6 ms·

Yale Stepping Up Computer Science After Students Demand Better Tech Training

31 points by ca98am79 12y ago

ch4s3 12y ago
>>This fall Yale will import Harvard’s most popular course, an introductory programming class called CS50 -- a move the department called innovative while students have characterized it as humiliating. Oh, tell me more...
- tashoecraft 12y ago
  I think it's incredible smart. More universities should do this. Harvard has produced a terrific course with a very good professor. Instead of trying to compete against it, why not utilize it into the classroom. Although if I was a Yale student I would probably think it was humiliating.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  The concept of an Ivy League institution not having at least a good computer-science department should be humiliating. Imagine a university saying that students shouldn't bother with mathematics because pre-law or accountancy are what are really important!
  - munchbunny 12y ago
    If you speak with actual Yale CS grads who are now programmers, I think you will find a very different story. Yale's CS curriculum is quite the opposite of weak, but the department is certainly stretched thin on people to teach it because the administration hadn't given the department the budget to hire more professors. I was a Yale CS undergrad and the curriculum taught me quite well. The classes never taught me Rails or Node.js (trending when I graduated), but I did have a rigorous education in algorithms, systems, networks, firsthand practice with a variety of paradigms and concepts (functional, multi-threaded, continuations, etc.), plus the discrete math and graph theory to think about the concepts analytically. By all accounts that is a very thorough though somewhat classical approach to CS, but it certainly sets you up for long term success as a programmer. If anything, the department's philosophy is actually "you don't need pre-law to become a good lawyer, we'd rather teach you logic and make you a strong writer first." Having enough people to execute on it is a different story.
  - sukilot 12y ago
    Note that this article is about the high demand for pre-programming, not theoretical computer science.
- wlesieutre 12y ago
  Harvard and Yale have a rivalry going, so the students are uncomfortable with the fact that Harvard has a great computer science course and Yale has to borrow from them. It makes way more sense than creating a new one from scratch, so props to Yale's faculty for taking this approach. There are places where experimenting and working on different teaching methods is a great idea, but I don't think this is one of them.
  - ch4s3 12y ago
    Ahh, I read it to mean they thought the coursework itself was humiliating, hence my confusion.
    - wlesieutre 12y ago
      I'm honestly just guessing at the meaning (I live in New Haven but have very little association with Yale). There's definitely some history between them. Like the time a group of Yale students dressed up as "Harvard Pep Squad" and got Harvard to do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_prank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_prank
  - wffurr 12y ago
    I took at look at the syllabus[1] and it sure seems to throw students in the deep end! The first week's lecture includes threads and event handling. Later on they cover all kinds of domains such as TCP/IP, tries, and MVC. Those who survive the pace and workload seem like they will have a broad introduction to just about every area of CS. Program By Design[2] used by a bunch of other great CS schools feels gentle by comparison. [1]: https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/lectures/0/w/syllabus/syllabus.html#lectures https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/lectures/0/w/syllabus/sylla... [2]: http://www.programbydesign.org/ http://www.programbydesign.org/
    - sukilot 12y ago
      CS50 was famously changed from "deep end" to "shallow end" several years ago, to make it more accessible to actual newcomers, not just kids who were experts in high school. "Threads and events" are covered very very lightly in lecture 0.
- munchbunny 12y ago
  Students characterizing that as humiliating? Sounds a lot like sensationalism. Certainly a Yalie won't want to admit that Harvard got it right, but a good curriculum is a good curriculum.
chatmasta 12y ago
For more responsible reporting, see here: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/10/up-close-tech-life-after-yale/ http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/10/up-close-tech-life-...
imjk 12y ago
Yale historically has had a very strong CS program. They just haven't been as progressive in expanding their curriculum as Harvard has. In fact, they haven't changed their curriculum or even expanded their department in a decade or so. Whereas Harvard offers an intro to CS class that's the most popular undergrad class even for non-CS majors. It's time for Yale to catch up now.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
mcguire 12y ago
"The college’s computer-science faculty is about the same size as it was three decades ago, yet it has 181 undergraduate majors -- about four times as many as in 2010, Bloomberg reported earlier this month." Sometimes I forget exactly how small some of these major schools are. (For comparison, UT Austin Computer Sciences has 41 faculty and about 2000 undergraduates.[1]) [1] https://cns.utexas.edu/about/departments/computer-science https://cns.utexas.edu/about/departments/computer-science
- thedufer 12y ago
  Huh, I thought exactly the opposite. I graduated in classes of 17 and 7 from my CS and physics departments, respectively. The divide between sizes of schools is amazing.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
  50:1 is an appalling ratio.
  - angersock 12y ago
    50:1 is an appalling ratio. We really do need to encourage gender diversity in our field!
  - mcguire 12y ago
    True, but it may look worse than it is. The 41 seems to be tenured and tenure-track professors; there are about 10 adjuncts and 10 lecturers listed by the department. At the time I went through it, there were fewer faculty, but the only class actually taught by a grad student was the giant introduction to CS; almost all of the upper-division classes were taught by professors. Class sizes for the required classes did get a little out of hand, but it wasn't as bad as you might think.
mark212 12y ago
anyone know the size of Stanford's CS faculty and number of undergrad majors? For comparison's sake, it'd be interesting to find out.
- WalterGR 12y ago
  http://www-cs.stanford.edu/faculty http://www-cs.stanford.edu/faculty lists 55 regular faculty members. http://www-cs.stanford.edu/undergraduate_students http://www-cs.stanford.edu/undergraduate_students lists 808 students.
brudgers 12y ago
This pretty much irrelevant to the industry. 181 undergrads means about 50 CS degrees a year. If they double the department over the next 10 year's that's about 250 more degrees...half the Fortune 500 can't get one. Yale is a great school, but it's not where the important changes in education are happening. What it (or another Ivey) does doesn't scale out to the Land Grant's in the US or technical universities around the world. It's like the doings of the UK 's Crown Prince...highbrow celebrity gossip.
PhrosTT 12y ago
Reminds me of 2003 when I told a Georgetown rep at a college fair I wanted to major in Computer Science. She chuckled a bit and said "we don't have that" as if somehow I was the idiot...

31 points by ca98am79 12y ago

ch4s3 12y ago

>>This fall Yale will import Harvard’s most popular course, an introductory programming class called CS50 -- a move the department called innovative while students have characterized it as humiliating. Oh, tell me more...

tashoecraft 12y ago
I think it's incredible smart. More universities should do this. Harvard has produced a terrific course with a very good professor. Instead of trying to compete against it, why not utilize it into the classroom. Although if I was a Yale student I would probably think it was humiliating.
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
The concept of an Ivy League institution not having at least a good computer-science department should be humiliating. Imagine a university saying that students shouldn't bother with mathematics because pre-law or accountancy are what are really important!
- munchbunny 12y ago
  If you speak with actual Yale CS grads who are now programmers, I think you will find a very different story. Yale's CS curriculum is quite the opposite of weak, but the department is certainly stretched thin on people to teach it because the administration hadn't given the department the budget to hire more professors. I was a Yale CS undergrad and the curriculum taught me quite well. The classes never taught me Rails or Node.js (trending when I graduated), but I did have a rigorous education in algorithms, systems, networks, firsthand practice with a variety of paradigms and concepts (functional, multi-threaded, continuations, etc.), plus the discrete math and graph theory to think about the concepts analytically. By all accounts that is a very thorough though somewhat classical approach to CS, but it certainly sets you up for long term success as a programmer. If anything, the department's philosophy is actually "you don't need pre-law to become a good lawyer, we'd rather teach you logic and make you a strong writer first." Having enough people to execute on it is a different story.
- sukilot 12y ago
  Note that this article is about the high demand for pre-programming, not theoretical computer science.
wlesieutre 12y ago
Harvard and Yale have a rivalry going, so the students are uncomfortable with the fact that Harvard has a great computer science course and Yale has to borrow from them. It makes way more sense than creating a new one from scratch, so props to Yale's faculty for taking this approach. There are places where experimenting and working on different teaching methods is a great idea, but I don't think this is one of them.
- ch4s3 12y ago
  Ahh, I read it to mean they thought the coursework itself was humiliating, hence my confusion.
  - wlesieutre 12y ago
    I'm honestly just guessing at the meaning (I live in New Haven but have very little association with Yale). There's definitely some history between them. Like the time a group of Yale students dressed up as "Harvard Pep Squad" and got Harvard to do this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_prank http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Harvard%E2%80%93Yale_prank
- wffurr 12y ago
  I took at look at the syllabus[1] and it sure seems to throw students in the deep end! The first week's lecture includes threads and event handling. Later on they cover all kinds of domains such as TCP/IP, tries, and MVC. Those who survive the pace and workload seem like they will have a broad introduction to just about every area of CS. Program By Design[2] used by a bunch of other great CS schools feels gentle by comparison. [1]: https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/lectures/0/w/syllabus/syllabus.html#lectures https://cdn.cs50.net/2015/spring/lectures/0/w/syllabus/sylla... [2]: http://www.programbydesign.org/ http://www.programbydesign.org/
  - sukilot 12y ago
    CS50 was famously changed from "deep end" to "shallow end" several years ago, to make it more accessible to actual newcomers, not just kids who were experts in high school. "Threads and events" are covered very very lightly in lecture 0.
munchbunny 12y ago
Students characterizing that as humiliating? Sounds a lot like sensationalism. Certainly a Yalie won't want to admit that Harvard got it right, but a good curriculum is a good curriculum.

chatmasta 12y ago

For more responsible reporting, see here: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/10/up-close-tech-life-after-yale/ http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/04/10/up-close-tech-life-...

imjk 12y ago

Yale historically has had a very strong CS program. They just haven't been as progressive in expanding their curriculum as Harvard has. In fact, they haven't changed their curriculum or even expanded their department in a decade or so. Whereas Harvard offers an intro to CS class that's the most popular undergrad class even for non-CS majors. It's time for Yale to catch up now.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

mcguire 12y ago

"The college’s computer-science faculty is about the same size as it was three decades ago, yet it has 181 undergraduate majors -- about four times as many as in 2010, Bloomberg reported earlier this month." Sometimes I forget exactly how small some of these major schools are. (For comparison, UT Austin Computer Sciences has 41 faculty and about 2000 undergraduates.[1]) [1] https://cns.utexas.edu/about/departments/computer-science https://cns.utexas.edu/about/departments/computer-science

thedufer 12y ago
Huh, I thought exactly the opposite. I graduated in classes of 17 and 7 from my CS and physics departments, respectively. The divide between sizes of schools is amazing.
GFK_of_xmaspast 12y ago
50:1 is an appalling ratio.
- angersock 12y ago
  50:1 is an appalling ratio. We really do need to encourage gender diversity in our field!
- mcguire 12y ago
  True, but it may look worse than it is. The 41 seems to be tenured and tenure-track professors; there are about 10 adjuncts and 10 lecturers listed by the department. At the time I went through it, there were fewer faculty, but the only class actually taught by a grad student was the giant introduction to CS; almost all of the upper-division classes were taught by professors. Class sizes for the required classes did get a little out of hand, but it wasn't as bad as you might think.

mark212 12y ago

anyone know the size of Stanford's CS faculty and number of undergrad majors? For comparison's sake, it'd be interesting to find out.

WalterGR 12y ago
http://www-cs.stanford.edu/faculty http://www-cs.stanford.edu/faculty lists 55 regular faculty members. http://www-cs.stanford.edu/undergraduate_students http://www-cs.stanford.edu/undergraduate_students lists 808 students.

brudgers 12y ago

This pretty much irrelevant to the industry. 181 undergrads means about 50 CS degrees a year. If they double the department over the next 10 year's that's about 250 more degrees...half the Fortune 500 can't get one. Yale is a great school, but it's not where the important changes in education are happening. What it (or another Ivey) does doesn't scale out to the Land Grant's in the US or technical universities around the world. It's like the doings of the UK 's Crown Prince...highbrow celebrity gossip.

PhrosTT 12y ago

Reminds me of 2003 when I told a Georgetown rep at a college fair I wanted to major in Computer Science. She chuckled a bit and said "we don't have that" as if somehow I was the idiot...