Computer Science Curriculum in College

Ludwig Feuerbach writes "As it's back to school for university students, including Computer Science undergraduates like myself, I look at my course schedule for this semester and I have courses with titles like: Theory of Computation, Numerical Analysis, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and History of Economics from Plato to Keynes. The first 4 courses are required in my CS program. I had thought nothing of it until I read an opinion piece by Dan Zambonini, who stresses the type of courses I'm taking are, essentially, useless for getting a job. He lists several CS courses useful for a job. Is he right? I tend to think that an university education should stress scientific topics over vocational ones, but since I'm just planning to get a job after I grad, am I in the right program?"

Comments

Regarding the purpose of a higher Ed degree...

[JymBrittain]

The types of classes you prefer will depend, essentially, on what you see as the purpose of a higher ed degree or some would even argue the purpose of an education. Some would argue that it is to prepare you for a job through the acculumation of a set of skills or a knowlege set. Others would argue that it is to prepare you for a lifetime of learning. In this day and age, odds are unless you're in a position where you can call in rich, you'll take more than one career zig or zag in your lifetime. Yet another group are those that see the purpose as a mixture of both. In the end, your choice as to the purpose of education should be one of the fundamental questions you get a personal grasp on before you even apply to an institution of higher learning.

Re:Regarding the purpose of a higher Ed degree...

[Coryoth]

the purpose of an education. Some would argue that it is to prepare you for a job through the acculumation of a set of skills or a knowlege set. Others would argue that it is to prepare you for a lifetime of learning. In this day and age, odds are unless you're in a position where you can call in rich, you'll take more than one career zig or zag in your lifetime.

The issue I have with evaluating everything in terms of "but will it get me a job?" is that, as you say, over your lifetime you'll probably make a few jumps in career path, so the skills you invest in now might not be what you find yourself doing in 5 or 10 years time. Add to that the fact that, especially in the IT field, there is a lot of churn in what are considered the "right skills" and you could easily find that the job skills you spent time learning are not much in demand by the time you've finished learning them.

That's not to knock vocational courses - they can be very useful and help give you the skills to get things done. Your life shouldn't revolve around your job however, and not everything should be devoted to that end. The best vocational courses are the ones that are unashamedly so, are usually short (a few weeks or months for the whole course) and something you can pursue when you need it. University courses are supposed to be about learning because you want to know and understand. Some of that may be useful for finding a job simply because people who understand some concepts may well be rare, and in demand. Some of that may be useful in a job because you have a good grasp of underlying concepts and understand what you're doing rather than just mechanistically repeating a process. Employment is shouldn't be the point of learning such things however, it should be a small side benefit. If you want a job, take some vocational training. If the job you want requires you to understand things for which you need a university degree then either that's something you want to learn regardless just so you can understand it yourself, or you need to seriously consider your career goals.

In the end the ability to learn new things efficiently, and the skills involved in such learning are the most valuable job skills you'll get. You'll rarely end up doing a job that is precisely what you trained for, so the ability to learn and adapt is highly beneficial. Those are things no university, trade school, college, or otherwise will teach you, it's something you have to learn for yourself. Of course any sort of education can give you practice.

Jedidiah.

Re:Regarding the purpose of a higher Ed degree...

[apoc.famine]

And from what I hear, one of the most useful classes you can take to get a job after completing a CS degree is Hindi.

Answer to your question...

[jawtheshark]

If you want to learn about computer science (which is for a big part just maths), you're in the right program. However, computer science doesn't teach you to be a software engineer, or a programmer. It teaches you the sience behind it all, the foundations of "how this stuff" works. (Which is mostly theory, by the way) It isn't all that useful for your job, but an academic degree doesn't make you ready for "a job". It makes sure that you can handle what comes after that. The ability to adapt, to learn and research on yourself when your job requires you to do so.
Sometimes the stuff you learn there seems completely and utterly unimportant for day to day usage. Still, often you suddenly get into a situation where no other non-CS guy can't find a certain bug because they lack the understanding of the background. I've been in the stuation myself where I was able to fix a bug that resulted out of the use of floating-point numbers. The guy that implemented the routine just didn't know about the mathematical boundaries of floating point numbers. It's just an example...

If you just want to become a programmer, just follow some evening courses... That's all you need... Programming isn't all that hard, but don't come complaining to me because the sorting routine you wrote is too slow and don't know why.

The choice of degree matters less than attitude..

[Ckwop]

A degree is an academic certification and as such it should not cover topics simply because they're trendy in CS related jobs at the moment. It should teach a curriculum that gives CS students a good background in a wide range of topics and above all else it should be interesting and set up a good basis for more advanced academic training.

It is not surprising that sometimes what is good course academically is not necessarily a good course from a business standpoint. As a professional programmer I think that CS graduates are typically no better than someone with no degree at all. I understand that this is a pretty damning thing to say considering the majority of slashdotters probably have a CS degree but in reality the CS degree gives you nothing in terms the ability to write good code.

In fact, a CS degree typically makes for a more dangerous coder due to their belief that the few programing projects they did on their course makes them a professional programmer. It also trains the wrong instincts. Academic coding is about producing beautiful programs - business coding is about being pragmatic. Often they have a hard time rejecting these academic instincts.

I liken programming to playing chess. Anybody can learn the game in a day but to become a master takes dedication, a willingness to learn and a lot of time. I've stressed the "lot of time" point because I think this is a key problem with CS students. You get the typical line out of them at an interview "I didn't learn C# in Comp Science but I could learn it in an afternoon.." I'm a young guy (22) and I've been programing professionally for nearly four years and I can tell you that this is simply false. Make no mistake about it, I'm still no coding grand-master and probably wont be for another ten years. When somebody says that they can learn a language in an afternoon it doesn't make me think they're lying, it just makes it blatantly obvious how ignorant they are of intricacies of writing code.

In conclusion.. I think that having a CS degree is no real advantage over having a physics, chemistry or maths degree. What a degree shows you is the person in-front of you applied themselves to a long term project and got a result. The same conclusion can be drawn from a person sat across from me without a degree but three years of experience. Really, both routes are equally valid and I hold neither higher than the other.

Simon.

Common Question

[wsloand]

This seems like a common question. There will be plenty of people who think that college should provide vocational training and plenty more who think that college should teach you "how to think independently".

I'm personally more in the second camp. I think that there are vocational schools for those who want to learn the vocation, but those skills will need to be constantly updated. I think that what you learn in college (as opposed to vocational schools) should be applicable to more fields than just the one that you learn and that you should be able to apply the lessons beyond what the curriculum specifically teaches.

Essentially, if you want to learn the theory of how databases work and know how to write a database you're taking the right sort of classes. If you're wanting to become a DBA, you should really go to a vocational school.

Learning A Language in an Afternoon

[CyborgWarrior]

I disagree with you on the point that you can't learn a language in an afteroon. Every programming langauge has its own set of syntax rules and functions. You can take an afternono and learn the basic syntax of the language, memorize a couple of the functions that you will use often, and find the best resources for help about the language. After that, your learning process will be just learning as you code. You said yourself it's going to be another 10 years before you would consider yourself really good at it. You aren't going to get there by just sitting and examining tutorials. You learn it by actually programming it and doing google searches / resource searches every time you come across something you need a tip on.

So while learning it in an afternoon won't make you a killer coder right away, it is enough time to set you up to be able to code just about any app and learn as you go. If you already know other langauges, then it will be fairly easy to apply the rules of good clean coding to this new language as you go.

No kidding.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got degrees in Physics and Math; and have never, ever taken a Computer course. I've also done a heck of a lot more than the author has.

What the author doesn't recognize is that one of the reasons you should take courses which aren't job related is to make yourself well-rounded. That is, capable of handling anything which comes up, instead of just being technically proficient in a few TLA's of the moment.

He completely fails to understand that the computer training you received in College will typically be obsolete in 5 years. However, if you've received an Education (instead of training), you can likely adapt to handle the new stuff as it develops.

Somebody who can actually think can pick up anything. Someone who just has job training is going to be in trouble unless they know how to adapt.

The only constant in this universe is change. You're best off preparing for it.

Re:no

[briaman]

Whatever you do - don't abandon your course. The most common computer job is that of IT Support and Administration. This does not require a degree, any clown with an MCSE can work at this. It's what I do for a living so I know what I'm talking about here. I also know that jobs in IT are becoming less attractive as the number of potential employees rises and the number of available jobs declines due to better remote administration facilities and outsourcing of services. Over the next few years the postition of IT Support Engineer will reduce in standing until it reaches equality with that of building maintenance engineer. IT systems will be so common and transparent that they will largely be used without thought on the part of the users. In order to escape this you need a value added qualification. One that demonstrates the ability to think in a critical manner, perform research and produce technical reports that are accurate and comprehensible to a target audience, from lay people to experts. These reports are needed by companies and organisations so that their boards and committees can make sensible business decisions. A degree is absolutely the right qualification for your long-term employability. Nothing prevents you from getting an MCSE too.

Re:no

[WindBourne]

He is in the right program. A good Computer Science has a good to great theoritical underpinning. Look, the design paradigms will change. So will OSs. And the languages. and the DBs.

While 2 years ago, there were tons of CSers unemployed, so were the EEs and the CEs. Now, I do not know of any CSers that are unemployed. I do know of a LOT of CISers and vocational people who are unemployed. I also know a number of them have moved on to other professions because the industry has shrunk.

Basically, the CS/CE gives you the ability to do anything in the software world. The CIS/Vocational gives you the ability to do just what you learned. And back in the 90's, the CIS world was learning mainframes with Cobol, RPG, and PL1. Is that were growth is? nope. Has not been for sometime. Can these people move easily to Microsoft (where the most jobs are currently), or Linux (where all the growth is)? Nope. They do not have the underpinnings to make the jump.

Re:The choice of degree matters less than attitude

[sribe]

...the majority of slashdotters probably have a CS degree...

What planet are you from?

You get the typical line out of them at an interview "I didn't learn C# in Comp Science but I could learn it in an afternoon.." I'm a young guy (22) and I've been programing professionally for nearly four years and I can tell you that this is simply false.

Well, I'm an old guy (42), who has not just learned, but used in shipped products, over a dozen languages. And I can tell you that I learn and master new languages a whole lot faster than all you guys without CS degrees who keep shooting off your mouths about how little use CS degrees are. Learning a new language in an afternoon is indeed an exaggeration, but learning a new language is a whole lot faster when you understand the fundamental mathematics on which all programs are based, and the way they are commonly expressed through language features.

Re:if you want more vocation, plus a better chance

[oc255]

I would agree with the usefulness of a Data Structures Course. It just so happens that I started a Jr Development (Java mostly) position recently and I was not a CIS/CS major (career change from SA/Unix).

I find myself trying to create a data structure/tree like a family tree or a directory structure. Each node has multiple children, a node can have no children, a fast way to find a path from a child to the root, etc. And in wondering how to create such a tree I find the usefulness of textbook knowledge, specifically the jargon. I'm reading like crazy about red/black trees, linked lists, doubly linked lists, binary trees, what a map is compared to a list, etc etc. It goes on and on. And I'm sure a course would have covered this or at least given me the knowledge to see quickly if the standard Java libraries have this structure already built.

Many of the Java books I'm reading have wording like, "if you remember from your CS class what a binary tree is, here's how to implement one in Java ..." The theory background would have made this a lot easier/faster, rather than jumping right into a specific language.

I definitely envy those who took any kind of data structures course.

Re:if you want more vocation, plus a better chance

[halcyon1234]

Having been to both University and College (Canadian terms. US equiv is, I believe, College and Community College?), I can say that I can't see not having both.

Although it is true that CS is a highly academic and theoretical field, almost all of its applications are (appropriately enough) applied.

So, what are some of the most common arguments?

If you don't know how to actually program a computer, an employer won't care if you know the theory behind machine code

Essentially true. Unless you get some plum "sit around and think about computers" job, most employers will want you to be able to actually DO the job they hire you to. However, on the flip side of that:

An employer doesn't want someone who has only been trained to use Language X. They want someone who wholly understands the concepts of programming and can adapt to any situation as the company grows.

Again, essentially true. Unless you are doing a temp contract, most employers will be looking for a Programmer (or some buzzword, like Solutions Analyst)... not a C++ Do..Until Loop Programmer.

But, as you can see, both of those requirments seem to contradict each other by seemingly presenting an either/or case. Either you know Programming OR you know C++.

And the same applies for just about any field in CS. (Either you know Network Administration, or your know Cisco Routers. Either you know Web Mastering, or you know Apache. Etc, etc.)

I first completed a college diploma, and learned how to build a network (Cisco style), how to set up and maintian websites (Apache style), and how to run databases (MySQL style). Although there was a spattering of "theory" in each course (usually consisting of the introductory lecture to each course), it was all "hands on".

I graduated and transferred over to University. By Year Two, I felt so detached from actual computers. I was learning a lot of facinating theory stuff, but really wanted to do something with it. Of course, "doing stuff" was a 4th year course. ;)

So, after getting most of the requirements for the Bachelor degree, I decided to switch back to college. In Ontario, colleges have been allowed to grant Applied Degrees.

Having experienced a good chunk of the cirriculum, I have to say that this is a great solution. It's a nice mix of theory AND practicality. Personally, I'd like to see the Universities lean more towards an Applied Degree, with all the serious intensive THEORY courses offered as 3rd/4th year electives... and as Masters. (I firmly believe that Masters should be near 100% theory. You SHOULD get a Masters in Network Science, not a Masters In Cisco IOS).

Re:The choice of degree matters less than attitude

[jwiegley]

Disclaimer: I am a university professor in CS. So, clearly, I believe in the value of a university education. But I'll try to explain why...

"I didn't learn C# in Comp Science but I could learn it in an afternoon.." I'm a young guy (22) and I've been programing professionally for nearly four years and I can tell you that this is simply false. Make no mistake about it, I'm still no coding grand-master and probably wont be for another ten years.

I think your statement here sums everything up nicely in favor of university degrees. You don't have such a degree, you can't learn new languages fast, can't recognize that ability in others and after four years you're still not an expert at the one language you do know and use daily.

Aside from the exaggeration of "[one] afternoon" which I agree is insufficient. You believe it's impossible because you yourself are unable to accomplish it due to your limited vocational training. Then you falsely project your own limitations on to others. As other posters have replied: yes. with a well grounded backround in theory and fundamentals it is possible to pick up yet another language in a very compressed period of time. (Though some of us benefit from an advantage in age over you.)

I have been proficient in the past with Fortran, Pascal, Modula-2, LISP and various assembly languages. I am currently proficient in Perl and shell and an expert in C, C++ and Java. (not trying to brag, a lot of /.ers have similar, or larger, skill sets and will relate to the rapid shifts in technologies that result in such sets.) The last job I took up required teaching advanced data structures in Java; a language I hadn't touched before the first day of class. Within one week I was productive in the language, within two proficient and within a month I was expert and using most of the advanced features of the language. I can't count the number of times my employment positions have put me in such a position where the programming requirements of the job have changed abruptly. I have always been ready to adapt to the challenge in a very, very short time frame and I believe this is due to my university-based education. I'm not afraid to change jobs or be fired because I know I can adapt and be valuable and productive in any new environment.

Here's two more examples:

1. Never during my education in CS did I expect to become a programmer and systems administrator for a Nortel phone system. But it did happen. I was ready for it and saved my company a lot of money in consulting fees because a dedicated technician didn't have to be called in to fix little issues.
2. Second example: One of my students obtained a job with an aerospace company and it was my responsibility to monitor them for a year to make sure everybody was happy with the arrangement. I asked what they were working on and they replied "debugging HPL programs. I've never even heard of HPL! How am I suppose to know this?". I said "neither have I. How are you doing at it". They said "Fine."

They were "fine" because they had the necessary theory fundamentals squared away. I would trust this student to pick up anything new and previously unknown in a short time period. In general, I would trust university educated people to have this adaptability more than vocationally trained peopl.

I'm really sorry for all the excellent, creative problem solvers you turned away because of your bias towards a single answer. "I don't know" is a perfectly acceptable answer (in any context) and doesn't, in itself, indicate an unworthy candidate. "I don't know; but I can learn it real fast" can indicate a truly flexible, useful person. Your loss; not the candidates.

Do you want a job or a career?

[LazyLawyer]

I got my CS degree in 1984. It's still useful, because they taught me theory, The languages they used (Pascal, PL/1 and LISP primarily) aren't.

My enthusiasm got me jobs. The degree only helped.

When I went to law school, almost everything I learned was theory. When I started the practice of law, I knew virtually nothing about actually running a trial. Now, I'm writing the book, and a publisher pays me for it.

Much of what I learned from the practice of CS and of law could have been taught at a trade school. 95% of the time, my work would be competent.

But that remaining 5% distinguishes between a tradesman and a professional. As a prosecutor, cross-examining the defence's psychologist or engineer, I have the advantage of knowing the basic theory behind their disciplines, because of the courses I took at university. I only tinker with writing software now, but I grok the new languages fast enough (when I get the chance to turn my mind to them).

I don't knock the trade schools. Enthusiasm to learn takes some people all the way through the theory they need to be pros. They don't need a university degree to be good.

And uninspired university graduates are so useless that should not be permitted to do anything important. I wouldn't hire them.

I remember that IBM used to hire only people with university degrees. Not just CS. Any degrees. IBM wasn't interested in what they learned at university. They wanted people who had the the enthusiasm/fortitude to slug their way through dry theory. A degree proved that the kid could work. Isn't that what an employer wants?

So what do you want? A job or a career? How much do you want it?