I would tend to disagree that elite programmers are the ones that have a degree in CS. Most of the software I use was written (and largely maintained) by physics and mathematicians.
That said, it's been my experience that good programming skills come from doing actual programming, which is often secondary in most CS programs. I dropped a CS major (in favor of math and physics) because of the dearth of actual code that came into the discussion about things like networking, data structures, and semaphores. I'd rather re-read a chapter of The Art of Computer Programming than get a headache trying to make use of my criminally overgeneralized OS textbook
</soapbox>
I can't help but be amused at the thought of how many people with undergraduate degrees in CS, having taken probably less than three college physics courses, are convinced they have any grasp of this phenomena; I have a BS in physics and it's way beyond my ken.
But as for this line of reasoning, maybe a Douglas Adams quote is best, "Isn't it enough to see the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too."
Slashdot Mirror
I would tend to disagree that elite programmers are the ones that have a degree in CS. Most of the software I use was written (and largely maintained) by physics and mathematicians.
That said, it's been my experience that good programming skills come from doing actual programming, which is often secondary in most CS programs. I dropped a CS major (in favor of math and physics) because of the dearth of actual code that came into the discussion about things like networking, data structures, and semaphores. I'd rather re-read a chapter of The Art of Computer Programming than get a headache trying to make use of my criminally overgeneralized OS textbook
</soapbox>
I can't help but be amused at the thought of how many people with undergraduate degrees in CS, having taken probably less than three college physics courses, are convinced they have any grasp of this phenomena; I have a BS in physics and it's way beyond my ken. But as for this line of reasoning, maybe a Douglas Adams quote is best, "Isn't it enough to see the garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too."