A lot of my friends wonder why they have to take calculus for their biology/chemistry majors.
Here's what I always tell them: you'll probably never see any utility in calculus at all when you go into your field; however, calculus is such a strong break away from the reasoning presented in prior math classes. If you can go through calculus, you'll come away with a set of reasoning skills that will be valuable later on.
Being a math major, I absolutely hate it whenever people whine about the "uselessness" of calculus as if the only valuable thing to take away from it is it's direct utility with their lives. With that said, calculus by itself might be a crap subject for a CS/SE student especially when you're talking about its usefulness, but it does provide a set of reasoning skills that WILL be beneficial for them later on.
I'm thinking about dropping my CS major.
Why?
Although they do teach you languages that are used today in the marketplace and tend toward an education that trains you as an effective software engineer, they don't care about teaching things that make people think about how everything is laid on top of each other and other ivory tower-esque stuff.
I was talking to another peer in the CS department (who is similarly disenchanted with the CS program as well) about the various classes he took. "Programming Languages" used to be about, you know, the structure of programming languages. Now it's simply a glorified scripting language survey course. "Operating Systems" used to be about the operating system as a concept. Now it's a glorified Linux Programming course. etc. etc.
I'd say that I'd be ready to tackle a project if I graduate with a CS degree from my current university. However, I think I'd simply be another cog in the machine, so to speak. That to me is a less desirable preparation than learning all about theory and finding out how to implement them in the real world by myself.
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A lot of my friends wonder why they have to take calculus for their biology/chemistry majors.
Here's what I always tell them: you'll probably never see any utility in calculus at all when you go into your field; however, calculus is such a strong break away from the reasoning presented in prior math classes. If you can go through calculus, you'll come away with a set of reasoning skills that will be valuable later on.
Being a math major, I absolutely hate it whenever people whine about the "uselessness" of calculus as if the only valuable thing to take away from it is it's direct utility with their lives. With that said, calculus by itself might be a crap subject for a CS/SE student especially when you're talking about its usefulness, but it does provide a set of reasoning skills that WILL be beneficial for them later on.
I'm thinking about dropping my CS major. Why? Although they do teach you languages that are used today in the marketplace and tend toward an education that trains you as an effective software engineer, they don't care about teaching things that make people think about how everything is laid on top of each other and other ivory tower-esque stuff. I was talking to another peer in the CS department (who is similarly disenchanted with the CS program as well) about the various classes he took. "Programming Languages" used to be about, you know, the structure of programming languages. Now it's simply a glorified scripting language survey course. "Operating Systems" used to be about the operating system as a concept. Now it's a glorified Linux Programming course. etc. etc. I'd say that I'd be ready to tackle a project if I graduate with a CS degree from my current university. However, I think I'd simply be another cog in the machine, so to speak. That to me is a less desirable preparation than learning all about theory and finding out how to implement them in the real world by myself.