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The Changing Face of Computer Science
For another facet of CS education, HangingChad writes "MSNBC is carrying an interesting article on the changing demographics of IT workers and education. The upshot of the article is that older, working adults are taking IT related courses for advancement while comp sci continues to slide as a career choice in college, which the researchers in the article attribute to perception issues." From the article: "In fact, as the technology-dependent United States struggles to stay ahead of the Bangalores of the world, the Higher Education Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles found significantly fewer students at the college level -- 60 percent fewer -- wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000. "
I thought education and career are like stock exchange, you should always buy low and sell high, but most people tend to buy high and sell low.
Now that everyone's talking about CS skill shortage, this is the worst time to start studying CS, because everyone will be doing the exact same thing, just like they did on "multimedia" courses in 1998/1999.
If you started studying CS right after the dot-com bubble burst (around 2000, "worst" time to get into IT), you will be very popular right about now.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
http://www.schoolworkshare.com/
40% Love
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At my university, there's The College of Computer Science, and under that, you can major in CS (Computer Science), IT (Information Technology) or IS (Information Systems). So is it all of the included majors affected, or is it just the CS majors that are affected?
thats why no one whats to work in it. low pay, high pressure and no job security.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
So the news in this article is that MIT, Cal-Tech etc don't churn out
the most CS degrees? Did anyone even think that? Top tier schools
have never been known for quantity, they are known for quality.
That's what has always separated them from other schools, not how many
graduates they produce. High quantity schools generally don't have a
good reputation, why do you think the MCSE is worth so little, because
everyone has it. So the fact that DeVry is churning out more
graduates than MIT is hardly news worthy imo.
Next they are comparing the number of people entering CS in 2000 to
the number entering now? That comparison is farcical at best. In the
year 2000 there were still many people entering the CS field because
of the boom years, when working in the IT industry was the equivalent
of the gold rush. Of course there are less people entering now than
in the year 2000. A more legitimate comparison would have looked at
the number of people entering CS during the pre-boom years rather than
during the boom years.
While I agree that we should encourage more people to enter IT related
fields, I don't agree that using misguided statistics is the best way
to go about it.
Doug Tolton
"The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't." -John Galt
As an ex-CS major let me tell you one reason people are leaving. Even though I plan on going into a CS related field the courses offered by my college (UCI) were very poor. Also there was no way to test out of redundant courses. Many of my classmates left for similiar reasons, and some even abandoned CS altogether as they weren't sure they would be able to compete with outsourcing and get a job
Philosophy.
With all the jobs being shipped out of the United States and reports of massive lay offs in the IT sector. The recent announcment by HP is a perfect example of this.
Why invest in a career where you have little confidence of supporting yourself?
"All I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power." - Ashleigh Brilliant
Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology.
TODO: come up with a clever sig
Is it just me or is it that the IT sector is the one complaining most about outsourcing? Why would you go into IT at a time like this, these are the exact jobs that are prime targets for outsourcing because they are not that difficult, can easily be done in a remote locations and have pretty easy to find common requirements. To make the situation worse as software gets better and more efficient less IT workers are required.
Why would you pursue IT at this point in time?
"A Lisp programmer knows the value of everything, but the cost of nothing." - Alan Perlis
Obviously there is a much better career choice.
Choose wisely for maximum income!
Starsucks
attribute to perception issues
It's not a perception issue. It's a real issue.
90% of the people I know in the tech field have been laid off once in the last 4 years. I only know of one mid-sized technical company that hasn't laid off employees, and everyone there hates their job. I quit after 6 months.
Granted, this is just from my own perspective. But look, the tech job world is slowly creeping out of a multi-year massacre, now the tech world is being run by business people who don't know what an IP address is, but spend a million bucks because IBM said it was good (and promised a trip to Hawaii!)
Sure, there's opportunity here, but students are going to have a hard time competing with we techies with 6+ years experience.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Back in the day when code needed to be efficient at a theoretical level, when compilers and related research was at the forefront of technology itself, and when the computer was the target of research, there was a need for a lot of computer science. Nowadays, there is not as much of a need for true computer science as there used to be. Instead, there is a greater need for people who know other types of science/engineering and have the programming skills to use a computer to solve non-computer problems.
At the career fairs I went to as a computer science major, everyone was interested in web development, flash, java, etc. The CS department at my university doesn't teach these things; a person can learn these through the Information Technology department, however. If all of the money is going to people that don't mind building websites and putting cute flash animations on them, why pursue a degree in computer science?
"significantly fewer students at the college level -- 60 percent fewer -- wanted to study computer science in 2004 as opposed to the year 2000. "
most of these younger folks think they were born gifted hotshots. Most of them think they don't need no steenkin education because they already know it all..
There is a large number of young people that grew up with computers, someone 20 years old now has probably had a home computer all his life. Someone old enough to be his parent did not have a home computer when they were his age.
I have the inability to do complex math
evidently you weren't cut out for CS anyway, so don't sweat it
I used to be a CS major (2 years ago), I've since changed to Communication (i know its cheap by/easy but its fun). I'm finding even though I'm not majoring in comp-sci, i'm still doing comp-sci like tasks for work (web design). Of my incoming class of engineers, we had 60 to start in the fall of 2003, now there are barely 25 still in the program who are still studying comp sci. Every year many people come in but don't stay in the program due to loss of interest or the realization that they don't want to spend the rest of their lives programing.
Most of IT these days isn't cool and interesting stuff, it's cleaning spyware and other shit off Windows PCs, or manning a help desk to answer the same stupid questions for 8 hours per day. It's got all the glamour of working in foodservice, except you don't come home smelling like french fries.
WHY THE FUCK WOULD ANY STUDENT IN THE US EVEN CONSIDER SPENDING 4 FUCKING YEARS, $40,000+ DOLLARS, 1.5 YEARS OF JOB SEARCHING TO EARN $10.50 AND HOUR ON A LEVEL 1 HELP DESK!? THAT'S THE REASON YOU FUCKING ROCKET SCIENTISTS TURNED REPORTS!!!
I've been in this shit for over a decade and I tell you this in very simple terms:
Computer Science as an industry is following that of the TV and VCR repair men. When TVs and VCRs are expensive they get em fixed. When they're cheap, they replace them. Computers are less and less a science as the hardware and software gets easier to install and maintain. Even computer programming is becoming more and more accessable to people as the higher level languages become more user-friendly.
Early on there was Computer Science. Now they have splintered into various factions like various specialized sciences following certain areas, (MIS,IT,DBAs,Programming, etc.) Because they is less and less need for the broad generalized Computer Science types enrollment would obviously go down. Just because TVs got cheap doesn't mean that electrical engineers demand went down or that scientists that research phosphates and optics are losing pay and prestige, but how many people in the last 20 years have a SMALL ELECTRONICS degree? Hell do they even offer that anymore?
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"Goodbye to all those who just wanted to get rich quick. "
Because we all know those are the only jobs going overseas.
"I look forward to working with you brave students who are chosing your career based on a love of technology."
Stock up on Pepto Bismol, Rocket Man. You're going to need it.
Employment stats check the unemployment/retraining section local to your area, it may be that things are finally turning around.
Also, we're having trouble finding testers.
As someone who hires IT folks...I'm not sure that CS degrees actually correlate with "Computer Career" right now.
Some of the best and brightest SAs/DBAs/Operators/Developers I work with have degrees in all sorts of completely unrelated things. For whatever reason, CS and related degrees didn't appeal to the same spark that makes them "good".
On the other hand, some of the worst people have had MIS degrees.
Whatever these chillun's are learning, the best prep for a career in computing still seems to be making your games work b/t ages 12-21. The real indicator of how advanced we'll be in 10 years is the current ratio of solid-state console gaming to PC based gaming!
So I can see my career go to India or China?
Better off getting a degree in something useful and just knowing IT and CS. That's what I did, and I do development for a living (while it lasts); and I have a real degree to fall back on when my job gets outsourced.
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
Because you can't get a fuc|ing job to save your g0ddamn life, and if you do, it's working for fuc|tards who have no idea how trained and skilled you are.
Kids... forget computers. Completely.
Become engineers and program only when it applies to your project.
Save yourself from the frigging YEARS of torment I have put myself through. Nothing like being unemployed (from your field) for 3 years to make you bitter.
Eh, who cares, I'm going to grad school.
In other news, research has shown that the latest trend is a Masters in Business Administration.
Many people throughout the country are enrolling in MBA programs, with dreams of getting rich quick (at an $60,000 pricetag).
I can't wait till these guys get out of school and find that the next logical round of outsourcing is to outsource many of the Business Administrators. It's a cost cutting measure, and fixes many of the communication problems that happen when the Managers live on a different continent from the Engineers.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
I think it is important to be accurate with with our language. IT is not CS. The terms are related, not interchangeable. A graduate of Devry does serve the same function as a graduate of MIT. Sometimes it is useful to talk about fruit, and sometimes we need to differentiate between apples and oranges in order to have an intelligent conversation.
"thats why no one whats to work in it. low pay, high pressure and no job security."
Sounds like marriage.
It's interesting, people say adapt or die, and that's true. But the choices facing my generation in the US are pretty poor. The technical fields are going overseas. What's left for the nerds out there?
This is Rajesh. He's just replaced you.
This is complete bullshit. Look at how all the CEOs are complaining about lack of CS graduates here in US. Its quite simple. When they move the jobs to india/china they can say that they we dont have enough people here. Just look at the layoffs. This is a delibrate attempt by these people to keep putting out these kinds of reports.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
A lot of people were taking CS majors in 2000 because the perception (somewhat true) was that being a CS major alone was enough to get recruited, then you could quit school and make a load of cash.
Now of course you have actually finish your course work, and even then there's no overpaying job waiting for you, even though I'm sure you'll find a job.
A lot of guys at my school picked CS because they figured they'd get rich quick, they didn't love it. I've always thought that if you love what you do and you're good at it, you'll do alright in life.
insert inflammatory anti-microsoft comment here
Supply goes down.
But even myself, I am looking towards getting a PhD in economics compared to furthering my career in computers. i know the skills to get work done, it simply doesn't interest me anymore.
meh
I'm 1 year away from graduated with a double major in CS and German (and not overworked... where are all these other people coming from?)
I'm paying just 6000 a year for my education
I'm working at a local software firm as a programmer as an intern for 11 bucks an hour (not exactly minimum wage) and yes, I get free soda. Set my own hours, too. This company has hired every intern they've had since they started (about 4 before me, so far).
So... where's the problem? I think the people who find CS courses exceedingly difficult may be in the wrong major...
Is it the computer science I learned, ie how to turn an undergraduate into a graduate student? Where everything is theoretical because that's how they like their graduate students?
Or are we talking about a DBA? Or someone to make sure your Exchange Server is up and running?
Computer Science at MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford, Berkeley etc isn't about learning how to be a DBA, its about acquiring the tools necessary to do research at a higher level. Who needs an algorithms class when you can just use the sort functions available in VC++? Or who needs to read a research paper about ISAM or BSTs when its already implemented and ready to use in SQL Server?
I'm reminded of "Profession" by Asimov. Is the purpose of higher education simply to show people tools and how they work so they can have a skill or to teach people why the tools are they way they are and (hopefully) help them to make the tools better? To me CS has always been the latter.
Note, this is not a put down to DBAs, sysadmins, etc. They have their own creativity and processes that I admire and respect.
"After all, who doesn't think the IT folks in their office are the most valuable of the bunch?"
Uhhhh.... Maybe all the CEOs who are moving our jobs to Bangalore?
There is a _huge_ difference between CS and IT.
CS is a lot more theoretical, and has a much larger emphasis on algorithms and underlying system operations. It's a hard science and requires, at times, some pretty hard classes. From my point of view, it's a lot more about direct problem solving and analysis than IT.
IT is more about making stuff that CS people write fit together. It's not even close to a pure science or engineering field. I'd liken it to more of an implemntation type of thing. And yes, it's definitely easier than CS.
MIT, CalTech, WPI, etc...this is science. DeVry...that's IT.
I absolutely hate it when people think that the two are one in the same, because they're not.
This isn't to say I would _not_ recommend either IT or CS as a major, however. One thing I do suggest to everyone is to study what you love to do. Going into ANY field for the money is just insane. Also, always think about a minor or doing a double major in something else you like as a backup.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
I find it silly that multi-billion dollar corporations think that there's a shortage of creative people out there willing to work in Computer Science. I would think the answer would be obvious. CUT PROFITS, FUND SCHOLORSHIPS AND RESEARCH GRANTS YOURSELF. Don't wait for a government that you're already avoiding paying taxes to to spend taxes taken from poorer people on R&D. Don't expect that just because you can get a coder in Bangalore for $2.50/hr that you can hire somebody in Seattle for the same price. And if you want loyalty from your employees, you need to show loyalty to your employees- by banking their salary several years in advance so that you don't have to lay people off when you hit a rough patch. THAT is the cost of having good people- so don't come whining to us that you can't hire people if you're not willing to pay for the cost of educating them.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I think the biggest problem is that the average high school senior actually beleives that going into computer science means that he is going to learn how to make web pages.
Who wants to study CS when their jobs are being outsourced to India anyway?
:-)
It's a chance to travel and get to know other cultures
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Maybe its just my school but the Computer Science department has a way of weeding out the people who aren't really interested in the subject. So heres my theory. As more and more people drop the subject all we have left are those who are good and interested in it. Therefore the quality of the applicants in the (addmitedly decreasing number of )jobs increases. Which might lead to an increase in demand for American IT and CS graduates.
... enlighten me which is different - please.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Is this a fluff piece? I noticed they are running online degree ads with it. hmmmm...
"Which schools produced the most degrees in computer science in 2001?" "try Strayer University and DeVry" "And what kind of student is most likely to take up computer science at Strayer or DeVry?" "try a 35-year-old African American or Hispanic woman"
Or could it be that these edu-businesses target minorities? They target people who want to do better and are willing to pay for it. This sounds more dispicable than anything else!!!
When Bill Gates and people like him say we need more CS grads (not that I believe them) they mean from REAL universities. Not these edu-businesses with no or little entry requirements.
It just kills me that places like DeVry, ITT, Strayer, etc. take advantage of people the way they do!
In one of my senior CS courses, the professor asked what the department could do that would make things better for the educational experience. He was expecting things like more course offerings, more focus on newer languages and approaches, stuff like that. The response that resounded with too many of the students was that the professors should do a better job at helping the students learn how to translate a project specification into code.
Basically he wanted the professors to hold his hand through the process of learning how to code. Not just do a better job at explaining Java, C++, etc., but rather teach time and again the basics of actually reading instructions and writing a program that implements them.
About half of our classes that use Java have a week of remedial Java. There is no "you ought to know it by now" in them. Consequently, I just skip the first week of my CS classes that aren't purely theory classes like ones on operating systems and algorithm design. We're talking junior level classes and people still sometimes struggle with basic Java and C++. It was a mind fuck for many of them to reach the operating systems class and have to *drum roll* LEARN C ALL BY THEIRSELVES except with a basic overview of the differences between it and C++ - which most of them never really learned at all in their sophomore year.
Needless to say, my response was "we need a mandatory design patterns class for the sophomores" which caused several of the better coders in the class to agree with. People can make the excuse that CS is about a lot more than coding, but it really isn't. If you can't code worth a damn, you have no business being in Computer Science because you're either cut out for engineering, networking or nothing related to IT altogether.
Seriously, I'm not a prodigy or anything, but I can code pretty well. It's disturbing when I see people with 3.9 major GPAs in CS who can't find less than a dozen ANSI C file I/O functions within 5 minutes of a Google search. I had to listen to one of our "uber-elite" female coders complain about how hard C is to learn for the first time, even though she had a 3.9 GPA and had taken probably 15-21 credits of classes that revolved around derivatives of C. Then I get called an elitist because my attitude is that since C is a subset of C++, and you have to take a class that uses C++ exclusively, that you shouldn't be spending hours learning the basics of C. It shouldn't be hard for anyone who reachs their senior year in CS, it's not like the projects were kernel level stuff. The most complicated project we did was write a "shell" that did little more than fork a process.
The problem, I think, is that so many American kids want to have it all spoonfed to them. They don't want to learn stuff outside of class. Most of them don't even really like what they're doing for that matter! Let the numbers slow down, maybe it'll be good for those of us who, regardless of skill level, care about it and enjoy it. Mark my words, eventually India will have the same problem and the types of cheap Indian coders, who are not inherently any better than Americans, will resemble the US. There will be the legions of certificate holders who have no natural inclination or skill toward the field except their pay check and there will be those who do care. In the end, things will balance out... or American business will choose tons of cheap, shitty coders, get thrashed like they deserve and we'll get to say "I told you so."
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
For the most part, the math part of CS is completely useless unless you're doing something in a field which specifically requires it, i.e. fluid dynamics. I started out as a engineering tech and can do circuit analysis and whatnot, but when I went back for CS the math requirements kicked my ass. I left for a cool job in NYC doing video editing, which I knew a lot about and required only timecode math and hex. So it depends on where you want to work. For some things you really need that math, but you're doing a database? No.
So go back and take all the programming courses you can, and other intersting things, and then go get a job. Do not let it stop you if you're interested in programming.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
When I was looking at schools and finally settled on a dual program in Physics and Electrical/Computer Engineering, I researched the CS program at the university I am currently attending, I found that the program was (perversely) a Software Engineering Lite. You actually learn more useful stuff in Software Engineering. (Flamebait protection: it is altogether possible that this is unique to my school, as it is known for it's engineering curriculum...I didn't start looking into a second major in the computing field until my Sophomore year, so I didn't look at how other schools did things)
I decided to go into ECE because (at my uni) it is closest to the program my dad did in college, it is a nice blend of software and electrical engineering. You learn the skills needed to design and produce software applications, as well as the skills to design systems that better fit the needs of a certain project.
A tip to anyone considering double majors where either is an Engineering or hard science: do it before your Sophomore year!
#define CLUE 0
As a recent graduate (okay, I graduated over a year ago) and as someone who works at a software company, I have to say that if I could do it all over again I'd do anything but CS. Most universities offer MIS programs, etc, that will put you into the tech field without nessicarly being a programmer, etc. But, heck, if I had skipped the four years of college I'd probably be a junior manager at walmart by now.
With jobs going overseas, and the supply of programmers heavily outweighing the demand, I don't see any reason for anyone to be intrested in CS at all.
When I hear Gates talk about lack of tallent within the US, I really have to say "who cares". The bottom line is that less than 1% of CS majors are going to be of the caliber of programmer that Gates is talking about, but what about the rest of us 99%ers? We have the joy of fighting tooth and nail for a job, then we have the joy of not getting the dream salaries that were touted in the 90s, and then to top it off we get to fight off competition for overseas that can do our work at a third of the cost because of living expenses overseas.
Back in the day it use to be cool to be a programmer. Now when someone says that I have to feel a little bit sorry for me.
Your mammas flamebait.
The destruction of a value which is, will not bring value to that which isn't
Comma ? Hmmm. Destroys all the impact of that nice short article.
I don't know what you're all talking about. I graduated with a CS degree just over a year ago, and I'm already pulling in a six-figure salary. Perhaps you people should look at the facts a little more before making wild conjectures about how allegedly deplorable the CS world is in the U.S.
Is the article talking about IT or CS degrees?
As Dijkstra said, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
I, for one, love working on computer science, but am only somewhat interested in working on computers.
Their Computer Science department acts like a bunch of elitest pricks when it comes to acceptence.
(The following is true of when I was applying a year ago)
Their applications form is SECRET and only available online for two weeks, during which you have to fill it out, answering all of their questions, and turn it back in.
How selective are they? Stories of students with a 4.0 GPA not being accepted into the school (transfering from Community College) abound. I knew students with a 3.4/3.5 GPA who were not accepted. Insane.
To have a snowballs chance in hell of getting into the department you had best have all of your math and science courses completed, the department apparently did NOT want anyone who would take any more than the minimum amount of time coming in there.
Still with all of these rules and regulations in place the department "has to" turn down dozens of students (if not hundreds...) every year.
Fuck, how do you EXPECT students to go into CS with that type of a bull-shit attitutude?
Compare this to Western Washington University, go up there, hey look, the head of the department met with me, teaches a transition course for students over the summer (and offers to, for free, go over material online with students as well who are not yet enrolled but plan on doing so) so that they can suceed in the department, and all in all, the entire department treats their students like actual people rather than machines.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
And when you're asked "how come the DB is so slow", you won't have the math to do a Big-O time analysis of your DB search/access algorithms.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
More importantly, IT != CS. There are a lot of people who may have CS on their degree and have taken nothing but programming courses. (perhaps a little more) On top of that, they likely have seen a single platform and no more than a couple of languages. (there's nothing like painting yourself into a corner before your first interview, let alone your first job)
If someone's walking into an interview with Computer Science on their diploma, I'm expecting them to have taken some math - not just calculus or differential equations. Something like abstract algebra with some group theory. Have they even heard of Evariste Galois or Paul Erdos? Have they written a compiler? A device driver? At least [written] some semblance of an operating system? (even if it's a tiny os) Have they taken any hardware courses? Even an introductory electronics or interfacing course. How about learning assembly language | assembler? Have they learned a couple of languages which are on different branches of the "family tree"? Even though the underlying philosophy is different, c and c++ are cousins, but what about adding LISP, COBOL, FORTH, APL? They don't have to have a black belt in them, but at least enough exposure that they aren't going to fall into the mode of "when you give a little boy a hammer, everything in the world looks like a nail".
And while we're at it, what courses have they taken which aren't CS or even science in general? History? Literature? Can they write? Not just documentation. If I need a paper written which will provide a client with what we consider to be the right direction to go, can I rely upon them to actually communicate with someone who isn't a bit twiddler (or what some call a bithead - although this term is generally a pejorative). Can they get up in front of even a small group (although sometimes that's tougher) and make a presentation in the same fashion?
I could go on & on, but even if the job doesn't call for all of those skills, if a CS degree walks in the door, I'm going to expect CS skills to walk in with the diploma.
And for the naysayers who think one doesn't need all of that, perhaps you don't need everything. But it'll never hurt you...except to be overqualified. And when you have to deal with the current issue of offshore outsourcing (it's not all that long ago but outsourcing meant someone not on the payroll doing the work - usually someone local; e.g. contractors, consultants, software whores), such as what's going on now, you'll be much better off when it comes to self-sufficiency. Starting out on your own and creating your own startup. There's still pressure, but it's a lot different. And for the most part, a lot more fun.
p.s. I graduated with all of the things I listed and a few more over twenty years ago. There's no reason it shouldn't work for someone else now. It's better to be prepared while you have the time. And whilst you're paying for it, you might as well get your money's worth.
the math part of CS is completely useless
I disagree. I think the maths courses weed out the folks like yourself who aren't actually interested in CS to begin with. If you don't enjoy computation, you certainly won't enjoy computer programming.
What I find amazing is how little a CS degree gets you on it's own.
Do a little search on monster.com or the liking, pick any tech related job. Look at the requirements. None of them are fufilled by a CS degree.
The ammount of therory in CS is what is killing these programs. What is needed is job training. You can graduate from a school like WPI with a degree in CS without knowing how to write a VB app. It's pretty sickening.
While I sure did enjoy Big O notation, learning how to write perl scripts would have been 3 trillion times more valuible.
I'll be the first to agree that a solid education has it's roots in therory, a solid job in computers has it's roots in application.
Why are we falling behind the Indias, etc? Because a bachelors in CS gives you no solid ground to become a good canidate for the types of programmers that are in demand these days.
Your mammas flamebait.
That's nice for the jobs, but they never send you postcards after they leave.
Your courageous and selfless spelling corrections have made me a better person.
1997 - graduated with bachelor's in Communication
1997 to 2000 - entered tech field during boom, liked it, thrived on it, wanted to dig in
2000 through 2003 - back to school (people told me I was crazy for quitting my job), tech freelancer
2003 - graduated master's CS, full time employment
2005 - web applications architect
For me, it was a matter of being given an opportunity to enter the tech field and discovering I thrive there. I give a lot of credit to my first sys admin boss who taught me from the ground up. Returning to school was about getting the theory and structure behind what I learned hands-on.
I'm not a natural; I needed those years on the job to get a taste before I could apply myself academically.
Science is about what is, not what we believe or hope. -- Dr. Lonnie Thompson, glaciologist, Ohio State University
When they talk about Computer Science sliding are they including Software Engineering.
It seems to me that if I were entering college and wanted to be a computer programmer these days, I'd take a software engineering courseload.
Computer science, in my perception, is more academic, research oriented, ivory tower stuff while the real work is getting done in software engineering.
Again, that's just my impression, but also my guess as to why computer science enrollment is dropping.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
I've been in IT since part way thru my military years, and I've switched over to Bioinformatics and am now pursuing a PhD in Economics, since I already have a post-grad certificate in Data Resource Management and don't think IT has any real promise by itself.
Fortune agrees with me that what the US needs are PhDs, and probably not IT ones. You can either get on board a sinking ship, or you can start building a better boat.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What exactly certifies you to be dictating the curiculum for convocating from University with a CS degree?
If you can't hack it, it's your own fault. Put up or shut up, because a degree is no small thing.
When I went into College 1997 There were 2 Computer Majors. Computer Science, and Computer Engineering. Because I wanted to focus more in software so I took Computer Science. By the time I graduated in 2001 we had Computer Science, Computer Engineering, MIS (for business focus), IT (Which focuses on job based IT jobs, with Web Pages, and small programming, and networking). Then later on I see other Majors popping up In Administration, Networking, Computer Security. So for some of these people they are taking other majors that better train them for the jobs they want to do. It is also an issue the job market for IT is not as stuffy on what degrees you have for an IT job, experience is far more important then the piece of paper you have. Third which has been stated Computer Science is no longer as glamorous.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
For the most part, the math part of CS is completely useless unless you're doing something in a field which specifically requires it, i.e. fluid dynamics.
This, I believe, is ultimately why I abandoned the CS degree path as an undergrad and focused on a major in the arts instead.
I came into college with a year of high school AB Calculus under my belt, but in order to graduate with a BA in CS I would have had to slog my way through at least two more semesters' worth of tedious problem sets, and unless I got into 3D modeling it wasn't even going to be applicable to the code I'd be developing anyway. I decided I would rather spend my evenings drinking or talking to girls.
TFA isn't really about CS. Mostly they seem to be talking about IT work, and perhaps some programming. Neither of which are really the guts of CS, even if they do get conflated with it on a regular basis. The article makes a big deal out of the fact that DeVry and Strayer are churning out lots of "CS" graduates compared to traditional CS programs. But both of those institutions provide vocational training, and quite clearly cater to a different market than the 4-year colleges. I don't know about Strayer, but DeVry (according to their website) doesn't even offer a "Computer Science" degree, just degrees in "Computer Engineering Technology" and "Computer Information Systems".
This study is only confirming the worst fears of academia. The bubble of 2000 is still contracting and its effects will soon be felt by the academics. We are talking about whole computer science departments evaporating. Your third tier schools will simply loose their programs; the second tier schools will see signficantly reduced faculty head-count; the top-tier schools won't be affected -- for now.
The main trouble is that most CS Departments are in an "enrollment free-fall" and they don't know where it will bottom out. I know that two years ago the institution at which I taught had a healthy MS and PhD program populated largely by foreign nationals. Immigration rules and procedures reduced enrollments *significantly*. Yet we have a huge faculty (22 tenure track.) AND the undergraduate program enrollment dropped by 2/3. Tell ya guys, you don't need many profs. if you don't have the students. This particular study will be read by deans, provosts, and college presidents. They will put their money where there is growth. And it ain't in CS.
Take that CS degree and head into a Project Mgmt or Business Analysis field. We can outsource "code monkey" jobs all day, but I believe there will always be a need for smart, technically-educated, AMERICANS in AMERICAN businesses. (or Germans in German businesses, etc) I don't mind the inherent problems in outsoucing (language barriers, time differences) in programmers, but you simply cannot effectively communicate business needs (and in turn translate them into specifications) if you can not communicate effectively. Now, the only problem is that PM and BA work is mind-numblingly boring. ... and when it's not boring, it's just plain frustrating.
Code for fun. Work to make money to have more fun.
In my area (midwest), a lot of the positions requiring a CS degree are hiring for these same kinds of positions- at least as far as the J2EE stuf f is concerned. I'm not sure what they're thinking- I seriously doubt that a J2EE installation is going to be the site of a "next great enlightenment" where something technically obscure and marginally useful is going to be discovered.
So what about business degrees in Information Systems? Better or worse?
What's surprising about this? Looking at CS, I've wondered what people did in the past with new technologies. Did ancient Rome have plumbing professors? Did Oxford have a Cotton-milling Science department in the 1800's? I can just imagine the help-wanted ads for "Rock Star" toilet mechanics way back when.
There were periods when railroads, electricity, steam engines, bicycles, and the like were considered paradigm-changing technologies, worthy of study at the highest level, but they've gradually settled down into a few hardcore academic subjects (eg Mechanical Engineering), and a wide range of skilled trades (Mechanic, Electrician, Plumber). As the pace of innovation slows, the need for on-the-spot engineering diminishes, and the main skill is in applying standards and more static design principles, in the most efficient (labor-wise) and reliable way possible.
My guess is that, in the worst case, CS will be gradually whittled down until it has only a few active areas of research, and end up merged with EE as many colleges already have. Perhaps someday both will disappear into a more general engineering discipline, or will be dropped altogether.
---- "If we have to go on with these damned quantum jumps, then I'm sorry that I ever got involved" - Erwin Schrodinger
Having recently graduated from a rather rigorous undergraduate institution with a degree in CS, and planing on going into the Ph.D. program at another well-respected school this fall, I find myself taking the "science" part of "computer science" pretty seriously. Somebody more famous than me once said, "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes, biology is about microscopes, or chemistry is about beakers and test tubes." That might not be strictly true, but it's the right idea. In my mind, being a computer scientist implies that one is engaged in real scientific research. A degree in computer science should come with an understanding of the history and theory behind the actual systems we use every day, an awareness of the open issues in the field, etc.
Somehow I get the idea (and feel free to correct me if you know better) that a "CS" degree from DeVry might not match my understanding of the term. That's not to say that there isn't a place for this sort of education -- I'm all in favor of competent entry-level programmers, web designers, DBAs, whatever it is that DeVry actually trains one to be. But to use a (probably flawed) analogy to other disciplines, this sort of education is to CS as auto repair is to engineering. It takes a not insignificant amount of skill and knowledge to be a decent auto mechanic; I'm not trying to knock DeVry graduates. But I wouldn't expect a mechanic to be able to do fundamentally new things in the space of automotive design any more than I would expect a DeVry CS major to do real computer science.
(Yeah, I have some idea of how pretentious and condescending that sounds. Go ahead and mod me down.)
Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.
For the most part, the math part of CS is completely useless unless you're doing something in a field which specifically requires it, i.e. fluid dynamics.
You talking about calculus or basic computability theory?
I rather like that I could authoritatively tell my boss that no, I could not scale up a particular matching problem, one I was solving with brute force, up to to the larger data set of about 10000 times more data, because it was NP-complete -- specifically, that it looked like maximal clique.
You don't always need to apply theory to a problem -- sometimes you just have to recognize it.
I am no longer wasting my time with slashdot
I work in the games industry as a programmer, and am generally leery of people with CS degrees.
On our programming test, we have simple question: implement char *strcpy(char *dest, char *src). Physicists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, and various other engineering majors seem to have no problem with this... which leads to various followup questions about optimization, memory use, pointers, etc.
One applicant with a 4-year CS degree asked us if he could use C++. "Sure... I guess," I replied.
So, after considerable time, he proceeded to write:
char *strcpy(char *dest, char *src)
{
char *dest;
dest = new char[strlen(src)];
strcpy(dest, src);
return;
}
When I asked him if he saw any mistakes that he would like to correct (as I do with all applicants regardless of errors), he added the following line at the top and then said "done".
#include "string.h"
He didn't win the job, but he did win the award for highest density of errors in 3 lines of code.
For the past five years, all we've heard about is the threat of 'offshoring' IT work - and I'm convinced a big reason for this was as a 'bargaining' tool for HR depts. to use to drive down IT salaries.
IMO, the 'threat' was much less then we've been lead to believe, and recent articles such as this Tech skills pulling in more pay seem to support that. (After all, the IT industry has been through this before in the late-80's and early-90's. Back then the 'enabler' was supposed to be cheap international phone rates and trans-oceanic data lines, now it's supposed to be the cheap and ubiquitous internet. It failed back then because, as now, developing software or complex IT infrastructure is not like putting together brake assemblies.).
Funny thing about that is, if offshoring by-and-large fails (which I'm convinced it will for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that wages are skyrocketing for IT workers in most other countries), the management geniouses in the U.S. are actually exacerbating the situation by trumpeting 'offshoring', driving skilled labor from the industry and convincing young minds-full-of-mush that there is no future in IT.
Mental Note: Be wary of management pissed off because some 'geek' is taking home more then them (while they conveniently forget that most of those geeks work twice the hours mgmt. does).
PS: I originally saw the link about on the MSN.com website. Most stories from CNET stay linked for at least a day on that site. This one was linked for 4 hours at the most.. Hmmm, odd how the (very) occasional contra-offshoring story get almost little or no exposure..
Yes, the CS dept. at UW is choosy. They value quality over quantity in their students - they weed out the subpar programmers or lazy kids who just think CS is the ticket to a fat paycheck (although there's far fewer of those these days.) It's how they keep the department's reputation intact and permit classes to stay relatively small and personal. They also, however, try to weed out people who are only good at getting good grades or who don't come off as having genuine academic interest in the field, which is why even people with high grades get booted sometimes.
One suggestion: talk to your TAs and professors. Get them to know you, so you stand out from the huge crowd in CSE 142/3. Some of them could be serving on the admissions committee, and could vouch for you being smart, actively involved, etc.
but how many people in the last 20 years have a SMALL ELECTRONICS degree? Hell do they even offer that anymore?
Do you mean Electronics Engineering as in (eggheads who among other things) design analog circuits for signal processing? That is still a very lively field. Of course these days they spend alot more time programming and working with digitized signals than they do building classic analog circuits. Alot of the guys I went to school with who took this speciality were taught alot of classical analog circuitry wisdom but ended up spending most of their time implementing say a bandpass filter to get rid of unwanted transient noise by programming a DSP and passing the signal through it rather than putting together a pure analog solution. The field still exists it has merely changed... alot!
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
I'm a little uncomfortable that even here on Slashdot, the terms 'IT' and 'computer science' get liberally mixed together as if they are interchangable terms.
'IT' is about people who shuffle around business information. And maintain printers and networks and mundane tasks. Data janitors, basically.
'Computer science' is about algorithms, the theory of data structures, etc (and 'paradigms' of objected oriented what-not and fad trends, of course).
They aren't interchangable terms.
It may be that "the best people" form a bi-modal distribution: those who feel the road to happiness lies in having more money (money == equipment [toys] for cool things), and those who feel it lies in having more time (time == freedom for cool things).
I feel working in software is the best of both worlds: being paid lots of money to do the things I want to do anyway, i.e. tinker and hack. I still recommend CS as an undergraduate major to smart people who like to tinker.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
I keep hearing people are dropping out of CS, yet academics would like more people to join. Does that mean people like my self (who slacked off badly in undergrad C.S.) will have better chances of getting into good comp. sci. grad programs?
Acually, I know of a lot of HS graduates (including myself) that are scared away from CS because of the outsourcing.
#1, can the language- I think the parent should have been modded down on that alone.
#2:
Ken P. IT/MIS Automation Consultant
Pretty funny hearing an automation consultant speaking on this subject.
Please help metamoderate.
I can see why so many American Students don't want to take out many many thousands in student loans to enter an industry that offers instability, layoffs, and Bangalore wages (Pretty hard to pay off your education at that rate)
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
Somebody who loves computer science, like myself. I will be a freshman in the fall studying computer science. Computer science is a very interesting topic to study and to research, which is what I intend to do once I'm done with college.
And not all jobs that require a computer science degree will be outsourced to India and China. We still need computer science researchers and professors. There will always be somebody trying to advance the field. I just find computer science to be a very interesting field to study. I'm in it because I love the topic and I can't imagine doing anything else. I don't expect a $100,000 salary and a BMW and a house in the Bay Area.
No, bad monkey! No banana for you.
The math (among other things) is what separates the Engineers from the Code Monkeys. Writing a simple program rarely requires a good mathematical basis. Your average java-xml-buzzword compliant web app doesn't need them. Welcome to blue-collar coding.
Queueing theory, filtering and FFTs, algorithms and complexity, physics simulation (think games), priority scheduling, error detection and correction, high availability, and so on, these things require you to understand more than code. It requires you to be an engineer, not a typist. To design things properly, to understand the implications of complex interactions, runtimes, hash collision probabilities, statistical breakdowns,... y'know, real math.
Barbie: Math class is hard.
Engineering is hard too, baby.
Actually, transformers transform.
Keep up the good work. I hope you're an intellectual armchair marxist. Otherwise, GET OUT THERE AND SELL YOUR PAPERS, dude.
Kids like me don't want to take four semesters of calculus, two semesters of physics, two electronic circuit classes, and two electromagnetism classes. Not to mention many of the electives that were 4 credits back in the day are not 3 credits, making us take even more classes.
So the question arises: Why be an Engineer when you can get your MBA sooner and manage a whole project and let the few nerds sitting in the front row do the dirty work?
What is the incentive for the person who is merely looking for a buck rather than pursuing their passion?
It ain't as cool to be a computer nerd as it used to be. Which is really a good thing for those of us who date back to when nerds couldn't skate or dress cool or get girlfriends but just liked to play around with machine code monitors and ARP tables. Now I need to get back to my RazorBBS server...
Repeat after me: IT is not CS.
Djikstra said: Computer Science is as much about computers as astronmy is about telescopes.
Perhaps that's one of the many reasons why it's among the nation's top 10 universities for a PhD in Computer Sciences.
Actually, I write the sort function, and I dropped out of high school.
There is no science in "computer science". The name is completely wrong. The whole information technology (IT) development is based on ideas, axioms, algorithms. Like math, for example. Math is no science either. For something to be a science we have to have a natural environment to be tested with theories and experiments. Biology, chemistry, physics, these are sciences. IT may be based on results from scientists, but that does not make IT a science. A biologist is a scientist, a physician is not. A physicist is a scientist, an engineer is not.
Information technology (IT) is a perfect term. Computer Science is like calling astrology a science. Sadly the appreciation for science in the US is so low that even the name has no meaning in the media anymore. Time to change that. Send your kids to schools with physics, biology, chemistry, and geology classes, instead of a blurb called "science" class. In most countries people do not use the term "computer science" for information technology. They also appreciate science a bit more. See for example section "Other greats" at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4631421.stm
I am currently majoring in Software Engineering . I have found that students are still enthusiastic about the technology related fields.
The only difference is, most students get into CompSci thinking that they will be doing "fun" stuff like programming all day. However, most of the CS program is hard-core math (for me it is about 80%). That is one of the reason many people find CS courses "irrelevant" cuz it is not programming.
Secondly, people have a hard time finding job as programmers because there is so much you can do being "just" a programmer. The only jobs that require only programming skills are help/support/QA style jobs. If you need to go higher, you will need to specialize in something else too.. like Business Management, Physical/Bio sciences etc. Remember that computer is just a "tool" to solve problems. You need to find the problems yourself.
Finally, there is market for Computer Scientist. Areas like AI, Human-Computer Interface, Graphics etc still have along way to go. However, I do agree that you won't be making $100K per year with a community college diploma in web-design.
"I decided I would rather spend my evenings drinking or talking to girls."
...so that ma pointer isn't left dangling. me really needs to add some nodes to ma list...me needs to create some baby objects which look just like me..
so...how's life as a pimp ? can ya get me something brother ? me is tired of allocating memory for ma pointer all by mah-self...me needs someone else to do it for me
You go into your first CS class as a freshman. Something like CS101 - Intro to Java, and you get some guy like Sanji Akawhatever. It's an 8AM class, and the guy babbles though basic stuff in the 100 words of english he can speak. You end up going about 5 times the whole semester, still manage an A because really, the class doesn't matter. He doesn't keep up on handed in assignments, and what test there are, are a joke.
Next semster you have two other classes, with professors with names you can pronounce, and accents you can't understand anyways. While all your friends are doing other interesting classes, you're sitting in CS102 - Computer Arch. which the professor is going page by page. It has taken him two weeks to tell you how a CD stores information. Meanwhile, you're sitting next to some hardcore linux nerd, who keeps telling you about the great things about his distro of choice, and saying he doesn't have to do any work, because he knows everything(note he fails any assignment that's handed out, with some 30 minute explaination on why).
Your friends are starting to do even interesting stuff, and you're sitting in classes(if you actually manage to go to them) that are just tedious to even follow. You start looking up fall classes and go "I want to put up with this shit for 3+ more years? Hell no" and go back in the fall with a new major.
I've seen the situation way too many times to just pass it off as antidotal. Maybe if schools would hire professors that actually knew what they were doing, and not make it a total waste to go, more people wouldn't leave the major.
CS is useless. The course work is trivial, at best, and antequated even at the time you are a freshman. When you've paid your $10,000's and get your piece of paper, you suddenly discover that your skills aren't in demand and your are woefully inexperienced.
Academia moves at a snail's pace. It simply cannot keep up with a progressive industry. College is, at best, three years behind the curve. Why, please tell me, would you pay for old & irrelevant courses on a topic that your professors often know little about (application, not theory).
I'm more interested in CS employment figures than schooling or training. We (my team) laugh at most applicants that have a masters degree in CS... not because of the degree, but lack of usable experience. Great, a degree... but can you solve a real-world problem? No? Next applicant.
In all fairness, CalTech has an exceptional CS department... but they are still behind the times. Too much theorizing on ideal programming practices than actual use. Linked lists... do something productive with them dammit. STL? Stop evangelizing. Java? Again, this is school, not church. Offer Java classes, but don't force the curriculum in that direction. If it were about "proper" object orientation then schools should at least offer a class in Python, but it's not. It's almost like there's an agenda to endorse topics without significant reason.
College needs dramatic alteration. Courses that actually make you think and involve you... not a lecture on 1980's technology dictated by an old & antequated professor. I'd take a C++ class by DJ Bernstein over a professor any day... and I'd learn so much more.
I'm always amazed by the people who think math is unnecessary. It must seem that way if you're so poor at it that you can't even recognize its uses. And I'm not necessarily talking about you - I'm just picking up on your example to point out that mathematics is ubiquitous if you just open your eyes. And ironically, it's often the fun software (eg. games, video/movie visual effects) that uses it the most.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
You mean people are actually do not want to live their lives as a code monkey in a cubicle for huge IT corporations ?! Because that's what Bill Gates wants and needs, right? Sun, too. Heck, they even design language so that you can have code monkeys cheap:
From Why Java is not my Favorite Language
How about some OOP with prototypes with multmethod dispatch for a change?
Main difference between the BSD license and the GPL license: one is from California and the other is from Massachusetts
It's always fascinating to hear people say we don't need as much understanding of CS these days, because all the outsourced code monkeys can do the mainstream programming, and no-one using programming incidentally needs that depth of understanding anyway.
Then they ask why software today seems to run slower than it did a decade ago despite hardware being orders of magnitude faster, complain about how everything on the Internet is insecure and they keep getting junk mail, wonder why web sites get Slashdotted so easily, get disappointed by the dumb actions of computer opponents in games, use grammar checkers that produce worse documents than they started with...
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The way to thrive in software is to get into the weapons ("defense") business.
I've been in it since 1990, and I've had steady employment, and rising wages. The working hours are sometimes bad, but mostly bearable.
Because of the large, long term contracts, the business is insulated from the highs and lows of the commercial world, and because of security requirements, it is insulated from off-shoring. During the dot-com bubble the job prospects were better in the commercial world, but apart from that, they've mostly been best in weapons.
Oh, as for technical interest, I would say that when I got into weapons in the 90's, the technology was more interesting than in the commercial world (because of the challenges of real-time systems). These days commercial technology (the web, databases, Linux, Windows) is probably more interesting. One factor in favor of this business is that program correctness is valued more than time-to-market - I would hate to have to churn out second-rate work to meet market deadlines.
The main downside is that once you're in it, it's very had to get out.
I'm a software visionary. I don't code.
There certainly is science in CS.
Yes, programming and software engineering isn't science, as you say - but that's not what computer science is. Computer science is the study of information management and processing. Fields like data mining, machine learning, and networking actually do employ empirical techniques and experiments on real data. It's not just about coding.
Salaries for Indian software engineers are escalating 30% year-on-year right now and there's a complete feeding frenzy under way as the employers struggle to keep staffed up. Growth there will come to a halt in the next year or two.
Between the inflation in wages and the pressure to revalue the rupee against the dollar, the cost advantage held by Indian outsourcers will evaporate within the next year or two. After that, the CS shortage in the US will begin to pinch badly again.
China will come on stream one of these days, but the language barrier has been proving far more of a barrier than people had expected. The impact of Chinese software engineers, who are also excellent, will be markedly less.
Finally, other parts of the world will begin to compete with the US for the outsource resources in China much more than they did in India. The Europeans are slow, but they're not stupid.
All that edjacation crap is for the birds - Ellison bailed, sodid Gates. Y should any 1 bother with collitch?
Now I'll just fire up my laptop running speculation software I bought on an infomercial, short a bunch of penny stocks I've been pumping for weeks on my spam bots and roll up North in my SUV and take a long weekend where it's k3wl... and some CS grad can ask me about Fries or something like that."
The above is not a troll - just illustrating the mentality of the good old USA, where corporations only exist to benefit stockholders, and people work for wealth, neither providing any goods and/or services to the public commonweal.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
In my first year I signed up for two computer science classes to fill my electives. I'd already done some serious programming thanks to a good teacher in highschool. In grade 11, I chose to program an flight booking system as my final project. When I got to University I was really expecting to be challenged, to learn OO and make the next Microsoft Word.
Bottom line was that the classes were so fucking boring and the teachers so lacking in charisma that I couldn't hack it. The first month was basically about the history of traffic light code. It was like that class-room scene from Ferris Bueller's Day off. I couldn't imagine anybody subjecting themselves to that kind of torture and I vowed to simply learn whatever I needed myself, IF I ever needed it. If the teachers were enthusiastic or sped things along a bit I might have taken a very different path but it was clear that CS was going to be 4 years of unnecessary drudgery and hell. I would suspect that many disgruntled and unemployed CS workers decide to teach, thus ruining it for many people.
So the fact that DeVry is churning out more
graduates than MIT is hardly news worthy imo.
I think the better point to make is the type of grad that DeVry is churning out. I don't think the authors of this article grasp what "computer science" is. I mean, take a look at the article for a second...
Adults, many of them women and minorities, are realizing they have to go out and obtain degrees in computer science to advance or just keep up at the workplace.
Wait a second, is the workplace suddenly requiring that their workers need to know the inefficiencies of a Bubble-Sorting algorithm? Are they expecting their employees to understand that it's a bad idea to short a +5V with a ground without putting at least some kind of load on the circuit? These are some of the things I learned in Computer Science, and I really don't see someone needing to study data structures and how to implement them in C++ or Java in order to succeed in the workplace.
In fact, on DeVry's own list of Undergrad Programs, I don't see Computer Science anywhere. There's "Computer Engineering Technology" (also classified as "Computer Technology"), "Network Administration", and the one that I'm betting the article considers computer science, "Information Technology". The objective's page for IT lists the following concepts taught: "basic foundation in programming, systems analysis and design, database design and management, and networking... Incorporating a strong applications-oriented component...Integrating general education competencies such as applied research, written and oral communication, critical thinking, problem-solving and team skills." I doubt they get any more complex with their studies than what I learned in high school Computer Science class (one sem. VB, one sem. hardware / networking / research).
The article's really twisting the true definition of computer science. Fear not, nerds of the universe, these "35-year-old African American or Hispanic women" tread not on our turf! I'm more afraid about my job being shipped off to India.
please stop comparing enrollment to 2000. The boom caused those number to swell, and as such should be considered an anomoly.
How does 1990->1996 enrollment numbers look compared to 2001->present?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Computer Scientists do not grow trees, it is like any other physical science it requires a certain aptitude to study the subject. People who study any science do not do it for their worth in the market, yes that is a concern but not the main reason I would study a subject.
The real dearth in my opinion is mainly in Phd side, not that many ppl are willing to spend 5 yrs doing one. But again its a question of aptitude.
A seminal article was written by Fred Brooks, of the role of computer scientists as "Tool Smiths". As he says computer science is not a science but an engineering, we apply the field to help solve problems in other fields. http://www.cs.unc.edu/~brooks/Toolsmith-CACM.pdf
This is where the field is maturing, and we are in the most exciting period where more and more people are realizing this. Just look at computational biology or physics.
Wait for the surge in another 2-3 years where the field will start hitting its peak!!!
Computer Science is bleck. I want to be a programmer, and CS does *not* teach you programming. I'm currently going for my bachelor's in Game Design and Development, which fits perfectly because I want to be a game programmer (not a "software engineer").
I think that could be part of the reason of declining numbers is there being alternatives out there now that will teach you programming as a base and theory secondary, rather than theory first, followed by programmer. I know 2nd and 3rd year CS majors that I could EASILY out-code and I'm only in my 5th month at Full Sail.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
> In fact, as the technology-dependent United
> States struggles to stay ahead of the Bangalores
> of the world...
The vast majority of technological innovation still occurs right here in the U.S.; What we
cannot do is compete with the wages that Indians
work for. Most people are attracted to a career
path at least in (large) part because of the
monetary compensation (which is legitimate).
When wages stay flat for 10 years and then
proceed downward, you are not going to draw a
lot of people into the career field. Let's face
it. Software development is hard. Why should
someone do it if they can make 75% of the same
wages doing something that is a lot easier.
In the beginning, most programmers had degrees in computer science and were relatively expensive. They worked in computer rooms and were treated with some degree of grudging respect (although companies never liked having to pay them well, they didn't make too much noise about it).
During the internet boom, several things happened to not just turn over the apple cart, but rather smash it to flinders:
1. Worldwide infrastructure was built out because companies knew they would be able to globalize the labor pool eventually, and they were willing to invest in this;
2. Companies like Microsoft, perceiving both a need and a high demand, worked to make programming more "accessible" to lower-skilled individuals (InDUHviduals, as they are called in Dilbert);
3. The Y2K panic caused all sorts of people who didn't have a strong CS background to jump into the field after totally inadequate training, and this trend virtually exploded when small internet companies started hiring anyone who so much as knew HTML and called them "Developers" and "Webmasters" (this totally devalued the Computer Science degree, as did the wholesale dropping out of school of company founders).
Cue the tech crash. Then, cue 9/11 and the recession.
Corporations now have the infrastructure to offshore whatever they want, and they have the H1-Bs and L-1's to replace people here. They go berserk, contracting out everything tech-oriented, and even start contracting out business functions, legal work, medical transcribing, you name it. If it's portable, it goes.
A few years go by.
Most people, not being totally fucking retarded, realize that they don't want to study computer science as a major anymore. They study something with better prospects, like art or medieval French poetry. A few students go Comp.Sci knowing they'll be unemployed, because they really dig it, and they'll go on to start the Napsters of the future (good for them, I say).
Suddenly, corporations have a problem.
Our colleges don't produce many computer scientists anymore. Those that DO go all the way to the Ph.D aren't Americans -- and they're going back to wherever they came from to start their OWN companies instead of being Good Little Immigrants(tm) and working for a corporation.
Some suit, deep in his six-martini lunch, wonders aloud, "Hey, wait a minute; if all these guys are going home and starting their own companies, and they have access to a really cheap labor pool, and the infrastructure we built up lets him sell his stuff to everybody worldwide, and we trained him and everybody in his neighborhood back home in OUR core business... Wait, I had a thought... What was that... Oh, yeah, so, if this Indian guy Apu, or whatever, does that, then isn't that competition? Like, with US?"
All lunch conversation dries up for a minute. The suits all look at each other.
"Say, old boy" says the Yale Man, "Do you mean that by outsourcing our entire tech staff to India, we trained and prepared this new guy's -- Apu, did you say? -- entire company for him, and at a moment's notice they could all decide to stop working for us and compete with us instead, leaving us gutted without any technical staff at all?"
"Umm... Maybe?" the first suit is starting to look a little green. Maybe six martinis were a little much. He eats a mint.
"And," Yale Man continues, "As Bill mentioned, nobody in America is studying computer science anymore because we told them to study business and move up the food chain, so we'll be (as the locals say) shit out of luck?"
"Uhh..."
"Oh, dear. Perhaps we should have Fortune write an article, and inspire young people to study computer science and math again?" He looks around at the other suits. "Surely we can appeal to their sense of national pride, and their desire to not see their own country's corporations fall by the wayside?"
And, here we are. What an interesting time this is...
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
People either consciously know or instinctively feel that there is no career there. And the real reason why there aren't there?
July 15, 2005
Economic Treason
What Kind of Country Destroys the Job Market for Its Own Citizens?
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts07162005.html
In addition, since an increase in IT workers is a "national need," the authors of the study recommended more public and private grants to allow more Americans to study the subject --even on a part-time schedule.
What kind of shit is this? Why not take care of the goddam techies we already have? One hand showers us with pinkslips, offshoring, and 60-hour-per-week visa workers; now the other hand is saying it is a "national need"? They subsidize sugar farmers, but let us techies compete with 3rd-world slave Phd's. Seems our national need is sugar, not coders.
My kids ain't going anywhere near IT and I will make damned sure of that! If they want to program or set up servers as a hobby, fine, but not a career. I want them to have a career that is upwardly mobile, develops social and sales skills, and not subject to the starving sharks of globalism.
Table-ized A.I.
There's a lot of niches for people with computer skills. Find one that lets you work sane hours and enjoy the rest of your life. Sometimes it's a tradeoff between income and lifestyle. Sometimes you'll find that improving your lifestyle leads to improving productivity, enjoyment, and eventually success.
There are places where 70-80 hour weeks are common, even 100+ hour weeks. Surgical residents, for example, have been fighting battles to stop institutional insanity. Many Wall St jobs require long hours. Thankfully tech use permeates all of society and an incredible number of job niches. Spend some time and explore the possibilities.
During the boom years, I guess that 30% of the technical staff at the large software company I worked for were totally incompetent boobs. And circa 2001, we were suppose to feel sorry because all of these idiots were laid off?
And the companies realized they can get the work these morons did done over in India for a lot less and better quality.
win=win.
Now that everyone's talking about CS skill shortage
The Cheap-Labor-Lobby always claims there is an IT shortage. They have no credibility. HP's Carly signed an ITAA petition claiming there was an IT shortage at the same time planning to cut its workforce and implementing a hiring freeze. IIRC, Intel and IBM did the same thing. People will tend to lie if the lie is difficult and complex to disprove.
Table-ized A.I.
They say the mind is the first thing to
I do not have any degree of any sort and I'm a guy in his early 30's working for a major multinational organization.
Some of my colleagues do have degrees in Comp Sci or Engineering but i believe that I have earned the respect of my peers through my creative solutions and accomplishments.
Business are looking for "out of the box" thinkers with real world experience and business acumen.
I would go as far to say that if you want to work as a developer in the corporate world, get a degree in Business and take courses on development "and" analysis/design. It seams as though there is a sore lacking of programmer analysts these days I also think there are way too many "software developers" with Comp Sci degrees with no clue about business or how to "design" software or elicit requirements from end users.
It might not hurt to take some psychology courses either as you may be able to better deal with difficult people and mediate conflicts between groups of users.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Data mining is not science either.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
[Who wants to study CS when their jobs are being outsourced to India anyway?] It's a chance to travel and get to know other cultures :-)
You better like those cultures, because you may have to stay to have an IT job.
Table-ized A.I.
developers! developers! developers! developers!
damn you balmer!
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
For fuck's sake, stop conflating the two already. CS is the study of computer science, which is a theoretical discipline. IT is management of infrastructure and hardware. And both of these disciplines differ from software engineering, where one is simply a software developer.
What is humor if not pain tempered by time?
I am a bit young right now (10th grade) but I know that I want to do something with computer science. I have pretty much decided that apps programming is not for me (other than open source endeavors), as I don't feel like losing my job to outsourcing and I prefer complex math things. I am kind of intrigued by theoretical computer science (hypercomputing and the like) but I don't know if my interest in that could coincide with my interest in eating. Would I be able to get a job in theoretical computer science? Or should I just try and get into normal IT (sysadmin, application development, etc)? In any case what sort of education should I look into? Any advice...
Fresh out of college I got asked this same exact stupid question and I answered it correctly. Too bad the guy who asked it didn't understand my answer, he had to ask his partner to check if it was correct (I guess he didn't know there are many ways to solve one of these problems).
... yuck)
If you can't figure out the answer, don't ask the question dufus. And this question tells you little about the kind of coder the person is in the first place.
BTW the job paid crap, and this was during the good days. I didn't take their offer of course (it was to program the Jaguar
- sigs are for wimps.
Oh btw the guys you hear blithering on about a CS skill shortage are mostly guys who don't like paying tech people anyway ... so they have sent all the work elsewhere, only to discover they have basicly moved themselves out of the loop. Now they have a tech skills shortage cause there are no college kids who can be short changed into taking jobs they can't afford in places they would never go otherwise.
Blah, Blah, Blah...
Twenty five years ago "Dr G" at Virginia Tech told us not to get our hopes up, but to enjoy a software career while it lasted, but not to count on it lasting all that long... The Va Tech guys seemed to think it would happen within five years... they were a few years late... but what do we expect from a bunch of fellows who let Mr. Dave Larson in the chemistry department invent the first micro computer to control his lab experiments ... (rembember the Blacksburg Bug Books) ... (I wonder if his experiments had anything to do with cloning) ... Seems the CS guys were eventually right ... the software bubble is busted, but please don't tell bill in redmond, he still thinks he invented the thing in a garage someplace, like cloning was invented in England. Professor J. A. N. Lee was from England, so I wonder if he had anything to do with cloning.
BLAH, Blah, Blah...
In anycase we are seriously close to being able to build self configuring hardware. Some of us old guys know how to build self configuring software, so give us the time it takes you to get a CS degree, and we will prehaps finish the thing ending the off, on, near, and buba shore computer code game. If this happens, computer science will become about as interesting and difficult as physics, with about that many jobs to go with it.
Blah, blah, Blah ...
If they don't want this to happen they best start hiring those of us who are out of work today in the computer science business, instead of blithering on about how bad it is there are no naive young people around for their companies to take undue advantage of anymore ....
If you want to know what to major in get yerself on up to Hokie land ... see what it is those guys are actually working on these days....
blah, blah, blah
I always had the saying that the ones who had the CS Degrees will be the ones at the front of the unemployment line. Everyone who says Computer Programmers have job security is a complete joke. What stops any company from just having a office overseas with India or China to do the same work you people do, for way less money? Nothing stops them, since your job deals with untangiable products and labor. I don't care HOW GOOD YOU ARE, you will loose your job at some point or another. Just always remember Computer Science Degree holders, someone can do your job just as good if not better, for way way way less money and benefits. If only IT Professionals Unionized at some point in time, maybe this could have been prevented. Luckily I dropped out of my CS major in college.
1. Foster an attitude that CS doesn't pay, is hard and/or boring, is all outsourced now, will make you burn-out once you get a "real job" (heh... I've got a "real job", where's the burnout?)
...
2. Do a load of projects, development, i.e. self-learning while taking challenging CS classes in school as soon as possible. I.e. not CS101 while freshman... CS480.
3. Get a real job immediately in college, that gives you immediate feedback on your skills in CS.
4. Concurrent research projects.
5.
5. Profit! While the rest go for the "easier" or "more paying" majors, you've basically decreased the ranks of the competition by both discouraging them from competing and by being the best you can.
You get a high-paying job doing what you love, why the suckers who got suckered into "more paying" or "easier" majors become burned-out...
Let me echo this point. In high school I lamented that I would never use the geometry and calculus I learned. In college I felt like 2+ years of higher math was a waste of time.
My first paying job after graduation I used linear algebra and geometry extensively. I was working with signal processing theory, wave form generation, euler equations, and more. Throughout my career as a computer scientist, I keep encountering interesting math. Monte Carlo simulations came up once. I once worked with a Russian math genious on a novel algorithm to efficiently convert any filled shape (even concave shapes and dohnuts) into collections of filled triangles.
Take some guesses what fields I have applied computer science to.
I think the problem here is that software engineering is not emphasized enough. Programming, while crucial is a small part of being a successful software developer. The way I see it there are four grades of software professionals. These are scientist, engineers, programmers and support.
These disciplines are often separated from each other. These separations prevent programmers from understanding the career paths of the industry.
The support people do not understand what skills are required to move on to the next level. Software patterns and practices are not terms they hear often and they are unaware of the importance they serve to the programming discipline.
The programmers understand patterns and practices but do not understand formal software engineering. Requirements and test case development, development cycles, defect management, development progress are all part of a larger software engineering discipline. These skills are required to move on to the next level. It's very easy for a programmer to understand deadlines are relative. But it is very difficult for them to prove it. If your car had a clock in the place of a speedometer could you tell me how fast you were going?
Software architecture can serve as a bridge between these disciplines but architects often do not understand how to manage leadership to obtain the technical goals of a project. Project managers run all over the architects in a project because the architects do not have the business / political savvy to play those games. Software engineering as a discipline that gives an architect the tool set to manage not just the technical side of a project but the human / political side of a project.
Scientists are scientists. They are the red headed step-"rock stars" of our era. Scientists bring the world to the next level. Scientists are very passionate about their work and are will to do it often times for very little money. But they stand to gain huge payoffs for a significant contribution to society. I don't know what could be more honorable.
But why does all of this matter, because most computer science majors are not scientists. They are programmers and often times just support people. They are trying to learn something to build a career on. A job in middle America that pays 125K/yr so they can take care of their family, have a nice lifestyle, better computer equipment than their friends and fancy cars to make up for the void of not living out their dreams. But 125K is a tough job to get and a tough job to have.
As far as I know very few universities offer serious software engineering degrees. Most programmers would probably not even major in software engineering simply because they don't understand it is the ticket to their goal. Computer science simply has not given the majority of programmers the necessary tools to make it in the computer industry.
Damien Hogan dhogan@direct-alliance.com 07-19-2005
I have three good reasons why I got out of CS degree path.
#1 - Entry level jobs dried up in my area. You can't go to work without experience. I called around for internships in all the major cities. 2 Years minimum experience with BA/BS. This goes along the lines of "Hey, genius, if everyone required 2 years minimum experience, nobody would HAVE 2 years minimum experience."
#2 - Job Market Shift. I held a job with a large computer company. I won't name who, but let's just say they're firing about, oh, 14,500 of them. I worked along side guys with 5 years C++ experience, MSCE's, Cisco certifications, etc. What work did we do? We stood in a long line assembling computers... plugging in IDE cables into harddrives, popping in video cards, etc. for 12 hours a day standing in one spot. A monkey with a blindfold could have done it.
#3 - Outsourcing is intimidating. Some can argue the reality, but the perception is, to me at least, that outsourcing tech jobs to those willing to work at under $X an hour (X being a wage we'd normally expect) just kills it completely for me. Gates is Satan, don't doubt it. Of course he wants more foreign workers, because they'll work for less. They come from places where $5 an hour is like a pot of gold. Meanwhile, they're families are living like kings back home, because this guy will work for $9.50. That displaces American workers who fight for jobs where they don't run their own offshore cruise ship sweatshop... and eventually, it comes down the food chain to me, where I'm fighting with guys who have 10 years experience over me for little 4-6 month temp jobs coding Visual Basic apps for Joe's Hardware Imporium to track 5/8" bolts through the warehouse.
I got into CS to do innovative things, work with intelligent people, earn a respectable living, and be able to look back at meaningful accomplishments. Instead, it looks like a nightmare career field.
I'm currently out of school working in a job completely unrelated to computers. I have no plans to go back (only need 1 more year) for my BS in CS (cause it's seems litterally BS). The career I'd been planning for 20 years (long before all the dot-com BS) is no closer now than it was then for me.
Had I the chance to do it all over again, I might have gotten into specializing in game development. I hear they work like slaves too, but... they work.
Currently, I'm wondering how much they pay Semi Drivers.
I8-D
I was in college 2000-2004 and couldn't get into the CS major because there was too much competition. Now most of my friends with CS degrees are going to grad school for law, med, bus, dentistry, pharmacy, etc. What a waste.
See this link:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newjersey/IMO, second year students are already so tired of keeping their systems spyware and virus clean, they get burnt out on it. No more!!! arrrrrhhhhhhh!!
Data mining research most certainly can be science, in the sense of involving falsifiable hypotheses about the effectiveness of algorithms or techniques, which are then experimentally verified.
I know many people who sacrificed so much to get by. This sucker is one of them. can't wait to use Finite Automata and prove something is NP hard.
engineers lack social skills? no shit! let them have a life outside your class you bastard professors! FTW, FTW.
Many people entered the field, who should've gone elsewhere. They become unhappy programmers and make their co-workers unhappy too.
The people, who are truly interested in Computer Science and Informatics, are welcome, but there is nothing alarming in the fact, that there aren't as many of them.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's funny how people don't notice that this was happening. I been going back to school part-time for the last four years to earn an associate in computer programming while working full time as a software tester. The last four years have been hard since many classes have been cancelled for low enrollments, and some classes I've been waiting three years to take. If the dean approves my paperwork, I will have one more class to take next semester (assuming it doesn't get cancelled) to get my degree. Otherwise, I got three classes to take over the next 1.5 years.
Back in my interviewing days, I found those that knew their stuff had the characteristics I mentioned above. They would succeed and be a great addition to the team, regardless of what they already knew. Some fields are new enough that no one knows about them so it's having learning skills that makes the difference.
Note that I didn't say what field I was interviewing for. The above skills are what will help you enjoy your work. Also, however, I don't think those will lead you to moving up to head the company. I'm just cynical enough to believe that there are other skills, such as exploiting human nature, to becoming CEO.
The point is, find a field you enjoy and if that ceases, have enough faith in yourself to find another. I have a wife and two kids, so I carefully prepared and then moved to another company. I've done that a couple times. If you don't have those obligations, you can be somewhat more radical, like taking a lower paid job, or moving to a riskier field.
I've been doing s/w engineering since 1978. I haven't been laid off, nor even faced that threat, even though layoffs are a (failure of) management tool. I'm not particularly smart; probably average in geek space. I'm not the most warm and friendly person; I tend to let those who are playing mind/power games know of my disapproval. But I do everything I can to know my field inside and out...and I'm always looking for new fields.
So it comes down to passion and hard work. It might be compsci, it might be s/w engineering, or something totally different. But anything worth doing ain't easy...if it was, why bother? You probably won't get rich, at least by European/North American standards, but you should be able to have a good life and have fun while you're at it.
Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them? --Abraham Lincoln
IT skills? What does that mean? Word? Excel? Setting up routers? Crimping cat5 cables? Why mention it in an article about computer science?
So? There was a temporary glut of non-computer people seeking to cash in on the boom. Glut over.
Why is this alarming?
I get the feeling they're teaching AutoCAD and claiming it's CS. If they are talking about CS or programming, the students should know that whatever glamorous application you're supporting, these remain essentially solitary, mentally challenging areas.
Computer classes? Again, are we talking about Word 101? Oh, but these computer classes would turn you into one of the IT folks. I thought we were talking about CS? If we are talking about CS or real programming, the vast majority of college students simply don't have the intelligence for it. I would argue that they don't have the intelligence to benefit from college at all, but saying everyone should study CS is like saying everyone should play football so we can become pros later.
I think this article annoyed me a great deal because it deprofessionalizes programmers. Nobody confuses doctors and nurses under the label "medical whizzes" but programmers who've spent years or decades perfecting their craft are lumped in with anyone who makes a living with a keyboard as "computer whizzes".
"Wait a second, is the workplace suddenly requiring that their workers need to know the inefficiencies of a Bubble-Sorting algorithm?[...]"
Damned ! I managed rookies for some time now on java projects... They don't even know what is a computer anymore ! Round tripping to the DB, what is the problem ? Allocating 1GB on the heap, so what ? sorting then filtering a collection, it works no ?
Learn an assembly language, what is a microkernel, how a compiler works and just forget about it the next day and you'll be way smarter than the average developper that have no clue about what they are doing.
Yes, the bubble years were fun while they lasted. It was indeed a nice time to get hired for $80,000 a year because you could write a Perl script which could take a directory full of JPEGs and make an index out of them ($120,000 if you could figure out a way to include thumbnails). Those days are not coming back, because there is no reason why you should be paid professional rates for doing a job which has the intellectual content of plumbing minus the elbow grease. Start aiming yourself at a career which can't be learned in two courses at your local community college and you, too, will be immune to outsourcing to India.
Some ideas of things with which you can justify the salary you want to get: language expertise, and I'm not talking C#. "Bah, I don't need to study a foreign language in college, thats what the localization company is for" -- you will find the first time you are in conference with Mr. Nakayama trying to understand his requirements list that this was fairly shortsighted. True, sometimes Mr. Nakayama speaks English -- but then he can go speak English with a quarter of the population of India, can't he? Why don't you learn to speak Japanese and take the cut the translators/localizers are going to take for yourself? (Or pick another language: Mandarin, Korean, Arabic, Spanish, whatever -- and if you think there are already too many qualified engineers who are bilingual in these take a look at the man pages in your favorite Linux distribution in any non-English language sometime)
There are other bits of globalization that people just don't seem to get: encoding standards (can you explain the difference between UTF16, UTF8, JIS? I've dealt with fifteen academics who do text processing for a living who can't, and my guess is India is not on average much better), designing to an audience who doesn't natively speak English, etc.
Languages, of course, are hard to learn. Thats the main advantage from your point of view: pick a skill that prices people out of the market, something that they can't pick up in their spare time, something that the guy in Bangalore says "Why the heck would I bother learning this when I could be working for $10 an hour on RentACoder?". A lot of the specific business logic in various industries screams for this. So does the CS part of CS, as opposed to the comparitively simple mechanics of actual code writing. If you have the benefit of an expensive four-year university education don't throw it down the tubes with course choices which mimic a two-year technical degree -- spread your mind a bit and reach harder stuff.
Incidentally, communicating in the English language is another skill that the market values and that engineers are, on average, woefully incompetant at. I don't mean "Can write a three-sentence email describing to another engineer what the holdup is" -- half of Bangalore can do that. I mean "Can give a half an hour presentation to a mixed audience of engineers and marketing-droids to explain why a $100,000 increase in your department's budget will help the business and why, while meanwhile fielding hostile questions with aplomb". Seriously, half of what my last job called me most useful for didn't happen at my desk, it happened at a podium in front of the decisionmakers.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Buy some acne cream.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
And that is why I'm worth hiring.
s ton.html
I'm sure you are worth hiring, but for what you would probably demand in salary with a 4 year CS degree and 4 years industry experience, I doubt you'd be worth hiring to write that VB app you were talking about. No offense, but this to me, is a common misconseption. "I've been programming for 4 years and can learn VB from a book in 2 days," while I have no doubt that you could, in no way compares to "I've been writing apps in VB for four years."
With the abundance of 4 year CS degrees floating around, and the abundance of those with CS degrees that can have programmed in VB for 4 years, do you really think that you are worth hiring for that position?
Sure, you know all the theory behind a visual basic app, and hey, you've got your book, and that's great. But what you don't know, is all of the things that you learn in the trenches (as you are an experienced coder I will assume you know exactly what I am talking about in this regard).
Joel has an article that touches on this very issue, in the article he states: "Leaky abstractions mean that we live with a hockey stick learning curve: you can learn 90% of what you use day by day with a week of learning. But the other 10% might take you a couple of years catching up. That's where the really experienced programmers will shine over the people who say "whatever you want me to do, I can just pick up the book and learn how to do it." If you're building a team, it's OK to have a lot of less experienced programmers cranking out big blocks of code using the abstract tools, but the team is not going to work if you don't have some really experienced members to do the really hard stuff."
Sorry for the rant, but I'm tired of hearing disgrunteled programmers that I know complaining about not getting that "Java" job that they applied for when they had 5 years of experience programming in VB. "Just give me a book! I can learn it in a week!" They say...
It's just not the same thing. And I wish people would stop believing that it was.
Here is the like to the article that I refer to:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/LordPalmer
Man, how can you have a PhD in CS or be an executive of a computer company and not know how to fix your computer? See the (duped!) link to the NYTimes on people throwing out their computers when they're infected with spyware instead of cleaning them.
My email addy? should be easy enough.
It would be a really good thing if the world of Computer Science (I mean the real thing, with the formal methods and the big O notation and the simply-typed lambda calculus, not "how to become an Excel power-user") were to receive a sudden influx of mature students, especially female, from a variety of class and ethnic backgrounds.
It would mean that our societies had changed, dramatically, for the better, without the apparent necessity of intervention by government planners and public servants. Progress for free! Or, rather, progress paid for by those who instigated it, the price being their own time, energy and dedication.
It would make academic conferences more fun, and LtU a considerably more exciting read (although you'd still have to be the sort of person who's excited by process calculi and monadic subcontinuations to really get anything out of it).
It would mean that widespread acceptance of mediocrity - in programming languages, in software tools, in operating environments - was starting to crumble, as previously "elite" knowledge was disseminated among a wider community of empowered users and technicians.
It would be great. But it isn't happening now, and it's not likely to happen soon.
Maybe we should start thinking about how to make it happen?
International Socialist Black Metal
I think the point maybe that it is not just up to one company to change the world, it would take a lot more, and industry shift. And the fact is, a lot of companies won't see the value in this until it is too late, or aren't in a position at the moment to do any funding of projects.
Seems to be saying that the people on the low rung of the ladder economically are going to DeVry, ITT, etc. to get degrees in whatever. I haven't looked at their course catalog in years, but probably hasn't changed much. (They just change the buzzwords each year: "Learn VB, no VB6, no .ASP, no .NET ...".) Now, these vocational schools advertise on TV. That isn't cheap. They tend to overemphasize what their education will do for a person to get the person to write a check. Disadvantaged people see this sort of education as a way up in life.
But when they graduate with their degree in plugging in CAT-5 cables (or whatever, rebooting NT servers, I don't know...), these economically disadvantaged people are precisely the lowest rung on the totem pole, and they're the ones swept aside in layoffs. This happened in 99-00, when everyone and his grandmother hung out a shingle as a professional web site builder after reading half an HTML book and taking a class. I still remember all the articles in the NY-Times and other liberal mouthpieces about how the disadvantages were chewed up and spit out during the bubble. Supply and demand: the entry level people are victims of the economic cycle.
So this article is saying that disadvantaged people are spending a lot of money for entry-level classes for training that has very little chance of getting them anywhere. They have very little idea of what the computer industry is really like.
I suppose this is why people say both that there is great demand for trained professionals who can apply technology creatively, while at the same time there is a great oversupply of entry level talent still being shaken out.
The article seems to be confused about entry-level technical skills and the ability to apply technology creatively to solve problems.
How many Bangalores are there in the world? I demand that President Bush tell us the truth!
When companies hire H1-B's and let Americans flounder? And age discrimination goes even further than that. Try getting a job being over 50. It's getting tough out there. Nobody is willing to pay for experience these days.
I agree that undergrads in CS programs should be taught to write code well, since that's what they'll most likely be doing. I like your idea of teaching things like design patterns, too.
However, I think you're construing "computer science" very narrowly. The software engineering subdiscipline may be the most practicaly useful for most undergrads and therefore should be emphasized more than it its, but there's a *lot* more to computer science than software engineering. Here's just a few other subdisciplines that I can think of off the top of my head:
* Operating systems
* Compilers
* Graphics
* Human-computer interaction
* Theory
* Databases
* Networking
* Robotics
* Artificial intelligence
* Architecture
* Security
So what you are saying is that I should go into a field that isn't in current demand? That's it! I'm off to study stone tool manufacturing.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Somebody who loves computer science, like myself. I will be a freshman in the fall studying computer science. Computer science is a very interesting topic to study and to research, which is what I intend to do once I'm done with college.
Do you mean you want to do academic research after you're done with college--or some kind of research anyway? Or are you wanting to get a job as a programmer?
successful successful successful successful successful successful successful successful successful successful
Please keep reading that over until it looks correct to you.
Just had to get that off my chest.
Happy people make bad consumers.
The mass of lower-middle-class wannabees taking computer science courses reminds me of the fad of training people to be keypunch operators in the 1970's. It was popular by the time it was obsolete. So computer science isn't quite obsolete yet. But where keypunching became technically obsolete most programming jobs in the West are becoming economically obsoleted by the Third World.
Whether the undergrads are right to shy away from CS depends on what else they are doing. If they're smoking dope or studying Critical Theory or Gender Studies they'll be SOL (poop out of luck) in the job market. Go find Norman Matloff's home page and read about the careers available for CS grads: lots of CS grads don't get jobs writing code. While searching for the reference I came across these two articles by Norman I also recommend: see this article or this one in rebuttal to an economist.
It only makes sense that if you lower the price paid for CS grads with H-1B visas and off-shoring, you are going to discourage knowledgable people (middle class college freshmen) from majoring in CS. That women and people of color are now being conned into working super-long hours for modest pay is just deja vu all over again.
To quote Norman Matloff:
I18N == Intergalacticization
Is it all that surprising that the number of people willing to spend four years of their lives and a hundred thousand dollars to enter this field are dropping?
Yes. It shows how people view a Comp Sci education as vocational training more than an essential part of our increasingly digital world. If you had only 4 years before getting a job, would you rather get an English degree or a Comp Sci degree? For me, the choice would be obvious.
Computer Science trains your brain. It lets you understand an essential technology in our economy. If people view it in vocational terms, it's because it hasn't been marketed effectively, both by the teachers of computer science and people who use it every day. Computer Science is one of the building blocks for a career. Sure you can make it the sum total of your work, like a student can focus on English skills after an English B.A., but such thinking is only one of many paths that are neglected and underemphasized in Comp Sci's case.
In the course of my career, I've been extremely thankful for my comp sci background. It's let me do work in medicine, 3D imaging, game playing, earth science, finance, Japanese word processing, and other fields.
It had nothing to do with signal processing and everything to do with telling VCR's where to be and when to record. This was in the early 80's, there were no non-linear editors and signal processing was mostly done with hardware. DSPs were just coming in. What we did was serial communications and alot of multithreading using Concurrent Pascal on a PDP 11/23.
It was just timecode math. I can recognize the uses of advanced math, I just can't do it and I recognize my limitations. I can do logic and languages and analysis, I make good money writing code and I've been doing so for 25 years, so I think if the guy wants a career in computing he can do it without numerical analysis.
I absolutely envy the guys who are doing really groovy signal and imaging stuff (my buddy Rob sits in the next cube and does it for us) but we all have our own talents, and not being a mathmetician is not reason to stay away from programming.
Cheers...
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Of course, we all choose some mix of the two, but the advantage of the latter approach is that it is considerably easier. Mostly, it requires a state of mind.
It's already too late- the industry is NOW paying the price for their short-sighted and profit-centric behavior over the last two decades.
I just find it rediculous that they thought they could treat people like crap, and not expect people to treat them like crap in return.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
One problem with being a CS student in post-bust years is colleges still have mechanisms in place to lower registration into CS.
Here at UT Austin there is a pre-CS process where students must take several "weed out" courses that focus on programming in Java, Calculus and Logic. Upon completion of the 5 courses required you must apply to the major, where things like your overall GPA and how well you did in the aforementioned pre-CS courses are evaluated. This means if you get accepted into the CS school you're already a Sophomore at the earliest.
The funny thing about the CS program at UT though is I will be graduating in December and I haven't programmed in a real language (not LISP or Haskell) since those pre-CS courses. I take that back, they made us do Quick Sort in assembly. Man can I do induction proofs though, I hope that ability gets me a fly job!
No, this verification only happens within the framework of your own axioms! This is quite different from a scientific study where you have natural phenomena, therories and experiments. You may use data mining as tool for a scientific study, but this tool data mining itself is still no science nor is it based on science. Data mining is a mathematical concept, and I do use data mining for my scientific research.
Amazing, I'm still able to reply. It just occured to me that you mentioned not being in a position at the moment to do any funding of projects. My original complaint was of the big, profitable boys such as Intel and Microsoft that have been complaining about the shortage of people. These companies ARE very much in a position to fund projects, scholarships, and the like- if they want to. But of course they won't, because they're addicted to their 95% profit margin and refuse to actually pay for what they use in terms of human capital.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.