure to all of this was in high school where we were taught Turbo Pascal on DOS. It was essentially a text-based IDE, but the teacher still taught us about the editor, the compiler, the linker, etc. and it made perfect sense. When I went to use the unix tools in college, it was quite confusing.
jarvic 13y ago
>They don't want to teach any "tools" b/c CS professors find teaching people how to be good developers as beneath them. They honest to god think CS is an actually hard science on par with math and physics. Despite what you (and a lot developers that I've talked to) seem to think, CS is a hard science. However, CS and software development are not the same thing. Most CS programs are taught by professors who have research degrees in Computer Science, not by people who have ever been (or probably ever claimed to be) professional software developers, so there is a fundamental disconnect between what you seem to think you should be learning and what is actually being taught. The professional software developer is a fairly new occupation in the grand scheme of things. The people who are most qualified to teach it are people who have actually worked as developers in the industry, but that is difficult because 1) most universities are reluctant to hire (and students can be reluctant to take classes from) adjunct/non-PhD faculty, and 2) it is hard for schools to offer enough to lure many of them away from industry anyway.
- blah32497 13y ago
  "CS is a hard science" Hahaha. As someone who did a degree in physics, computer "science" is a joke when it comes to math. They took one of the easiest field of mathematics and rolled it in to a half-assed degree. Sure you learn some logic and some graph theory (yeah, lets try to avoid numbers as much as possible...) but it's not at a very high level. I seriously doubt CS professors are making significant contributions to mathematics. "there is a fundamental disconnect between what you seem to think you should be learning and what is actually being taught" Yeah. That was the point of what I wrote. There is also a disconnect between what academia wants to teach, and the tools that the students need to actually learn the concepts. It's like teaching an Literature class without actually teaching people how to write. Code is our primary tool for expressing algorithms and concepts. If you hamper people's ability to write code, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
  - mkartic 13y ago
    Why the bitterness against CS? As jarvic says, > However, CS and software development are not the same thing. A lot of schools offer a separate degree in Software engineering as opposed to CS (or at least separate tracks). So the distinction is pretty clear. Where I studied, there are separate degrees for CS and IT. You seem to be fudging the two. Do you expect physics majors to be mechanical engineers automatically? CS degrees teach you algorithms, not how to write code in Java. Doesn't matter what IDE/language you're using, bubble sort is going to be slower than quicksort for large lists. Yes, unfortunately most people who do CS end up becoming IT drones. That's the nature of the industry, not the CS program's fault. As a matter of interest, what do most physics majors become? I'm sure there aren't enough professorships available. Or in the words of E.W.Dijkstra: “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.”
mandor 13y ago
CS prof. here. We don't want to teach "tools" (e.g. IDE) because they are always changing. There is no point is knowing how to set up an IDE when the IDE will have a different GUI before the student graduates. We teach"unix tools" a bit more because they did not change much during the last decades. My goal is to teach "concepts" (which is hard) and use tools as examples of these concepts. Dealing with the specifics of a particular IDE or tool is pointless. We are trying to give students general skills that will be useful for the whole life of the students, and not skills that the industry needs this year. That said, I do my best to teach debugging (mainly using gdb and valgrind). The real issue with debugging is that it relies on a lot of experience, which students do not have, by definition.
- analog31 13y ago
  Thanks for the comment. I agree that tools go obsolete quickly. But it occurs to me that debugging is both a set of tools but also a knack. I'm curious what you think about how to teach the knack.
  - wolfgke 13y ago
    How to teach the knack: Write lots of code that uses the most sketchy language features available. The chance is high that soon you'll get code that doesn't work. Now go through each line (source code or assembly) using a debugger of your choice and get it to work again. Do this until there is nothing that will scare you anymore.
    - Illotus 13y ago
      Also, do lots of maintenance programming. Finding bugs in code someone else wrote is generally much more difficult (and in my opinion valuable in learning sense), because you aren't familiar with it.
- rpedela 13y ago
  The tools for debugging have changed yes. But the high-level process is the same whether it is fixing a NAND gate, figuring out the cause of a segfault, or finding a the location of the leak in a water pipe. There is a problem. Many of the interns and recent CS grads I have worked with or hired have struggled with debugging. On a day to day basis, debugging is one of the most important skills. I would argue it is also an important skill in research settings, not just industry. I don't know the answer, but maybe somehow integrating debugging into every CS class over the four years would help. Because you are right, it also requires a lot of practice/experience to get good at it so it is unlikely that just adding a class would solve the problem. That is what the Purdue psychology program (I have a minor) does in its undergraduate program. The first 2-4 weeks of every class is spent on research methods often specific to the particular topic of the class. After taking the 4-5 classes to complete the minor, how to reduce bias in surveys, usability tests, etc was beaten into my brain.
Perseids 13y ago
> They honest to god think CS is an actually hard science on par with math and physics. Theoretical computer science is a branch of mathematics. Don't dismiss the whole field just because your university chooses to under represent the theoretical side.
scott_s 13y ago
Print statements for debugging is not necessarily a bad thing: http://www.scott-a-s.com/traces-vs-snapshots/ http://www.scott-a-s.com/traces-vs-snapshots/
- henrik_w 13y ago
  Agreed! In the same vein, I recently wrote about both debugging vs logging [1] and about session-based logging [2]. [1] http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/01/finding-bugs-debugger-versus-logging/ http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/01/finding-bugs-debugger-vers... [2] http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/21/session-based-logging/ http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/21/session-based-logging/
  - scott_s 13y ago
    Neat, we hit on many of the same points.
    - henrik_w 13y ago
      Yep!

wging 13y ago

Plenty of people still use ant. It's the path of least resistance where I work since we have a lot of tooling and preexisting code that use it.

grayarea 13y ago
On that note plenty of people still use svn for the same reasons.
lstamour 13y ago
As an update Gradle's easier to use Maven is gradually replacing Ant and has its sights on Make next. See Android for example.

jiggy2011 13y ago

The purpose of a CS course is not necessarily to teach people to become developers. Indeed it would be interesting to know what % of CS grads even work as programmers post graduation, probably less than HN would imply. Based on the people I keep in touch with from my graduation class, I would put it somewhere near 30%.

socillion 13y ago
I'm curious - what do the remaining 70% do?
- jiggy2011 13y ago
  Various things, a common aspiration was to try and fast track to a management position at a consultancy or blue chip where things were are more about spreadsheets than code. Others do technical work, but not strictly development like Q&A or technical support. Some went into academia and some did other things altogether, I know at least one person who became a tree surgeon and another who is a session musician.
  - cema 13y ago
    If Q&A is QA then it should be considered development, in a specialized domain.
    - Datsundere 13y ago
      except you just click things on a GUI there.
      - redblacktree 13y ago
        I'm fond of developer-QA folks that automate most of their pointing and clicking. There is, absolutely, a skill in finding bugs by exploratory testing, but someone who can combine that with automating previous tests (thus building up a regression suite) in a way that's maintainable is a real keeper.
      - bcbrown 13y ago
        Unless you're writing test automation.
      - cema 13y ago
        I think you mean "except when..." As others said, QA automation is a serious endeavor, and an important one.

ygra 13y ago

We didn't even learn what source control is, let alone a tool like Subversion. We used it because some of us were familiar with it, but tools in general weren't taught.

mnw21cam 13y ago
I was taught version control. In fact, university made very sure to emphasise proper source control in our second year group project, even to the extent of making one person in each group the "code librarian", responsible for making sure the code of the various members fitted together, was properly controlled, and safely backed up (which was me). And of course the nightmare situation occurred. The project manager (read: no !*&^£ clue) "accidentally" deleted the entire source control repository. Reconstructed from backups from three hours previously, plus changes from peoples' working copies within half an hour.

Mvandenbergh 13y ago

It also gives a huge advantage to students who've been coding for a few years, especially if they've been involved in open source projects. I used source control tools for my programming classes at uni (not a CS major) and it made me 50% more productive, easily.

m_mueller 13y ago

The debugger should be a concept to be taught, just like the compiler, linker, interpreter, assembler and so on. There should be at least a few lab hours where students are given existing programs and need to go for a bug hunt. This should include strace and valgrind, two essential tools that will probably not be outdated for quite a while. Now, where I disagree is the IDE part. I have nothing against IDEs per se and I think everyone should be able to choose the tools he can work with best once (s)he starts a professional career. (hence why I like the concept behind cmake btw.). But I think it's a bad idea to start off with this as a student. An IDE comes along as an non separatable entity and it's hard to distinguish between the essential components behind it if that's the only thing you practice developing with. Students should learn what those components do from scratch and that's easier when you can see them as Lego bricks in front of you. IMO it's also a more satisfying learning experience than having MS, the Eclipse Foundation or anyone else holding the hand for you when you do your baby steps.

blah32497 13y ago
I think it's important to hit the ground running using the best tools available. "Students should learn what those components do from scratch" Yeah, they will eventually. When they take a compilers class, they'll understand how the compiler works. It's okay to have that be "magic" in the mean time. They should be focusing on learning about OO principles, and data structures, and algorithms and not futzing with command line tools.
vitd 13y ago
I see this as completely backwards. Tools like cmake are often worse for beginners because they have no idea how to understand them, and it involves learning another new language in addition to whatever programming language they're learning. Looking at something like Xcode or Visual Studio or Eclipse, where they can see "these are the source files that comprise my project," is much easier. I do agree that learning the difference between the editor, compiler, the linker, and various other pieces is important, but I think there are better ways to do it than trying to understand the unix build tools right off the bat. FWIW, my first exposure to all of this was in high school where we were taught Turbo Pascal on DOS. It was essentially a text-based IDE, but the teacher still taught us about the editor, the compiler, the linker, etc. and it made perfect sense. When I went to use the unix tools in college, it was quite confusing.

jarvic 13y ago

>They don't want to teach any "tools" b/c CS professors find teaching people how to be good developers as beneath them. They honest to god think CS is an actually hard science on par with math and physics. Despite what you (and a lot developers that I've talked to) seem to think, CS is a hard science. However, CS and software development are not the same thing. Most CS programs are taught by professors who have research degrees in Computer Science, not by people who have ever been (or probably ever claimed to be) professional software developers, so there is a fundamental disconnect between what you seem to think you should be learning and what is actually being taught. The professional software developer is a fairly new occupation in the grand scheme of things. The people who are most qualified to teach it are people who have actually worked as developers in the industry, but that is difficult because 1) most universities are reluctant to hire (and students can be reluctant to take classes from) adjunct/non-PhD faculty, and 2) it is hard for schools to offer enough to lure many of them away from industry anyway.

blah32497 13y ago
"CS is a hard science" Hahaha. As someone who did a degree in physics, computer "science" is a joke when it comes to math. They took one of the easiest field of mathematics and rolled it in to a half-assed degree. Sure you learn some logic and some graph theory (yeah, lets try to avoid numbers as much as possible...) but it's not at a very high level. I seriously doubt CS professors are making significant contributions to mathematics. "there is a fundamental disconnect between what you seem to think you should be learning and what is actually being taught" Yeah. That was the point of what I wrote. There is also a disconnect between what academia wants to teach, and the tools that the students need to actually learn the concepts. It's like teaching an Literature class without actually teaching people how to write. Code is our primary tool for expressing algorithms and concepts. If you hamper people's ability to write code, you are shooting yourself in the foot.
- mkartic 13y ago
  Why the bitterness against CS? As jarvic says, > However, CS and software development are not the same thing. A lot of schools offer a separate degree in Software engineering as opposed to CS (or at least separate tracks). So the distinction is pretty clear. Where I studied, there are separate degrees for CS and IT. You seem to be fudging the two. Do you expect physics majors to be mechanical engineers automatically? CS degrees teach you algorithms, not how to write code in Java. Doesn't matter what IDE/language you're using, bubble sort is going to be slower than quicksort for large lists. Yes, unfortunately most people who do CS end up becoming IT drones. That's the nature of the industry, not the CS program's fault. As a matter of interest, what do most physics majors become? I'm sure there aren't enough professorships available. Or in the words of E.W.Dijkstra: “Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.”

mandor 13y ago

CS prof. here. We don't want to teach "tools" (e.g. IDE) because they are always changing. There is no point is knowing how to set up an IDE when the IDE will have a different GUI before the student graduates. We teach"unix tools" a bit more because they did not change much during the last decades. My goal is to teach "concepts" (which is hard) and use tools as examples of these concepts. Dealing with the specifics of a particular IDE or tool is pointless. We are trying to give students general skills that will be useful for the whole life of the students, and not skills that the industry needs this year. That said, I do my best to teach debugging (mainly using gdb and valgrind). The real issue with debugging is that it relies on a lot of experience, which students do not have, by definition.

analog31 13y ago
Thanks for the comment. I agree that tools go obsolete quickly. But it occurs to me that debugging is both a set of tools but also a knack. I'm curious what you think about how to teach the knack.
- wolfgke 13y ago
  How to teach the knack: Write lots of code that uses the most sketchy language features available. The chance is high that soon you'll get code that doesn't work. Now go through each line (source code or assembly) using a debugger of your choice and get it to work again. Do this until there is nothing that will scare you anymore.
  - Illotus 13y ago
    Also, do lots of maintenance programming. Finding bugs in code someone else wrote is generally much more difficult (and in my opinion valuable in learning sense), because you aren't familiar with it.
rpedela 13y ago
The tools for debugging have changed yes. But the high-level process is the same whether it is fixing a NAND gate, figuring out the cause of a segfault, or finding a the location of the leak in a water pipe. There is a problem. Many of the interns and recent CS grads I have worked with or hired have struggled with debugging. On a day to day basis, debugging is one of the most important skills. I would argue it is also an important skill in research settings, not just industry. I don't know the answer, but maybe somehow integrating debugging into every CS class over the four years would help. Because you are right, it also requires a lot of practice/experience to get good at it so it is unlikely that just adding a class would solve the problem. That is what the Purdue psychology program (I have a minor) does in its undergraduate program. The first 2-4 weeks of every class is spent on research methods often specific to the particular topic of the class. After taking the 4-5 classes to complete the minor, how to reduce bias in surveys, usability tests, etc was beaten into my brain.

Perseids 13y ago

> They honest to god think CS is an actually hard science on par with math and physics. Theoretical computer science is a branch of mathematics. Don't dismiss the whole field just because your university chooses to under represent the theoretical side.

scott_s 13y ago

Print statements for debugging is not necessarily a bad thing: http://www.scott-a-s.com/traces-vs-snapshots/ http://www.scott-a-s.com/traces-vs-snapshots/

henrik_w 13y ago
Agreed! In the same vein, I recently wrote about both debugging vs logging [1] and about session-based logging [2]. [1] http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/01/finding-bugs-debugger-versus-logging/ http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/01/finding-bugs-debugger-vers... [2] http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/21/session-based-logging/ http://henrikwarne.com/2014/01/21/session-based-logging/
- scott_s 13y ago
  Neat, we hit on many of the same points.
  - henrik_w 13y ago
    Yep!