Because this is slashdot, most of the people commenting seem to be CS oriented. I'd like to rant a little on the other side.
I did liberal Arts at college (Auckland University, New Zealand). Going in, I had pretty much the same marks in English, Physics, and Maths. I've always been into computers, so my first instinct was CS, but when I looked at the curriculum, I got the same feeling that a lot of people here have talked about; all of this stuff was going to be useless in a few years. At the time, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) was being moved onto java, so there was very little evidence of C++, C, linux, unix, assembler, basic comp theory, etcetcetc. A very one dimensional programme, and so I crossed the floor to do english and history.
A lot of people here have been complaining about people who are too specialised in their computer degrees. Let me tell you, it's also very bad in the humanities. Most of the people I've worked with, students and lecturers, wouldn't know the first thing about maths, science or computers. And the real problem is that a lot of them seem to feel the need to discourse on these things they know nothing about. Echoes of all the things that Alan Sokal was complaining about are everywhere (physics guy who wrote a phony "postmodern" paper on quantum physics, revealed that a lot of the humanities people had no idea what they were talking about, if you don't know).
My main point is that while we may complain (justly) that a lot of computer and science people don't know much about the humanities, at least (most of them) have the basic skills of writing and literacy. And in my experience there are also a lot of very well read science types around. But many people at the end of the liberal arts spectrum have absolutely no idea of even the most basic computing and science concepts. As an aside, this often extends to knowing nothing about stats, which is scary given that a lot of humanities research involves it at some point or another. And while most unread computer people wouldn't presume to rabbit on about sophocles or Milton, many liberal arts people just HAVE to say impressive, vague things about the sciences.
Lack of rounding cuts both ways.
Ghoraz
Slashdot Mirror
Because this is slashdot, most of the people commenting seem to be CS oriented. I'd like to rant a little on the other side. I did liberal Arts at college (Auckland University, New Zealand). Going in, I had pretty much the same marks in English, Physics, and Maths. I've always been into computers, so my first instinct was CS, but when I looked at the curriculum, I got the same feeling that a lot of people here have talked about; all of this stuff was going to be useless in a few years. At the time, everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) was being moved onto java, so there was very little evidence of C++, C, linux, unix, assembler, basic comp theory, etcetcetc. A very one dimensional programme, and so I crossed the floor to do english and history. A lot of people here have been complaining about people who are too specialised in their computer degrees. Let me tell you, it's also very bad in the humanities. Most of the people I've worked with, students and lecturers, wouldn't know the first thing about maths, science or computers. And the real problem is that a lot of them seem to feel the need to discourse on these things they know nothing about. Echoes of all the things that Alan Sokal was complaining about are everywhere (physics guy who wrote a phony "postmodern" paper on quantum physics, revealed that a lot of the humanities people had no idea what they were talking about, if you don't know). My main point is that while we may complain (justly) that a lot of computer and science people don't know much about the humanities, at least (most of them) have the basic skills of writing and literacy. And in my experience there are also a lot of very well read science types around. But many people at the end of the liberal arts spectrum have absolutely no idea of even the most basic computing and science concepts. As an aside, this often extends to knowing nothing about stats, which is scary given that a lot of humanities research involves it at some point or another. And while most unread computer people wouldn't presume to rabbit on about sophocles or Milton, many liberal arts people just HAVE to say impressive, vague things about the sciences. Lack of rounding cuts both ways. Ghoraz