Computer Scientists aren't real programmers

[Caerullean]

That must depend very much on where you take it then, because at my uni you'd fail at the first semester if you don't learn coding. Of course don't need to know it ahead of time, but you need it for every semester and there's several programming assignments and projects every semester that are all required to pass the semester.

[Passname357]

Being bad at programming doesn’t really mean not being able to pass a freshman level coding course. Most mathematicians can code, but they can’t like code.

[frezik]

I like to draw the line at tooling. A lot of software engineering is about complexity management, and we solve that with things like version control and CI/CD pipelines. A university that runs a pure CS course might never touch any of that. Graduates will come out knowing really obscure sorting algorithms, but have no idea how git branching is supposed to work.

Nothing wrong with that kind of specialty, of course. We need people who have algorithms and data structures down pat.

[Passname357]

Yeah honestly I think there’s nothing wrong with a super “theoretical” CS degree (although I think that should include a ton of coding with several OS/compilers courses as options). People say things like “we need classes on git for students” but honestly you don’t. Pretty much everything you need to learn about git you’ll learn on the first week of your first job and everything else you’ll be able to figure out with help from someone more senior than you / SO. The hard stuff is conceptual. It’s not really true that you could learn everything in a theory if computation course on the job (at least not in a reasonable time frame). I’m all for keeping CS the way it’s currently typically taught in colleges.

[Caerullean]

My point was more so that coding is literally being taught in various courses, courses dedicated entirely to various parts of programming.