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Do Businesses Really Need to Hire CS Majors? (cio.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the degrees-of-separation dept.

A new article in CIO magazine argues that when it comes to computer science, "few of us really need much of any of it." Slashdot reader itwbennett offers this summary: At the heart of the matter is the fact that most businesses don't really need programmers to be deep thinkers. For them, it's "just as worthwhile to hire someone from a physics lab who just used Python to massage some data streams from an instrument. They can learn the shallow details just as readily as the CS genius," according to the article.
CIO's anonymous author promises an incomplete list of "why we may be better off ignoring CS majors." Some of the highlights:
  • Theory distracts and confuses. "Many computer scientists are mathematicians at heart and the theorem-obsessed mindset permeates the discipline."
  • Academic languages are rarely used. "...the academy breeds snobbery and a love for arcane solutions."
  • Many CS professors are mathematicians, not programmers. "One of the dirty secrets about most computer science departments is that most of the professors can't program computers. Their real job is giving lectures and wrangling grants...."
  • Many required subjects are rarely used. "...it's too bad few of us use many data structures any more."
  • Institutions breed arrogance. "...the very nature of academic degrees are designed to give graduates the ability to argue one's superiority with authority. "
  • Many modern skills are ignored. "If you want to understand Node.js, React, game design or cloud computation, you'll find very little of it in the average curriculum... It's very common for computer science departments to produce deep thinkers who understand some of the fundamental challenges without any shallow knowledge of the details that dominate the average employee's day."

"It's not that CS degrees are bad," the article concludes. "It's just that they're not going to speak to the problems that most of us need to solve."


7 of 473 comments (clear)

  1. The GP is right, ... to a certain degree. by Qbertino · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been progging for 33 years, since my teens. Classic 80ies computer kid. I do that for a living since 18 years ago. I've finally enrolled in a BSc CS track that I'l pobably manage to complete, after having done my German GED High School diploma 3 years back. I'm in the second semester, only taking a few courses at a time, and pushing a wave of exams in front of me. I do part-time, because I'm working as a professional webdev too.

    Here's my observation and it's 100% spot on with my expectations and one of the reasons I'm doing CS in my late 40ies:

    The basics - Math, theoretic CS ("Theoretische Informatik" ... dunno what that's in english exactly), graph theory, expanded theory of sets and so on are exactly what someone doing anything computer related at a professional programmers and software architects level should know and be able to wrap his/her head around. Being able to algebrahicly express and calculate the complexity of a relational graph in a database is a level or two above simply discussing which goes in what entity. It's tough - boolean algebra is a particularly neat alien monster to tackle if your not into algebra that much - but it's doable and it ups your understanding of what you're doing in your everyday work and it does away with the fog that covers many deeper areas that IT people encounter every day and should know more about. This is the reason you should do CS if you'e doing IT professionally. At least a bit of it on the side, in Kahn Academy or something.

    Point in case: I'm in a CS project group right now reimplementing RSA to learn all the n00ks and crannies about it. Very nice. Slow as hell and crappy n00b code by my 19 year old comrades, but we all (me included) learned new stuff. For instance: Asmetric is hard and demands performance, thus is only used to do a preceeding exchange of a symetric key before the show starts. That's why https handshakes take up 1.5 of the 3.5 second rule for loading and displaying websites. Now who without some CS knowlege is aware of this?

    However, there is the other side that the GP mentions, and this is a very simple cold hard fact that CS faculties need to get into their collective head: The avantgarde of software development is not in academia anymore. The regular skills you're teaching your students are most likely sub-par and will be nigh obsolete once your students leave for the real world. Yes, there is the occasional Scala that comes out of a university and then gets some hype in the industry, but that only works if the Prof who invented it is in the industry himself aswell.

    Point in case here: We're doing this project in IntellyJ Idea already (bad idea imho). The introduction into the IDE was sub-par and the Prof talked bullshit and wrong details about Git. I could've given his introduction on the spot and he would've learned some new things. ... That's because they probably only moved from SVN a few years back.

    Kotlin is barely on their radar and it's already being used in the industry, in non-trivial projects.

    Bottom line: As far as practical skills go, CS is too far behind the curve. I'm sure they are becoming aware of this and many a college is trying to catch up with close ties to the industry, but right now I learn more and better at local meetups than in class. Graph theory and math however I doubt I find some better place to learn that than at my faculty.

    --
    We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
    1. Re:The GP is right, ... to a certain degree. by swilver · · Score: 4, Informative

      For instance: Asmetric is hard and demands performance, thus is only used to do a preceeding exchange of a symetric key before the show starts. That's why https handshakes take up 1.5 of the 3.5 second rule for loading and displaying websites

      This has absolutely nothing to do with the performance of the assymetric encryption, but everything to do with the two extra roundtrips it takes for the HTTPS handshake.

      And no, I don't have and never will have a CS degree -- I only have a solid interest in how stuff works (tm), which has led me to expand my knowledge in all kinds of areas.

    2. Re:The GP is right, ... to a certain degree. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      If you want, "practical skills," go to a Trade School.

      Want to learn how to think? Maybe go to College. YOUR problem is that you think it's supposed to be like a Trades School when it's more a discipline than anything else in this case.

      The schools may be inadequately teaching the courses, but it doesn't lead to YOUR supposition that he's partly right. He's NOT. But then, you're probably not having Mechies and EE's honestly ask where you got your Engineering degree, do you? Hehe...Kotlin? It's WORTHLESS and only sort-of used in the industry. The moment you used that statement...you lost and you lost any argument, because you're just flatly CLUELESS. You're better served with other tools. Kotlin's only used by the wonks that like JetBrains' stuff. Seriously.

  2. Re: Heh by Mogusha · · Score: 4, Informative
    Sounds more like someone who doesn't understand that computer science isn't a degree in programming. It's a degree in the theory of programming, not in programming itself. So, to say that it's bad that a computer science teacher doesn't know how to code means nothing bad about them if they know the theory. Pretty much the only reason CS majors learn to code is to implement the theoretical algorithms and structures in a way that is concrete.

    Depending on the institution many of the CS departments came directly out of the mathematics Department. Which is one big reason why many of them are highly math oriented.

  3. Re: Heh by admin7087 · · Score: 5, Informative

    100% this. It's a blatant misunderstanding of the discipline to think the main goal of computer science is to enable someone to program. Maybe you could say that being able to program is a prerequisite to start learning CS, though. In Germany the discipline is called "Informatik" which is perhaps a better term than CS. However, in the end CS is a branch of applied mathematics, but one that is important enough to warrant its own discipline. In that respect it's similar to statistics.

  4. Bc completely unaware software engineering exists by raymorris · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sounds like the author is completely unaware that software engineering and systems engineering are fields, and people get degrees in each. He thinks computer science is the degree for programming. Realizing that computer science teaches a lot that isn't programming, he suggests hiring a physicist who learned a little programming.

    Maybe an analogy will help him:

    If you want to design and build a physical thing, such as an engine, you get an engineer to design it. The *science* of how an engine works is physics, applying that science is engineering, not physics. Specifically, you want a mechanical engineer.

    Similarly, applying knowledge to design computer-based systems is the job of an engineer as well, a different type of engineer. Either a software engineer or a systems engineer. The difference is that while an engine needs to be designed in detail, blueprints made, before it is built, for software the detailed blueprint *is* the software. You don't need the extra step of machinists physically constructing it after the blueprints are made.

    Computer science is to programming as physics is to engine design.

    Computer engineering, like mechanical engineering, is a degree that teaches you how to design robust, cost-effective things. Programs in the former, machines in the he latter.

  5. Defending ignorance by dpons · · Score: 4, Informative

    This needs to be repeated: "The idea of programming as a semiskilled task, practiced by people with a few months' training, is dangerous. We wouldn't tolerate plumbers or accountants that poorly educated. We don't have as an aim that architecture (of buildings) and engineering (of bridges and trains) should become more accessible to people with progressively less training. Indeed, one serious problem is that currently, too many software developers are undereducated and undertrained. Obviously, we don't want our tools--including our programming languages--to be more complex than necessary. But one aim should be to make tools that will serve skilled professionals--not to lower the level of expressiveness to serve people who can hardly understand the problems, let alone express solutions. We can and do build tools that make simple tasks simple for more people, but let's not let most people loose on the infrastructure of our technical civilization or force the professionals to use only tools designed for amateurs." - Bjarne Stroustrup