4 ms·

"It is a school’s job to churn out students who will be able to walk into a job in industry on day one and work in whatever language/paradigm is flavour du jour

by verelo 12y ago

"It is a school’s job to churn out students who will be able to walk into a job in industry on day one and work in whatever language/paradigm is flavour du jour. WRONG! We’re here to teach children the core concepts of Computer Science" Am I the only one ticked off by the "WRONG!" in this post? If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some form of fraud. Schools like Waterloo in Canada do a great job of providing core concepts while providing the workforce with useful people. I'm an employer (who didn't go to Waterloo personally) and we love to see their interns come our way, as does LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and many others. The school realizes they're not good at making people useful, but they do what they can to help the student become useful by connecting them with the real world, while providing them with the core concepts to enable them to be successful in that position. Maybe you're frustrated and getting a lot of opposition because you're WRONG!?

skrebbel 12y ago
> If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some form of fraud. If you really believe that it's a high school's job to "create useful people" then I hope you're not working in education. > Schools like Waterloo in Canada That, or you simply didn't bother to even read the article. I'm not Canadian or anything similar, but a part of me suspects that "Waterloo in Canada" isn't a high school. Stop starting flamewars on articles you don't even bother reading introductions of.
quasque 12y ago
She's talking about an education in computing for teenagers who will typically be sitting exams at ages 16 and 18, for GCSE and A-Level qualifications respectively - not a rant about undergraduate education, as you seem to be implying. Here's more details on what these subjects are composed of; it's quite basic stuff: http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/ict-and-computer-science http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/ict-and-computer-science
cbhl 12y ago
As someone who went to school at Waterloo, I think I have to side with the author here. Where did I learn how to use git and how to write Android applications? Certainly not at school -- I did it on the dime of some very generous employers that were hoping to woo me into working for them after I graduated. Students gossip about which employers are best -- if a co-op student isn't growing during their experience, then (as an employer) you're going to have a hell of a time retaining the kids when they graduate. What did I learn in class? Algorithms, data structures, and other fundamentals that are required to grok (let alone answer) the kinds of questions that come up in interviews. Interesting stuff, but almost entirely tangential to industry skills. The only reason Waterloo students post-graduation are "useful" in the workplace is because they've been in the workplace -- with almost two years of experience!
_RPM 12y ago
Yes, what is reason for uppercase letters with an exclamation point? He seems angry.
- TheSOB88 12y ago
  The article author is a woman. Also, a lot of people are missing that she is talking about children, not university students. She teaches A-levels, or the equivalent to AP classes here.
throwaway5752 12y ago
I guess I'm annoyed by the false dichotomy. I don't agree with you, though. I think the schools should teach theory. Anyone that can learn that theory (algorithms, data structures, computability) should probably be able to be useful without much trouble. That's been my experience with CS interns, at least. edit: I also distinguish between CS and CE. I'd firmly agree with you that CE or other engineering oriented degree programs should be almost vocational. edit: can't stick around to wait til I am allowed reply to you, karmelapple, so I have to reply by edit. I know some schools have a computer engineer degree, in addition to a computer science degree. I would say that mechanical & structural are applied physics, and EE and some others are more like applied math (in which I invite, but back away from the centuries old math/physics flamewars)
- karmelapple 12y ago
  I'm curious what the "computer science" equivalent in the engineering world would be. All of the engineering majors study a particular type of engineering: mechanical, electrical, computer, construction. There's no "engineering science" program that I'm aware of that would teach the theory behind engineering and award a degree just for that. Instead, the engineering student must understand that way of thinking simultaneously while learning the practical components of the degree (analyzing free-body diagram forces, producing printed circuit boards, building physical objects for competitions, etc).
  - na85 12y ago
    >There's no "engineering science" program that I'm aware of that would teach the theory behind engineering and award a degree just for that Actually the University of Toronto offers an "Eng Sci" program that is exactly this. They offer it alongside their regular engineering program. A guy I went to high school with dropped out of the eng sci program because it was "too theoretical" for him and he wanted a more practical education.
    - karmelapple 12y ago
      Do you know what the typical career path is for someone with an undergrad in this? Academia?
na85 12y ago
>If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some form of fraud. This is a huge distortion of the point the author is making. The author is not saying "schools should be paid to churn out students that are not useful." The author is saying "schools should be paid to churn out students *already equipped with the skills they will need to learn once they get to the work force." Anyone, and this includes you, that expects a fresh CS graduate to "hit the ground running" with no adjustment period and to be fluent in whatever language/toolset you decide is important is deluded. The point of a CS education is not to master every library, every IDE, and every language. The point of a CS education is to master the fundamentals so that even if you learned Java in school, you can spend a weekend learning the syntax of Swift because really that's all that's different. You already know object-oriented design (or whatever). The problem is that employers expect new employees to start being profitable on day 1, when that is absurd. There's always a learning period, even for a seasoned veteran. Whether that learning period is 3 weeks or 3 months, there's always a learning period and I wish employers would get this through their seemingly think skulls.
- bicknergseng 12y ago
  I'm not sure that is a big distortion of what she's saying. It seems to me like she's suggesting that keeping up with modern computer science isn't necessary to teach computer science. With her all caps "WRONG"s, she seems equally incontrovertible. While I don't think teaching iOS8 beta dev is necessary in a modern cs curriculum (which I don't think many people are suggesting), not approaching the massive shift in the industry towards mobile is equally absurd. It's not about mastering every library or IDE or language (which again, the parent comment didn't suggest), but there is certainly no reason that CS fundamentals cannot be taught with a nod towards modern computer science. Yes, employer expectations are often absurd, but so too is the expectation that teaching Java without ever building an Android app does everything sufficient to "equip students with skills." If a curriculum is going to spend a month on linked lists that's fine, but do something real with them instead of implementing stdlib over and over in a vacuum. Use some popular libraries as teaching tools to demonstrate good and bad code, ways things have been done in real life, etc. Don't pigeonhole on jquery widgets, but build a webapp in rails or node or go or c or jsp or whatever. Hell, build it in Haskell and teach some killer fp at the same time. But don't just spend 4 years teaching students how to implement x to do arbitrary y with no practical examples or connection to real life.
vacri 12y ago
Speaking of WRONG!, the University of Waterloo in Canada is not a high school. Not only is there a clarification at the top of the page, the entire article reads like it was written about high school classes. Not just subtle things like "I have studied education at the postgraduate level" or characterising herself as a teacher rather than a lecturer or professor, but complete giveaway lines like "don’t presume to know more than me about how to teach children", repeated a couple of times.

by verelo 12y ago

skrebbel 12y ago

> If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some form of fraud. If you really believe that it's a high school's job to "create useful people" then I hope you're not working in education. > Schools like Waterloo in Canada That, or you simply didn't bother to even read the article. I'm not Canadian or anything similar, but a part of me suspects that "Waterloo in Canada" isn't a high school. Stop starting flamewars on articles you don't even bother reading introductions of.

quasque 12y ago

She's talking about an education in computing for teenagers who will typically be sitting exams at ages 16 and 18, for GCSE and A-Level qualifications respectively - not a rant about undergraduate education, as you seem to be implying. Here's more details on what these subjects are composed of; it's quite basic stuff: http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/ict-and-computer-science http://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/ict-and-computer-science

cbhl 12y ago

As someone who went to school at Waterloo, I think I have to side with the author here. Where did I learn how to use git and how to write Android applications? Certainly not at school -- I did it on the dime of some very generous employers that were hoping to woo me into working for them after I graduated. Students gossip about which employers are best -- if a co-op student isn't growing during their experience, then (as an employer) you're going to have a hell of a time retaining the kids when they graduate. What did I learn in class? Algorithms, data structures, and other fundamentals that are required to grok (let alone answer) the kinds of questions that come up in interviews. Interesting stuff, but almost entirely tangential to industry skills. The only reason Waterloo students post-graduation are "useful" in the workplace is because they've been in the workplace -- with almost two years of experience!

_RPM 12y ago

Yes, what is reason for uppercase letters with an exclamation point? He seems angry.

TheSOB88 12y ago
The article author is a woman. Also, a lot of people are missing that she is talking about children, not university students. She teaches A-levels, or the equivalent to AP classes here.

throwaway5752 12y ago

I guess I'm annoyed by the false dichotomy. I don't agree with you, though. I think the schools should teach theory. Anyone that can learn that theory (algorithms, data structures, computability) should probably be able to be useful without much trouble. That's been my experience with CS interns, at least. edit: I also distinguish between CS and CE. I'd firmly agree with you that CE or other engineering oriented degree programs should be almost vocational. edit: can't stick around to wait til I am allowed reply to you, karmelapple, so I have to reply by edit. I know some schools have a computer engineer degree, in addition to a computer science degree. I would say that mechanical & structural are applied physics, and EE and some others are more like applied math (in which I invite, but back away from the centuries old math/physics flamewars)

karmelapple 12y ago
I'm curious what the "computer science" equivalent in the engineering world would be. All of the engineering majors study a particular type of engineering: mechanical, electrical, computer, construction. There's no "engineering science" program that I'm aware of that would teach the theory behind engineering and award a degree just for that. Instead, the engineering student must understand that way of thinking simultaneously while learning the practical components of the degree (analyzing free-body diagram forces, producing printed circuit boards, building physical objects for competitions, etc).
- na85 12y ago
  >There's no "engineering science" program that I'm aware of that would teach the theory behind engineering and award a degree just for that Actually the University of Toronto offers an "Eng Sci" program that is exactly this. They offer it alongside their regular engineering program. A guy I went to high school with dropped out of the eng sci program because it was "too theoretical" for him and he wanted a more practical education.
  - karmelapple 12y ago
    Do you know what the typical career path is for someone with an undergrad in this? Academia?

na85 12y ago

>If you can tell me that it is your job to accept payment yet not create useful people, in my opinion, you're committing some form of fraud. This is a huge distortion of the point the author is making. The author is not saying "schools should be paid to churn out students that are not useful." The author is saying "schools should be paid to churn out students *already equipped with the skills they will need to learn once they get to the work force." Anyone, and this includes you, that expects a fresh CS graduate to "hit the ground running" with no adjustment period and to be fluent in whatever language/toolset you decide is important is deluded. The point of a CS education is not to master every library, every IDE, and every language. The point of a CS education is to master the fundamentals so that even if you learned Java in school, you can spend a weekend learning the syntax of Swift because really that's all that's different. You already know object-oriented design (or whatever). The problem is that employers expect new employees to start being profitable on day 1, when that is absurd. There's always a learning period, even for a seasoned veteran. Whether that learning period is 3 weeks or 3 months, there's always a learning period and I wish employers would get this through their seemingly think skulls.

bicknergseng 12y ago
I'm not sure that is a big distortion of what she's saying. It seems to me like she's suggesting that keeping up with modern computer science isn't necessary to teach computer science. With her all caps "WRONG"s, she seems equally incontrovertible. While I don't think teaching iOS8 beta dev is necessary in a modern cs curriculum (which I don't think many people are suggesting), not approaching the massive shift in the industry towards mobile is equally absurd. It's not about mastering every library or IDE or language (which again, the parent comment didn't suggest), but there is certainly no reason that CS fundamentals cannot be taught with a nod towards modern computer science. Yes, employer expectations are often absurd, but so too is the expectation that teaching Java without ever building an Android app does everything sufficient to "equip students with skills." If a curriculum is going to spend a month on linked lists that's fine, but do something real with them instead of implementing stdlib over and over in a vacuum. Use some popular libraries as teaching tools to demonstrate good and bad code, ways things have been done in real life, etc. Don't pigeonhole on jquery widgets, but build a webapp in rails or node or go or c or jsp or whatever. Hell, build it in Haskell and teach some killer fp at the same time. But don't just spend 4 years teaching students how to implement x to do arbitrary y with no practical examples or connection to real life.

vacri 12y ago

Speaking of WRONG!, the University of Waterloo in Canada is not a high school. Not only is there a clarification at the top of the page, the entire article reads like it was written about high school classes. Not just subtle things like "I have studied education at the postgraduate level" or characterising herself as a teacher rather than a lecturer or professor, but complete giveaway lines like "don’t presume to know more than me about how to teach children", repeated a couple of times.