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The History of the CompSci Degree
Esther Schindler writes "Young whippersnappers might imagine that Computer Science degrees — and the term "computer science" — have been around forever. But they were invented, after all, and early programmers couldn't earn a college degree in something that hadn't been created yet. In The Evolution of the Computer Science Degree, Karen Heyman traces the history of the term and the degree, and challenges you on a geek trivia question: Which U.S. college offered the first CS degree? (It's not an obvious answer.)"
I want to see how long it takes a site specializing in guys good at CompSci in the age of Google to find that answer!
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
*yawn* glad I'm smart enough, passionate enough, and imaginative enough to pursue a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
... I did not graduated with a comp sci bachelor degree
I graduated with a EE degree, simply because the courses in comp sci in my university was more towards software and I was more interesting in hardware
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The first taught computing course in the world was at Cambridge University, UK in 1953. Why not be a little more international in outlook?
... don't have a degree in anything. Just graduates from the school of hard knocks.
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
Astronaut. Must have experience with moon landing.
early programmers couldn't earn a college degree in something that hadn't been created yet.
And yet, recruiters would still think so.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
I would say my Uncle is/was a "computer Scientist". He graduated with a BS in Math in 1962 or so. Then did 6 years in the Marines(on AWACs). I'd say he fits the bill. No degree in CS though...
âoeAt an academic level, it's a very different background,â says Bobby Schnabel, Dean of the School of Informatics at Indiana University and chair of the ACMâ(TM)s Education Policy Committee. "The calculus and differential equations that underlie engineering are not what underlies computer science. It's really discrete mathematics."
That was true a few decades ago. Today, though, all that discrete math isn't as useful. Today, you need calculus and Bayesian statistics for machine learning. You need differential equations and computational geometry for game development and robotics. Number theory, mathematical logic, graph theory, and automata theory just aren't that important any more. Most of what's needed from those fields is now embodied in well-known algorithms.
I got all the classic discrete math training, but over the years, I've had to use far more number-crunching math.
EE and Comp Sci, while related, aren't the same
EE is more towards the hardware side while Comp Sci is more on the software side
And I've met with brilliant folks from both the EE and the Comp Sci, and some of them even have earned both degrees (bachelor Comp Sci, master/phd EE, for example)
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Purdue was first in 1962... and no I'm not THAT old and I didn't have to RTFA. I went there.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
Exactly what I was about to point out. I have a PhD in EE (microelectronics), and a bachelor comp sci, the two things could not be more far removed.
The PhD in EE was all about things like the physical properties of materials (especially silicon), chemistry, properties of plasmas in a vacuum, etc. the comp sci degree was more about coding algorithms,apis, multitasking and other operating systems concepts.
Both things are useful to me, and gave me completely different skill sets.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Comp sci grew very much out of different departments, some places (like waterloo) it's an extension of maths, some places it's physics, some places it's engineering. But you're right, as a discipline comp sci is concerned much more with what is theoretically computable and how complex that is, how you logically envision that problem and how you organize and represent information. Computer engineering is much more about the problem of building all of the components and how they get soldered together.
Though I grant there are computer scientists who do research on what is computable on real hardware only, and engineers (and physicists) who think about hardware that could be used to solve problems not normally regarded as computable or computable in a particular time. Part of doing research is that you solve a problem and what discipline it happens to be belong to is secondary.
grad school / PHD / is over kill for Most IT jobs and even CS is to much on the theory side.
Ok when the did the tech schools had degree as part them???
Yes there is a need for tech schools but maybe the not the degree part.
Maybe they will be better off not being tied down to rules cover by degrees and can be more about teaching real job skills.
Very true. If you're getting a PhD you're trying to do actual science, not just be an IT guy. hell if you want to be an IT guy you don't even need a BSc.
I did see a help desk job with masters preferred listed.
I began studying computer science and realized I should have pursued a BA Mathematics so I changed majors. The mathematics degree has proven far more useful and those computer science courses with a mathematical foundation (discrete structures, discrete mathematics, compilers, algorithm analysis, databases, and data structures). The computer programming courses were dull and boring because I had already taught myself several programming languages before beginning university; I was helping other students in the computer labs after completing my own assignments within hours of them being issued by the professors or their teaching assistants.
Especially with the fresh grad hires with BSCS degrees, there seems to be more BS than CS.
CS is a new and brilliant approach based on mathematics to an idea which never existed in any person's head until von neumann & turing and even lady ada before. It's a new science which literally changes every day.
Get the degree : It's _so so so _ worth it
I wrote my first, very simple computer program around 1966 in a class in numerical analysis when I was an undergraduate math major. I was going to a small liberal arts college, less than 2000 students. The college computer was a PDP 8. You bought decks of cards, punched them up with your program and submitted them to a clerk in the Admin Building and hoped the thing would run. In the mid-1970s, after a hitch in the Navy, I went back to school at a somewhat larger place on the GI Bill. We timeshared on a Univac 1108 in another county, but, at least we had terminals, at first uniscopes, later hazeltines. You could also still use punch cards if you wanted to. But that was when it was even feasible to offer a computer science degree.
In theory, theory and practice are the same; in practice they're different. (Yogi Berra & A. Einstein)
Computer science now has "routes", "track", or "emphasis". C.S. with emphasis on Web, or Security, or Artificial Intelligence, or Crypto, or Machine Learning, or Software Engineering, or General/Mathematics, or Foundational/Theoretical. So I can tell an employer, "Yea, I am a computer scientist. But only the kind that works with web tech. I don't know enough about Embedded systems to get your water pumps working in sync, sorry!" I've even seen a "Developer" track offered. Hmm.
What's going on is these degrees are really just teach the current industry and market. Theory is shoved aside to make room for immediately practical skill, so the uni. can say "last year 98% of our c.s. grads got jobs". But 98% of their c.s. grads can only write Android apps or work with Joomla templates, so wtf does that mean for the future of our digital era? Not shit. I shouldn't have to commit myself to the Crypto track to get insider knowledge on Information theory, right? Shouldn't that be general knowledge to any C.S. grad ?? So I say put those "industry now" topics into survey courses as track electives, or assign them to a different degree altogether, or perhaps as a double major or minor. Then I can graduate with a B.S. in C.S. with a A.S. in web tech, or a double B.S. in CIS security, right?
I am going back to school this fall to finish my B.S. in C.S. degree after switching from religious studies to philosophy to C.S.. Can you imagine I only need 2 upper level math classes to graduate from this particular university? I have to double up with a maths major to get what I think is sufficient material for what I imagine a professional computer scientist ought to know .... it's ridiculous the way this stuff is run these days...
"Sheldon-like snobbish mathematicians who look down on CS majors as failed math majors."
Hence, I can conclude that Physicists are lazy math majors. I can vouch for that at least :)
The first hard CS school was in fact Mil Inteligence at Bletchley Park, Allen Turing and, John von Neuman, of Princeton were the founder thinkers, later joined by Chris Streachy. The Universities of Cambridge and Manchester, Tom Kilburn and Maurice Wilkes, created nescent departments at their universities, and Wilkes aided by David Needham and Sir Peter Swinnerton-Dyer founded the Cambridge Maths Lab in the late 1950s. Joined with distinguished continental colleagues, eg Edsger Dijkstra formed a nexus of excellence in Europe. ... Martin Richards taught the first BCPL course at MIT, 19 while on sabatical 1970, and via PDP10 ports becam widespread.
MFG, omb
"Which U.S. college offered the first CS degree?"
I believe it was Jerry Falwell's Liberty Christian University. But the computer was an abacus, and it could only count up to 6,000.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Someone please mod this up!
"In our tactical decisions, we are operating contrary to our strategic interest."
EE is more towards the hardware side while Comp Sci is more on the software side
It's more than that. Engineering disciplines are different than the science disciplines. Engineering majors will be required to take courses on the engineering process that are merely optional for a student of computer science.
Years ago I found myself with a BSEE and no job. At the time it seemed like every job interview ended with, "Thanks for your time but we're looking for someone with more programming experience." It didn't take me long to realize that I needed to go back to school.
I talked to a student counselor about my options and it quickly became a choice between a major in computer science or computer engineering. The computer science course took me on the path of a lot of math courses, computer architecture, and (since it was a major in the Liberal Arts college) things like public speaking, foreign languages, and such. In the computer engineering program, and electrical engineering program, I was offered courses on software design along with the other courses on programming languages.
Where I went to school it was possible to take a nearly identical set of courses while majoring in either the electrical engineering or computer science. The difference was that the courses on the design process, good engineering practice, and so on, were required in electrical and computer engineering where in computer science the mind set was more on gaining a wide knowledge set in programming languages, mathematics, and theory.
In other words, computer science focused on the "what" while engineering focused on the "how".
At the time I recall hearing people talk about how recruiters were looking for electrical engineers to be programmers. This was because electrical engineers were taught good design practice along with a lot of computer theory. The computer science majors typically knew the language the recruiters were looking for but it was much easier to teach someone a programming language than teach them good design practice after getting the job.
I believe this is where the software engineering program came from where I went to school. There was a demand for people that both knew the programming languages and good design practice. The computer science program was not teaching people this. Rather than turn the computer science program into something it was not intended to be they created a new program to fill in the hole.
I realize my experience may be somewhat unique. Some colleges have treated computer science more like what we now know as software engineering for a very long time.
Also, don't think that I'm knocking the computer science majors out there. We need computer scientists. The problem was that people were going into computer science thinking they were going to learn how to engineer software. Employers found out quickly that students in computer science weren't being taught good engineering practice. I feel sorry for all of those people that were essentially duped by so many about what computer science meant, both the students and the hiring managers.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I graduated with the first five-year class of NUCCS in 1988. Five years because Co-Op experience was mandatory and built into the curriculum. Freshmen and Sophomores used Pascal; by Middler (3d year) you had to take the 1-credit "lab" course in C to move into the Operating Systems track. We also had VAX Assembler and FORTRAN... Until 1985, the whole University's enrollment system still ran on punch-cards.
Computer Science was created by the foremost minds of yesteryear, with hideous amounts of resources, to solve problems that the human mind would find either tedious, impossible, or both.
To reiterate my point, it was created because the Physicists, Mathematicians, and Electrical Engineers of half a century ago had hit a brick wall, and needed something new to help themselves over it. I believe Einstein, Feynman, and friends were among those people, using computers to perform yield calculations (and borrowing a fair amount of silver for the wiring of it (since copper was in short supply)). I'd provide a direct link, but Google is being less than helpful.
So, yes, if you consider Einstein and Feynman to be not smart enough for a PhD in EE, sure, then Computer Science was created for the less intelligent. If you do think they are smart enough for a PhD in EE, then what does that say about your comment?
Computer Science is the melding of over seven different fields, with a lot of knowledge / wisdom unique to itself. It's not easy, which is why CS people, like EE and others (who are in equally demanding fields), are in such high demand, and the stuff you do in it is mind-bending to say the least. Trying to explain a data structure to a laymen is like trying to explain a Bose-Einstein condensate or thermodynamics to the same.
Which reminds me. Nothing makes the engineers that I've known happier than having a computer scientist on their team (so they don't have to write their own code). I remember the EEs from my university receiving special dispensation to take one day out of a given senior CS class and give a presentation on their current projects, in an attempt to lure / persuade some CS people to join their teams and help fix their code. And they showed us some of their code, during that presentation...I want you to imagine 30,000 lines of if / else statements in C++. Had I the time, I would have helped them (senior year at my university, with my chosen tracks and lifestyle, was a little 'rough').
I am John Hurt.
I remember software job postings in the 70s that suggested a variety of acceptable degrees, including Philosophy, Logic, Rhetoric, and the like.
Depends on the help desk and the kind of things they are helping with if they actually need masters degree in some area.
See subject-line above: Discrete Math's an INTERESTING course (& unlike any other math I'd ever taken, because it was more THINKING than just plain "by rote" algorithms - funny part was I had graph theory in the mix with it & other things that our professor told us "bordered on number theory")
However, like yourself:
I too found that the MOST of what I used was plain-jane number crunching mathematics (nothing algebra wouldn't get you through in other words) - that's from out of a MOSTLY data-processing standpoint in programming though!
(Where I concentrated my programmatic career efforts because most of the jobs out there were oriented towards business & are NEVER the same, because no companies do "exactly the same thing" in terms of data they have OR how they process it).
APK
P.S.=> There were 2 distinct degree tracks really: Straight Comp. Sci. (CSC - which had all the mathematics & this is what I pursued)
OR
The less "math-laden" one (CIS), which was actually geared towards MIS/IS (mgt. information systems/information systems/dataprocessing) - makes me wish I took the CIS track because I found some of the mathematics HARD & actual work!
Especially discrete math, which had elements of:\
---
1.) LOGIC (truth tables, & this I liked, well, not on LONGER proofs - even with the "shortcuts" possible)
2.) Graph theory
3.) Set theory (relations & such)
4.) Mapping
5.) Sequences
6.) Induction
7.) Recursion
8.) Counting techniques (ala Johnny Chan)
9.) Probability Theory
10.) Shortest Routes & Paths (I saw this in business degree I had too)
11.) Matrix Math
---
( & more - interesting & HARD stuff imo, but nothing I really ended up using, DIRECTLY, except for the shortest path work, in the CIS/MIS/IS/IT related coding work of information systems)... apk
Much like typing and shorthand. The original word "computer" referred to mostly female clerks, who tallied long calculations by hand or adding machines in backrooms of laboratories and insurance companies. Many of these same women migrated to the early electronic computers in the 1940s programming them by setting dials, rewiring, and punch cards. I believe the feminine clerk side of the business gave computer programming a low status in the early decades.
I attended MIT before they had a formal department of computer science (1970s). It was a minor in electrical engineering (6.3) and business school (15). It seemed like half of undergraduates knew some programming before they arrived even though there were no personal computers at this time. There were very few formal programming classes. It was considered a side skill you pick up for a theoretical comp sci or engineering class.
In 1980 MIT formally recognized computer science as major discipline making it a department name and department course requirement (6 EE And CC). Computer sills are still not a university wide requirement, despite MIT music or philosophy mast must take a year of physics and calculus. Its been on the agenda to make it so for some time.
I wont hire you because of a degree.
This also answers all those, I was just initiated into becoming THE admin over the past three days and nights, now what?
Now you fucking shine motherfucker, quit bragging about the past, make something new.
Napoleon Hill the fuck up.
"On most university campuses, CS grew out of mathematics or engineering departments, not (ahem) from accounting or business departments, according to Williams and others."
You mean a specialized mathematics degree started in mathematics and engineering departments and not in departments that are completely unrelated? SHOCKER!
You would find it funny then that Purdue's department came out of the School of Science, and not Engineering (what Purdue is known for).
2004 Purdue CS Alumni
Dear snotnoses:
When I went back to Philly Community College[1][2] in 1978, I got into a track for an Associate's Degree... in Data Processing.[3] There were a *lot* of folks taking DP. That was, of course, before the escalation of titles (that's a sanitary engineer, not a janitor). I also have an ex who's library science degree title included information systems
mark, BS, CIS[4], 1995
1. Phila., PA, USA
2. CCP, just one C short of being the Soviet Union
3. Which I didn't get, because I didn't want to take accounting, so I got a plain AA
4. Computer and Information Systems
As an undergrad at Ga. Tech back in 1969-1973, they had a GRADUATE program in C.S., but no undergrad program. I had a roomate who was working on his masters in C.S., but I could not major in that. Also at that time, there was no minor program available (for anything--not just C.S.). So I majored in physics and took a lot of computer courses when I could. Good old Basic, ALGOL, and Fortran for the most part. I even recall an assembly-level simulation language called "Dummiestron" (or Dummystron?).
Me fail english? That unpossible!