4 ms·

I like your sentiment, but your "good computer science education" sounds a lot like a "true scotsman". A lot of the people I work with have BS's in CS and a lo

I like your sentiment, but your "good computer science education" sounds a lot like a "true scotsman". A lot of the people I work with have BS's in CS and a lot don't. I haven't seen any correlation between a real in depth understanding of computer science and a CS degree. I agree programmers should be able to read and understand Knuth's books, but I don't think a CS degree is preparation. Would you think someone needs a CS degree if they already have a good understanding of the books? My complaint with college is that it seems to be mostly fluff. If you show up and pay the bills then you'll get your degree.

RogerL 11y ago
Define 'need'. In college I learned, besides all the normal CS stuff: * writing * accounting * organizational psychology * small amounts of business stuff * lots of EE, digital and analog * how to read and write research papers * how to research * how to prove theorems (important if you are inventing your own) * linear algebra, calculus, stats and probability, discrete algebra * physics I-III, plus 1 semester of experimental physics * chemistry (I,II, no organic) * a bit of philosophy * circuit design * numerical computation It would be a Herculean task to take all that up in your spare time to the level I did at school (I still learn on my own time, so you have to catch up not just with what I did at school, but everything afterwards). It's 4+ years of opportunity to bump against really good minds. I went to professors and said "I want to learn x". (think of the course catalog as a suggestion!) That got me, among other things a co-authorship with a professor on an academic book. All of that has been relevant to my career except for the chemistry. Even with that, my first job could have used it if I had stuck around more, and it is useful to know if you want to be scientifically literate. Or, you know, you can punch your time cards, do the bare minimum, and graduate with a pretty useless certificate. College as voc tech to learn to manipulate the LAMP stack is probably a poor choice of time. If you want to be able to take a job to compute cancer statistics, program robots, build digital interface cards, perform computer vision, simulate the ocean, write aircraft wing simulations, model and research traffic flow, work on medical devices, you almost certainly need more then votech and/or self learning, IMO. I've done most in that list professionally, and friends of mine have done the rest (no rockets in that list, but I was offered a job to do that, turned it down). There are multiple paths to life, but the chance to just think and learn for awhile is pretty incredible if you can afford it.
- rmk 11y ago
  This. You realise the value of the time you pissed away only when it's too late. Unfortunately, college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander. Sigh...
  - PhantomGremlin 11y ago
    college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander THIS IS THE BEST COMMENT YOU WILL READ TODAY, IF NOT THIS WEEK!!!! Sorry for the all caps, but "truer words were never spoken". So, anyone reading this who hasn't gone to college or who hasn't yet graduated, heed those words. You will thank the poster perhaps 30 years later.
    - dwmtm 11y ago
      “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.” ― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life Thus, follow your heart- dwell not on what you did, nor on what you do, but listen to what you need. Long after, look back, and see, more clearly, what you need now.
      - aaronem 11y ago
        I won't say you're wrong, but I still think I'd rather regret having gone to school than, as I do now, regret having not gone; not that I haven't done rather well for myself, so much as that I'd have liked to do more -- I've learned from experience that the ancestor comment, about how much you have to make up, to be absolutely true; however autodidactic you happen to be, there's a lot of value in the distilled knowledge university courses can provide, and only so many hours in a day -- and days in a lifetime -- besides.
    - Jugurtha 11y ago
      One of my friends has loaned some books to my other friend's brother at the beginning of the year. The year being over, I asked my friend if his brother is done with the books. He got back to me saying that his brother asked if I was in 1st year, and that he was surprised when he learned that I graduated and still studying. I had a chance to talk with him yesterday (well, this morning at 4 AM), we were seven people at my friend's. I said that not working harder than I did back in college is a mistake I am paying the price for today. I urged him to work harder than he is for he will later regret it with hot tears. I said that right now, he's in a cocoon where nothing is expected of him except to study, which he should do vigorously, relentlessly, and constantly. He has no other obligations or pressure other than to learn and become excellent. I said if I was asked to kill ten people to be able to go back a decade, I would kill an additional two to show how thankful I am for the bargain. I tried to convey the message because he didn't fully grasp that time wasted is never, ever coming back. That once it's gone, it is forever. That it is the only thing we own only for its very duration, not a second more. I hope he understood. There was a fleeting expression of realization after the chuckles that I hope will grow.
ht_th 11y ago
Certainly, if all you're after is a degree (the certificate), not much effort is needed. On the other hand, if you want to, you can get more out of college. Which brings me back to my "good computer science education": it depends a lot on the aims of the student and how she approached her learning. That is not to say that there are no computer science programs that is basically vocational training, nor that there are programs that are very theoretical in nature, of course, but if you want, you can get more value for your money than a degree. > Would you think someone needs a CS degree if they already have a good understanding of the books? To be a programmer? No. But, at least to me, programming related matters is but a small part of computer science. Which makes Knuth's books such a great resource: it goes into detail in that small, yet quite large, field of programming.
- anthony_d 11y ago
  You can say the it's up to the student to put in the effort but that really just sounds like confirmation that it's not part of a college education. If you want more out of an education you have to do it yourself, don't expect much from college. I guess what I'm saying is that an undergraduate CS degree is just a vocational degree. College does not prepare you to read TAoCP. If you want a solid CS foundation you have to self study.
  - ht_th 11y ago
    > I guess what I'm saying is that an undergraduate CS degree is just a vocational degree. I think my undergraduate CS degree contained exactly four courses that I would classify as pure vocational in nature: the first class everyone had to take was to learn to program in Delphi; a class on functional programming; a class on GUI programming; and a class on object oriented programming. After that, all classes were either: - mathematics, from analysis, statistics, writing/reading proofs, to loads of discrete mathematics - formal methods, from proving correctness of programs, modeling, to different methods to analyze complex systems - theory, from automata theory, language theory, compiler theory, database theory, relational algebra, to complexity and computability - odds and ends, such as ethics, philosophy, history Then, each trimester, we also had an engineering project where we would have to apply theory. There were no vocational classes associated. If we had to, or wanted to, use a tool, language, system, we had to learn it by ourselves first. Nevertheless, these engineering projects can be seen as vocational in nature too, of course. Still, that makes for about one vocational class a year (of about 15), and three engineering projects a year. So, when people talk about undergraduate computer science degrees, I always assume their experiences are not dissimilar to mine.
jcoffland 11y ago
I don't know about other schools but my CS degree took a little more than showing up. Granted many of my classmates, even some of those who managed to graduate, never quite "got it." It's easy to say you don't need something you don't have. The lack of CS knowledge in our field is shameful and is a large contributor to all the crap code being pumped out at huge expense. That said, if you really love what you do you will probably learn how to do it well, eventually. A CS degree is a huge advantage, regardless.

RogerL 11y ago

Define 'need'. In college I learned, besides all the normal CS stuff: * writing * accounting * organizational psychology * small amounts of business stuff * lots of EE, digital and analog * how to read and write research papers * how to research * how to prove theorems (important if you are inventing your own) * linear algebra, calculus, stats and probability, discrete algebra * physics I-III, plus 1 semester of experimental physics * chemistry (I,II, no organic) * a bit of philosophy * circuit design * numerical computation It would be a Herculean task to take all that up in your spare time to the level I did at school (I still learn on my own time, so you have to catch up not just with what I did at school, but everything afterwards). It's 4+ years of opportunity to bump against really good minds. I went to professors and said "I want to learn x". (think of the course catalog as a suggestion!) That got me, among other things a co-authorship with a professor on an academic book. All of that has been relevant to my career except for the chemistry. Even with that, my first job could have used it if I had stuck around more, and it is useful to know if you want to be scientifically literate. Or, you know, you can punch your time cards, do the bare minimum, and graduate with a pretty useless certificate. College as voc tech to learn to manipulate the LAMP stack is probably a poor choice of time. If you want to be able to take a job to compute cancer statistics, program robots, build digital interface cards, perform computer vision, simulate the ocean, write aircraft wing simulations, model and research traffic flow, work on medical devices, you almost certainly need more then votech and/or self learning, IMO. I've done most in that list professionally, and friends of mine have done the rest (no rockets in that list, but I was offered a job to do that, turned it down). There are multiple paths to life, but the chance to just think and learn for awhile is pretty incredible if you can afford it.

rmk 11y ago
This. You realise the value of the time you pissed away only when it's too late. Unfortunately, college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander. Sigh...
- PhantomGremlin 11y ago
  college coincides with the most callow years of your life, when you scarcely know the value of time, or the opportunity you are about to squander THIS IS THE BEST COMMENT YOU WILL READ TODAY, IF NOT THIS WEEK!!!! Sorry for the all caps, but "truer words were never spoken". So, anyone reading this who hasn't gone to college or who hasn't yet graduated, heed those words. You will thank the poster perhaps 30 years later.
  - dwmtm 11y ago
    “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.” ― Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life Thus, follow your heart- dwell not on what you did, nor on what you do, but listen to what you need. Long after, look back, and see, more clearly, what you need now.
    - aaronem 11y ago
      I won't say you're wrong, but I still think I'd rather regret having gone to school than, as I do now, regret having not gone; not that I haven't done rather well for myself, so much as that I'd have liked to do more -- I've learned from experience that the ancestor comment, about how much you have to make up, to be absolutely true; however autodidactic you happen to be, there's a lot of value in the distilled knowledge university courses can provide, and only so many hours in a day -- and days in a lifetime -- besides.
  - Jugurtha 11y ago
    One of my friends has loaned some books to my other friend's brother at the beginning of the year. The year being over, I asked my friend if his brother is done with the books. He got back to me saying that his brother asked if I was in 1st year, and that he was surprised when he learned that I graduated and still studying. I had a chance to talk with him yesterday (well, this morning at 4 AM), we were seven people at my friend's. I said that not working harder than I did back in college is a mistake I am paying the price for today. I urged him to work harder than he is for he will later regret it with hot tears. I said that right now, he's in a cocoon where nothing is expected of him except to study, which he should do vigorously, relentlessly, and constantly. He has no other obligations or pressure other than to learn and become excellent. I said if I was asked to kill ten people to be able to go back a decade, I would kill an additional two to show how thankful I am for the bargain. I tried to convey the message because he didn't fully grasp that time wasted is never, ever coming back. That once it's gone, it is forever. That it is the only thing we own only for its very duration, not a second more. I hope he understood. There was a fleeting expression of realization after the chuckles that I hope will grow.

ht_th 11y ago

Certainly, if all you're after is a degree (the certificate), not much effort is needed. On the other hand, if you want to, you can get more out of college. Which brings me back to my "good computer science education": it depends a lot on the aims of the student and how she approached her learning. That is not to say that there are no computer science programs that is basically vocational training, nor that there are programs that are very theoretical in nature, of course, but if you want, you can get more value for your money than a degree. > Would you think someone needs a CS degree if they already have a good understanding of the books? To be a programmer? No. But, at least to me, programming related matters is but a small part of computer science. Which makes Knuth's books such a great resource: it goes into detail in that small, yet quite large, field of programming.

anthony_d 11y ago
You can say the it's up to the student to put in the effort but that really just sounds like confirmation that it's not part of a college education. If you want more out of an education you have to do it yourself, don't expect much from college. I guess what I'm saying is that an undergraduate CS degree is just a vocational degree. College does not prepare you to read TAoCP. If you want a solid CS foundation you have to self study.
- ht_th 11y ago
  > I guess what I'm saying is that an undergraduate CS degree is just a vocational degree. I think my undergraduate CS degree contained exactly four courses that I would classify as pure vocational in nature: the first class everyone had to take was to learn to program in Delphi; a class on functional programming; a class on GUI programming; and a class on object oriented programming. After that, all classes were either: - mathematics, from analysis, statistics, writing/reading proofs, to loads of discrete mathematics - formal methods, from proving correctness of programs, modeling, to different methods to analyze complex systems - theory, from automata theory, language theory, compiler theory, database theory, relational algebra, to complexity and computability - odds and ends, such as ethics, philosophy, history Then, each trimester, we also had an engineering project where we would have to apply theory. There were no vocational classes associated. If we had to, or wanted to, use a tool, language, system, we had to learn it by ourselves first. Nevertheless, these engineering projects can be seen as vocational in nature too, of course. Still, that makes for about one vocational class a year (of about 15), and three engineering projects a year. So, when people talk about undergraduate computer science degrees, I always assume their experiences are not dissimilar to mine.

jcoffland 11y ago

I don't know about other schools but my CS degree took a little more than showing up. Granted many of my classmates, even some of those who managed to graduate, never quite "got it." It's easy to say you don't need something you don't have. The lack of CS knowledge in our field is shameful and is a large contributor to all the crap code being pumped out at huge expense. That said, if you really love what you do you will probably learn how to do it well, eventually. A CS degree is a huge advantage, regardless.