Which Language Approach For a Computer Science Degree?

wikid_one writes "I recently went back to college to finish my CS degree, however this time I moved to a new school. My previous school taught only C++, except for a few higher level electives (OpenGL). The school I am now attending teaches what seems like every language in the book. The first two semesters are Java, and then you move to Python, C, Bash, Oracle, and Assembly. While I feel that it would be nice to get a well-rounded introduction to the programming world, I also feel that I am going to come out of school not having the expertise required in a single language to land a good job. After reading the syllabi, all the higher level classes appear to teach concepts rather than work to develop advanced techniques in a specific language. Which method of teaching is going to better provide me with the experience I need, as well as the experience an employer wants to see in a college graduate?"

Comments

Hobby

[sopssa]

After reading the syllabi, all the higher level classes appear to teach concepts rather than work to develop advanced techniques in a specific language.

It's great that you have it like that. Its the concepts that matter more than just teaching some language dependant pack of tricks. Languages can always be learnt afterwards and quickly, and they also tend to change during years. Concept stay somewhat the same, and those are what you need to understand. I wish I would had the same kind of program in school.

I also feel that I am going to come out of school not having the expertise required in a single language to land a good job.

Usually programmers are quite self-taught. Schools can teach you concepts and languages, but the real knowledge comes from when you're interested in it and try out and do stuff. Yes, this means you should have some interest in coding at home for your pleasure too, as a hobby. I would think that programming would being really really boring if you dont have the interest to learn yourself or even program your own stuff at home.

You didn't mention if you do programming yourself, but if you dont you should start to. Start coding some games yourself or stuff you think are useful to you. Or learn PHP and start coding websites. You can even start to make some cash out of it, either by selling your software/game, running websites or coding as a freelancer. Try out things.

However the most stupid approach is to think you should be awesome in one language and lack everything else. Usually you need combination of different languages and better understanding generally. Read some programmer job listings and you see how they always contain lots of different thingies and qualities they're looking for. Programming languages used at work will most likely change aswell (Java was hot in some apps programming years ago, but C# and other languages have been stealing position from it). This is why you want to have the general understanding instead of just knowing tricks&tips of one language.

Re:Hobby

[morgan_greywolf]

Agreed. Programming concepts are far more important than any particular language. It's important to understand at more than one programming paradigm: object-oriented programming is the paradigm de jure (C++, Java, C#, Python), but also understand a traditional imperative structured approach (C, Bash) and a functional approach (Lisp, Scheme) as well. Note that these languages are only examples: Python is actually a mixed-paradigm language that supports imperative structured programming and functional programming in addition to OOP, for instance.

Re:Hobby

[m6ack]

I thought of posting this separately, but I really wanted to echo sopssa. What you have is a "GOOD THING" at this school.

You are getting a well rounded education in concepts, like object orientation, functional programming, scripting, and sand-boxed virtual machines. You're also getting closer to the metal with C and Assembly (Preferably Intel Protected mode?) -- and that's very cool.

My avenue was the hobby route, but I never really spent my time on the net. I'm an engineer by trade, but I found myself gradually learning coding within my organization more and more. I chiefly program now in sed, python, C++, and VBA; but the mix changes on a periodic basis. I write standard libraries, and a lot of filters and scripts to automate much tedious work within my organization... I try to program so that whatever application I write can be run on any OS -- though some of my stuff lately works best on Linux. (Linux is OK, because people can log into the workstations from their Windows PC's). Cross-platform and Open is the way to go, because you never want to force your customer to disrupt his work-flow to use your tool, and you want your customer to be able to figure out what you're doing and take over support as much as possible.

So, with my scripts, a lot of people internally at my company have become my customers. This work has taken over much more of my job as my rep built... And now we do about an order of magnitude more work than we used to with a single engineer. The tedium of filling out spreadsheets or copying by hand is largely a thing of the past. So much work is being done so quickly that the vendors that we work with are getting very nervous that they will be able to keep up with what we are doing -- and with us us targeting multiple vendors in our work-flow they are very worried about competition.

One other thing I learned -- we can learn much from the "Old Ways." What a horrible, nasty, terse, poorly documented -- and absolutely wonderful gem -- sed is! How nicely does it fit in with the UNIX toolkit: regular expressions with VIM, grep, and find; and roughly stapling things together with xargs and bash! You learn one thing by doing another, and you become so much more productive. Recently, I had to do a remote debugging session over a slow link. There were 50 engineers in the room, and a tag-team of 3 driving the remote system. How nice it was to have VIM there -- hacking stuff with only a few keystrokes to select and change lines on the fly, rather than having to wait a minute to click and select via some GUI. We were extremely successful and productive. I got promoted because of this -- because I drove the creation of tools, and because I learned to become proficient in the "Old Ways."

Because you are not established within a company, you'll have to find another avenue to get yourself noticed, and you'll have to find another way to find your niche. I think that the best way for you to get noticed is to find some Open Source project on the net to dig your fingers into. You build your rep., and you find your niche -- find out what you like, and keep doing it. Let your direction change as you find out what your interests are. Keep learning new ways of doing things, and don't be afraid to experiment with crazy ideas. Make a positive contribution to how things are done -- make something better from the inside out.

I like this quote from Daniel Phillips (Tux3): "A weak coder becomes a strong coder by reading code and writing code every day for fun."

Re:Hobby

[complete loony]

If there is a single language that is not taught enough for real world experience, it's SQL. Just about any business programming job is going to involve storing and reporting on data. While a CS degree is going to give you a basic introduction to SQL, I feel that SQL should be introduced earlier and worked into more of the assignments you are asked to write.

Your school is right

[enrevanche]

A CS degree is not about making you a monkey that can program only one language. It is about learning how to think. The multi-language approach will ensure that you are exposed to many ways of representation.

The "real" world will train you how to be a monkey well enough.

If knowing one language well enough to get a job, a certification in Java, C# or whatever will serve your simian side better. Use the knowledge in the diversity in languages to tell potential employer that you can quickly learn to program in whatever environment is required.

Re:Your school is right

[sixoh1]

There are two kinds of CS degrees, one tends to be more like a MSCE type degree aimed at getting you employed in a job shop. Typically you'll find these at ITT or University of Phoenix. Frankly, as an employer of CS folks, I can tell you these degrees are not worth the paper they are written on, and they rarely offer job security, they teach you to be a 'cog' instead of an independent thinker.

The second type sounds like your new school. These are more complex and are more like an engineering degree which is about a solid practical basis (tools) and good breadth so you know where to start when some thing new comes along. I dont expect a proper CS graduate to "know" anything or be really ready to work on their own immediately, but I do need the to be able to work at learning the new things independently. The workplace is too varied and complex for college to teach you the important things, but I cannot take the time to spoon feed a neo when there is a deadline bearing down.

The first parent post has another thing exactly right, if you develop your own skills by doing some hobby work, that is where you can get the 'practical' skills you seem to crave. The bonus there is that you can prove to a prospective employer that you have the one thing colleges and trade schools cannot possibly teach: drive. There is absolutely no specific coding technique that can make up for a lack of drive.
 

Re:Your school is right

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to learn how to fix cars. Should I learn all about the carburetor* or should I focus more on the brake pads?

Brake pads, if you have to pick just one, because all cars have brake pads, but carburetors are obsolete and not in common use.

C# and Bing

[Anonymous Coward]

The skills that are in highest demand is the ability to write code in C# and to use Bing. C# is now the dominant choice among the new-wave languages (which includes Java) that appeared after 1990. What employers want to see is the ability to write a C# program to automatically issue requests via HTTP to Bing to query the WWW and to retrieve the search results.

Languages don't matter

[erikharrison]

I make the hiring decisions at my company. I check to see if people can solve complex problems. I don't care what language you know. You can learn PHP in a couple of hours. Sure, your first 5.000 SLOC are going to look like whatever language you know best, but right out of college your first 5.000 SLOC are going to suck anyway.

Learning a bunch of languages has the advantage that you learn what concepts are universal to programming and what are just entrenched in the language, but what really matters is learning to think algorithmically, no matter how many languages you know, be it one or one thousand.

It sounds like you've already made your decision about which school you're attending, you just want some assurance that this education won't be wasted. Let me assure you that it won't.

Re:Go to a "trade school" for that. Not a universi

[happyemoticon]

That's like saying an Art MFA shouldn't teach any actual art in any particular medium, just hypothetical art.

There IS a distinction between the "craft" of programming in any particular language and software engineering, but in order to become a software engineer, you need to work through the medium of the language. That's the only way to access it. Knowing how to paint in oils doesn't make you a good artist, but you do have to start making art in some manner in order to get there.

Algorithms and Data Structures

[PleaseFearMe]

Learn about Binary Search Trees, Red Black Trees, Bubble Sort, Quick Sort, Heaps, etc. Those are the important things to know. Bob Dylan is not famous for knowing English grammar and spelling. He is famous for what he does with them. Teach him Chinese, and he can most likely make amazing songs in Chinese as well. You didn't go to college to learn grammar and spelling. You can learn that in elementary school. Instead, you're going to college to learn how to use the language to create amazing things. It is an abstract level above the syntax level you see on the computer screen, and it is something crucial that anyone learning anything in college _must_ understand.

Re:Algorithms and Data Structures

[snookums]

Actually, you learn about bubble sort so you can understand where is might actually be a valid choice -- i.e. where you need to sort a small set in place with minimal use of stack space or other temporary storage.