Is Computer Science Still Worth It?

prostoalex writes "Is it a good idea to go into Computer Science? Yes, there are certainly pending labor shortages as Indian companies outsource to the United States, but speakers of Stanford Computer Forum generally agree that it's a good career choice. From the article: 'To ensure job security, students must learn business, communication and interpersonal skills, Vardi recommended. The personal touch will become as important as technological expertise, he said. "There are jobs galore," agreed Suzanne Bigas, assistant director of the Stanford Computer Forum.'"

Comments

Other fields?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is studying philosophy worth it?

Yes, if you love it.

Re:Other fields?

[dubbreak]

Yes, yes, yes. Do NOT repeat NOT go into a field you are not interested in. There is no point in going into CompSci for the money at this point, even with the possibility of labour shortages. I am a few months away from gradding with a major in CSc and my best recommendation is: don't do it unless you love it. I know too many students that hate programming, and generally dislike everything in the field other than playing with computers. They got into it because they thought it would be easy and pay well. If you sound like one of those people, don't do it, you'll hate doing the degree and when you are done you won't want to work in the field for the amount of money you are going to be starting at (which will be low since as an unmotivated student your abilities will be lacking to say the least).

Do go into computer science if:

• you love math (I don't mean you did well at it in HS, I mean you enjoyed it and would learn more on your own)
• you have programmed and found it fun and interesting (not you tried it and thought it was easy, or did pretty good in some course)
• you are a strong problem solver

If you want to make money, go into business. Sciences are best suited for people who love the science and aren't worried about the wage. If you aren't sure, take a few courses first year in different areas and see what inspires you.

Re:LOL

[2nd Post!]

You confuse computer science with computer programming.

That is like confusing music theory with music composition, something I would hope you would be aware of.

Computer science deals with algorithms, complexity notation, predicate calculus, proofs, and grammars, most of which you will not pick up by just being a programmer.

Re:the fact

[Red Flayer]

look at mu aunt, she has a degree in Computer Science, and yet she is still working at the same place for the last 25 years

Well, there's the problem -- delta aunt is much better at change, while Beta eta aunt, and now she feels sick to her stomach.

need good people

[flynt]

I think there's always room for good people in CS. If you're a type who goes to Stanford/MIT/others and gets a degree in CS because you love learning about computational processes and have a natural drive and curiousty, my guess is that there are plenty of firms willing to hire you.

If, on the other hand, you want to learn CS to get a 'good job' after school, and end up going to a second-rate university where they teach you specific software instead of abstract ideas, you might not have such a good future after college.

I'm sure both types of students attend all universities CS departments, don't get me wrong. I think your attitude going into it is what matters most, if you love CS and work hard, I bet you'll be just fine. If possible, don't choose your major based on what's in fashion, do what you want.

Learn to sell

[ClosedSource]

As a professional software programmer for over 20 years, I'd advise anyone who wishes to still be programming professionally in their 50's to spend a summer selling used cars. Being able to sell yourself will be much more important in the later years of your career than your technical knowledge will be.

Please excuse my rant...

[g1zmo]

I'm tired of {system-,network-,db-} administration, programming, and every other trade skill getting equated with Computer Science. CS is a branch of theoretical mathematics and has very little to do with anything you can sit in front of, type into, click on, or reboot. And I don't mean this as a (serious) troll. I just hate to see the term misused, much like engineers cringe when they hear the building maintenance staff referred to as 'engineers', as in "we'll have an engineer bring some buckets up to put under that leak in the roof."

/End of Friendly Math Snob Rant

Re:CS Degree = no sunlight

[gosand]

Computing Scientists are not all Programmers. Not all Programmers are Computing Scientists.

THANK YOU. I was about to post the same comment. But let me expand on this concept that people don't seem to understand (especially programmers).

We need more CS people in general. Why? Becuase the CS degree will give people a decent technical background and understanding of computer related technology. I would much rather have a project manager with a CS degree than a marketing degree or communications degree. But I have yet to see one. Programmers tend to think that the only thing you need is a good programming staff. While that will get you pretty far, there are many other pieces of the software puzzle besides programming. I have been doing software testing and QA for 13 years. I made the choice to go down this path instead of programming. However, many programmers think that I am somehow some kind of "failed" programmer. And no, ex-programmers don't make the best QA people, no matter what Google thinks.

I think that the more people we have in the software industry with CS degrees, the better. I guess I had better qualify this with the statement that I have no real idea what CS degrees these days are like, I got mine back in '93. There was only 1 software engineering class, the rest was math, hardware/circuits, or programming. I hope that these days they have added more to the curriculum that deals with the process of developing software.
(taking a few writing classes wouldn't kill you either)

Re:CS Degree = no sunlight

[DuckDodgers]

My software engineering degree required a lot of presentations, a handful of written papers, and a lot of discussions on software development models, good design procedures, formal verification of code, testing practices, and so forth.

Now that I've been in the workforce 5 years, a lot of what I learned is very valuable. But for the first two years out, most of it was useless - I needed a background in actual application development at the low level in the trenches. I had the Computer Science, but no programming foundation to build it on - fine if you want to do testing or management, crap if you wanted to actually design and program.

Smart colleges should offer courses that cover bug tracking, source control, learning how to find the information you need in technical documentation, and especially how to read other people's code. Give a class a 50,000 line application with 20 or 30 known, non-trivial bugs in it and spend the semester showing them how to find the bugs. Give a class some applications which have very poor code reuse and show them how to break out common code into separate libraries which are easier to document, track, and debug. etc... etc... After getting my MS in Software Engineering, I was like a mechanic who could diagram the variable valve timing in a Ferrari but couldn't change a tire.

Crappy needs to be defined

[zerosix]

I'm a software engineer and currently getting my CS degree part time. Frankly there are two aspects to websites, The apperance and the backend. Not very many programmers are good at apperance, ie colors, ect. While I hate creating websites I do like writing backend components for websites(ASP, PHP). Frankly, I wouldn't even consider creating a webpage programming from the fact that it's not required to use anything other than HTLM for a webpage and still have it be well a webpage. Simply knowing HTML does NOT make you a programmer.

So if by crappy you mean design, I don't think a degree in computer science will help. If you mean crappy as in functionality, a degree in computer science might help.

Re:You can't code your way out of all problems.

[FlyingGuy]

And then there are the rest of us, who write well formated, well structured, well designed code every day, but never went to collage. We did what a LOT of people did in the 80's we picked up a copy of whatever language we could get our hands on and started teaching ourselves.

We read books, we looked at other peoples code, we experimented. We wrote our own Direct to Video Memory code to avoid the bios screen write functions.

But now we are in our late 40's and not hip and cool. We don't get hired because we don't have a piece of paper saying we know something, we just have massive amounts of code to back us up, but none of the under 30 hip cool crowd cares about that, its "You got your degree from where?" When I tell them SHK ( school of Hard Knocks ) as a joke and then tell them I am self taught, I get the "We want someone more qualified" What a bunch of horse shit.

Thats the biggest problem with our society, no one values experience, no one values wisdom gleaned from 25 years of doing the JOB.

Most of us don't care for the latest and greatest Ruby on Rails or Roads or even a race track. We don't do cutting edge, we do what works, we do it most of the time under budget, ahead of schedule and in code that readable AND commented.

So we will keep writing code that supports what all you "Latest & Greatest" fan boys think is SO cool, when in fact its the exact same language we built so many years ago, with a cosmetic twist.

I guess the other thing that is SO fucking depressing is that most CS or even SE grads these days don't have a clue how to create anything unless its spoon fed to them in some object repository. I asked a recent CS graduate if he knew any assembler of ANY flavor. His response was, "Well we had about 2 hours of it and some theory", but other then that all he knew was Java and rudimentary C.

A pretty sad state of affairs if you ask me. And people wonder why companies outsource.