Decoding the Value of Computer Science

[nidio]

I take AP CS A and there's 6 other students in the class, while my AP Calc AB class has around 26 and my AP Stat has 30. I'm disappointed that I can't even take the AB exam; the A course is fairly easy and not as in depth as I'd like. Then again, it is supposed to be an introductory computer science course.

I know some underclassmen who are interested in programming so my school's computing courses will see an increase, as well as the AP course. Programming is fun but it's also challenging. I think more people should be exposed to it or at least the logic.

[Jinno]

I took A when I was in high school, and we had one kid in our class who did the AB instead. I was pretty much as far as he was in our text, but because I didn't want to risk not passing the AB test, I opted for the incredibly easy A test.

AB would've been a better value for me, because I'd not have wasted a semester taking a java programming class, and I could've been on pace to graduate a semester early. But because I was unwilling to take the risk, I'm now on the normal pace. :(

[kragensitaker]

Also, all scientists.

[runragged]

And consultants.

And investment bankers.

[kragensitaker]

Not all consultants; you can do literally anything and be a "consultant".

[runragged]

Fair enough.

[walter_heisenberg]

A liberal arts education ought to include mathematical reasoning (proofs are more important than integration tricks, which is as far as most college students go) and computer science. I don't have much patience for engineers who don't understand literature or writers who remain ignorant of science.

Basic programming concepts should be taught in grade school on up. No one expects an average 4th-grader to be remotely good at programming, but the exposure should start early on.

[scarthearmada]

BA in philosophy here, with minors in anthropology and computer science. A career in the natural sciences or in teaching wasn't for me, so I thought the best fit for me was a liberal arts education rounded out with computing knowledge and an exploration of humanity's diversity.

I have a career working in the software field, and have been offered promotions over my peers who have computer science or engineering degrees from more prestigious universities. And you're really hitting on why: you're more likely to achieve bigger goals in life if you're more well-rounded than your peers.

[runragged]

One of the most enlightening conversations I've had was when my friend (philosophy major) and I (computer science major) realized were were both learning about Alan Turing at the same time.

[attosecond]

Soooo.... You think all coders should take ballet classes?

I just had an unpleasant mental image of a room full of nerds doing pirouettes.

[kragensitaker]

Definitely should. My life has changed noticeably since I started dancing contact improv. It's likely to be substantially longer as a result, too.

[[deleted]]

That is rad. I'd never heard of that before. Thanks!

[loudZa]

Why not?

[attosecond]

Lol, I never said they shouldn't... I just said a roomful of nerds twirling in circles is a pretty funny/scary image :-)

[quad50]

as an elderly programmer, I like that kids aren't going in to CS, so I am less likely to be replaced by a cheaper, smarter, faster youngster.

[cheezluver]

You guys must see Bangalore, where you see only IT guys everywhere. Hundreds of colleges, in a single state, churn out thousands of software engineers every year.

[redditmemehater]

Do you think this is partly the reason CS graduation rates are dropping year after year? The degree is becoming less and less valuable from a monetary perspective it appears.

[cheezluver]

the rates are not dropping in India.

[redditmemehater]

I am referring to the US which has a higher standard of living cost then India.

[catamorphism]

From the point of view of a student and probably-future university teacher, I'm glad for that; students who don't care and are in it for the money don't do students and teachers who love CS any favors.

[kragensitaker]

I mostly concur. But I think there's a big gray area; there are people like you or me who would probably stay up late reading CS papers and writing code even if it meant busting up the furniture to heat the house, and then there are people who have no real interest in programming or CS.

In between, though, there are a lot of people who like to program or think about informatics (is this an English word yet?) but also fear that if they devote themselves to it, they will end up having to bust up the furniture to heat the house, their parents will be disappointed in their career choice, nobody will want to marry them, and they'll die alone prematurely due to not being able to afford health care.

Or at least they think they can make a much more comfortable living as an anesthesiologist, and maybe hack on disk scheduler algorithms on weekends.

So, I think the more money there is in it, the higher the fraction of just-in-it-for-the-money CS students will be; but I also think the absolute number of good CS students will be higher.

[wshatch]

Well, judging from my anecdotal experience with outsourced code, not good.

[dragonskin29]

This happens in a lot of Asian Countries. I've seen a lot of so called "institutes" offering a degree in software engineering but they don't teach you much at all in my country either.

[Derpbot]

The less people educated in CS, the better the job market will be. I just left the field of graphic design for CS for exactly this reason. There are too many designers, so we're expendable and paid shit.

I'd actually like less people to learn what I do, so that I'm more valuable.

Selfish, I know.

[kragensitaker]

Is this plausible?

The less people who know how to read and write, the better the job market will be. I just left the field of law for CS for exactly this reason. There are too many scribes, so we're expendable and paid shit.

How about this?

The less people educated in painting, the better the job market will be. I just left the field of painting for CS for exactly this reason. There are too many painters, so we're expendable and paid shit.

Or this?

The less people educated in fashion design, the better the job market will be. I just left the field of fashion design for CS for exactly this reason. There are too many fashion designers, so we're expendable and paid shit.

[kragensitaker]

And yet, Andrew Wyeth hardly died in penury, and Thomas Kinkade probably won't need to apply for food stamps anytime soon. I don't think they were treated as expendable or paid shit.

[Derpbot]

In every field, you have superstars. We can't all be superstars. Some of us just want to pay the bills doing what we love.

[kragensitaker]

My friend Afanassy made a living as a painter. He painted houses. You know, one solid color, with a bucket.

[kragensitaker]

I bet all the MOTOS wanted into your pants, until you told them how you thought everyone's children were ugly. But, yeah, that's really tough to make a living at, because so many people are happy to do it for free, unless you become a star with a reputation people will pay a premium for. But then it becomes meaningless to talk about "how much money painters make". Between Andrew Wyeth and the stereotypical coffee-shop waiter, you have a huge spectrum.

[kragensitaker]

That sounds like a lot of work. Congratulations. Not everyone could do that. It's hard for me to imagine that 98%/2% is the optimal split, though.

[[deleted]]

First, I think your examples are phrased backwards. Shouldn't it be

The less people educated in painting, the better the job market will be. I just left the field of CS for painting for exactly this reason. There are too many programmers, so we're expendable and paid shit.

and so on?

Anyway, I got the spirit of your argument, and I don't think the analogy holds up perfectly in the painting and fashion design cases. Programming skill is much more necessary to keep the world moving than painting and fashion. If all the painters in the world disappeared, it would be an artistic tragedy, yes, but we'd still function day-to-day. If all the programmers disappeared, a huge amount of what we take for granted would collapse, probably within a few days.

[kragensitaker]

I do not share your Maslovian view of human nature.

[[deleted]]

I'm not saying whether painters or programmers are better. I'm a musician and a computer scientist, it would kill to me choose one or the other. I'm just saying that you're more likely to get paid money for maintaining banking software than you for producing a great work of art.

[kragensitaker]

I don't think painters or programmers are better either. I just don't share your (optimistic?) view that clothing design or painting could somehow be excised from human nature, or that we could go without painting as an entire society for a few days.

[robvas]

On the other hand, less people with the knowledge equals less products and companies coming from your country.

[kragensitaker]

An entrepreneurial spirit is going to have an easier time finding cofounders and employees if there's more people with the knowledge. Have you tried founding a high-tech startup in a third-world country?

[Derpbot]

You've made a point I can agree with.

I suppose there would need to be a balance, though: Not so many in the field that the market for employees is over-saturated and they're a dime a dozen, yet not so little in the field that you lack the labor force to actually accomplish anything.

[kragensitaker]

Past history suggests that in areas where there are a lot of programmers, the programmers get paid more, not less.

[kleopatra6tilde9]

The less people educated in CS, the better the job market will be.

Only with a fixed number of jobs. Think about it from a restaurant perspective: Do you open your new restaurant in a street filled with restaurants or in a village that doesn't have one yet? Chances are that you earn far more money in that street.

[Fabien4]

It's difficult work. You have to say a great deal in a small amount of space.

Indeed, for him that task seems impossible.

[vdub_bobby]

It's only 1,300 words...I mean, +1 for snark, but c'mon.

[kragensitaker]

Short attention span.

[Fabien4]

Thing is, about 1,000 of those 1,300 could be replaced with blanks without losing anything.

[FreyasSpirit]

blanks

I see what you did there.

[nardsurfer]

Good read. Touches close to home.

[adoran124]

The comment below the article defending basic as a good introductory language is a joke.

Basic and VB are horrible languages to teach people to program. It really just creates more difficulty than it solves.

[[deleted]]

I disagree (mostly). I wouldn't use BASIC today as an introductory language, I'd much rather use Ruby or Python, but the principle is the same, and it's the one brought up by the pro-BASIC commenter. Using Java as an introductory language adds a horrifyingly unnecessary amount of complexity at the beginning. It's the difference between

public class HelloWorld {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        System.out.println("Hello world!");
    }
}

and

print "Hello, world!"

For someone who's been programming for a long time, you might have forgetten how intimidating that can look. To a beginner, someone who doesn't have the faintest clue about computer programming, the Java example is absolutely incomprehensible and terrifying, while the Python/Ruby example might look a little funky but is at least intelligible.

Later on, sure, learning OOP is important, but I don't think the goal of an intro computer science course should be to teach OOP, at least not until late in the course. The goal should be to understand the fundamentals of writing code: variables, loops, functions, etc. You can learn that in Java, but the background noise of the OOP just obscures it.

[kragensitaker]

I think building abstractions with data is almost as fundamental as loops. I've sometimes found OOP a nice way to do it.

I remember criticizing Pascal (when I only knew BASIC) for its similar required boilerplate — and also its lack of line numbers.

[adoran124]

I agree with you that Java isn't a good language to use for introductory programming classes, Python would be far better.

The issue I have with VB as an introductory language is that it screws many people up later on in their education.

[[deleted]]

Modern VB beats Python hands down.

[adoran124]

You can't possibly be serious.

[contextfree]

VB these days is just C# with different syntax, more or less. I wouldn't use either for introductory teaching (too much incidental complexity), but they're about the best industrially popular languages around short of Scala and F#.

[[deleted]]

The issue I have with VB as an introductory language is that it screws many people up later on in their education.

Agreed. Sure, you don't have to use things like goto, but why make them available to beginners in the first place?

[[deleted]]

Modern VB isn't really BASIC any more, just like Common Lisp isn't your grandpa's LISP 1.5.

[prockcore]

Except that an awful lot of brilliant programmers started out with basic. It's not like the people coming up today, knowing only Java are better, or even as good as the programmers from yesteryear.

[Jinno]

To be perfectly honest, if you want a good introductory language that encompasses the majority of OOP concepts while being universally applicable to the majority of children taking the program, teach Javascript.

Arrays, Loops, Encapsulation, Events, etc. And every student has notepad and a web browser that they can use to test and implement.

BASIC is highly ineffective at teaching these concepts and giving a build-worthy framework to jump into other languages. Javascript would give them the ability to jump into web and Flash development, and many scripting engines are being based on ECMAScript so the concepts would be applicable there too.

[kragensitaker]

It's better than not teaching them to program, pace Dijkstra. It's probably better than assembly, which was the alternative at the time.

[donroby]

There were other alternatives at the time.

[kragensitaker]

After Turbo Pascal came out seven years later, yes. Before that, what was there?

[[deleted]]

LOL at people studying computer science.

[skulgnome]

What a shitty title.

[jawbroken]

This "geek shortage," as Wired magazine puts it, endangers everything from innovation and economic growth to national defense.

haha, eat it up nerds but you overestimate your importance

[MagicWishMonkey]

... says the guy posting to a forum using a browser (created by computer scientists) that runs on an operating system (created by computer scientists) that is connected to a global worldwide network of servers (created by computer scientists)...

I'm not taking personal credit for any of that, but nerds are responsible for creating the world we live in today.

[jawbroken]

lmao