Ask Slashdot: CS Degree Without Gen-Ed Requirements?

davidjbeveridge writes "I'm interested in getting a CS degree. I've been programming since I was 13, and like many of us, taught myself. I am familiar with a number of languages, understand procedural, functional, and object-oriented paradigms; I'm familiar with common design patterns and am a decent engineer. I learn quickly. I work 2 jobs and I have a life. I want to get a CS degree from an accredited school (a BS, that is), but I have no interest in wasting any of my precious time taking classes in English, Philosophy, History, Art and the like. While these fields are useful and perhaps enriching, they will not contribute to making me better at my job. Moreover, I attended an excellent high school that covered these fields of study in great detail, and I feel no need or desire to spend more time studying these things. I want a BS in Computer Science with no general education requirements. Any suggestions?"

Comments

Re:No offense intended, but...

[anagama]

The spreadsheet is probably one of the most valuable software contributions in history -- it's used in sciences for data analysis, business for financial analysis, small clubs for keeping organized lists, small businesses as a data source for mail merges ... the list is probably miles long.

While a student at Harvard Business School, Bricklin co-developed VisiCalc in 1979, making it the first electronic spreadsheet[dubious â" discuss]. It ran on an Apple II computer, and was considered a fourth generation software program. VisiCalc is widely credited for fueling the rapid growth of the personal computer industry. Instead of doing financial projections with manually calculated spreadsheets, and having to recalculate with every single cell in the sheet, VisiCalc allowed the user to change any cell, and have the entire sheet automatically recalculated. This turned 20 hours of work into 15 minutes and allowed for more creativity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Bricklin

Dan Bricklin didn't become super rich, but he literally changed the world. I saw a documentary once in which an accountant or some type of professional said that the first time he saw a computerized spreadsheet, he cried, because it took out so much drudgery it could make his work fun again.

If Bricklin had not been getting an MBA, would he have gotten the idea? I'm guessing he looked at hours of paper and pencil boredom recalculating cells, and realized that there was a better way to do it because of his computer background.

Moral: Bricklin's background in computer-science when coupled with exposure to an unrelated area, showed him a need and in the process, he changed the world.

Alternate Moral: If accountants and MBAs had stepped outside their study area and looked at computer-science, they could have changed the world themselves