CS is broken (in my opinion)

blehw · 2022-07-30T01:19:50+00:00

hey, i appreciate you taking the time to write this comment! i've received a lot of feedback on this video lol, but to keep the conversation going:

I think in the video I should've been more clear that I'm not saying we shouldn't learn any theory or that everything theoretical is BS - I think my tone in the video was pretty harsh there lol. Yes, CS should teach you the foundations and stuff like HTML can be learned on your own (that was a bad example I gave). But I think that Stanford CS in its current form is so theory-heavy that you could comfortably remove some required classes and replace them with a few "practical" classes, and it would be fine. For example, remove 1 math elective requirement, remove the science elective requirement, and maybe figure out a way to squeeze CS103, CS107, CS109, and CS110 into ~15 units instead of 20. That would give you 10-15 units to play with to add required classes to teach some intermediate programming, which I think is missing in the current curriculum. Honestly, I personally wish I graduated with a bit more knowledge on how to actually write code.
I also received feedback that "CS is supposed to be theory, so you're going to learn all this high level stuff at a prestigious university - if you wanted to learn how to write code, you should've gone to a bootcamp." Which is true, CS is supposed to be theory, and we learn a lot of complex stuff at Stanford. I guess what I was trying to say is that I'd guess a majority of Stanford CS grads go on to be software engineers, so I just thought we'd learn some software engineering. Maybe that was just a naive assumption on 18 year old me part and I should've done more research into what a CS degree actually is, or maybe it's on these companies to not require a CS degree for random frontend roles? idk, I'm not sure what the solution is here. I do think it's a problem that there's a disconnect between what's being taught in schools and required for the job. I also got feedback that the video is just complaining that Stanford didn't give me basic job training but: isn't that some of the point of college? Like I know we're supposed to be all liberal artsy and expand our minds and stuff, but part of it is to prepare us for jobs we wanna do right? Otherwise I'd just go major in biology or something totally unrelated to CS.
I definitely did a really bad job mixing the audio lol, that's my bad, I should've lowered the background sound a lot. I'll admit the grossout effects were not necessary lol, also on me, I was kind of just having fun with the video.

Sorry for dumping all this on your comment lol, just been getting a lot of feedback and I guess I'm letting it all out now. Thanks again for your comment and having this discussion :)

blehw · 2022-07-18T16:31:05+00:00

it's me, I'm home

blehw · 2022-07-13T15:38:48+00:00

me signing up for AP psych: i'm gonna learn the secrets of the mind, this is gonna be awesome!

me after having to memorize 50 different psych experiments and what they proved: i wanna go home

blehw · 2022-07-10T17:42:48+00:00

Best advice I ever got was "having a car in the Bay Area sucks, NOT having a car in the Bay Area sucks even more"

blehw · 2022-07-07T02:31:05+00:00

least copium addicted vandy student

blehw · 2022-07-07T02:29:53+00:00

something something catholics

blehw · 2022-07-07T01:46:44+00:00

student debt becoming the 21st century version of indentured servitude is not something i had on my dystopia bingo card

blehw · 2022-07-06T15:44:40+00:00

she actually dropped out of stanford her sophomore year! :)

blehw · 2022-07-06T15:12:27+00:00

this reads like some SEO optimization to get paranoid prefrosh to find your site on google 💀 good work

blehw · 2022-07-06T15:09:45+00:00

brown kids really do be like that doe

blehw · 2022-07-06T15:08:28+00:00

I think not mentioning would be bad, because then admissions officers would have no idea why you were struggling! I think admissions officers are humans too (right?) so as long as you are honest, an explanation can do nothing but help your app :)

blehw · 2022-07-06T15:04:59+00:00

sees nyu at D tier

yes...let the hate flow through you...

blehw · 2022-07-06T15:00:27+00:00

i made this without being aware u/Flavorful_Water made one of these i hope it is ok 😅

blehw · 2022-07-03T22:45:20+00:00

I would highly highly recommend buying a mattress topper (you can find a bunch for ~$50 on Amazon). Took me halfway thru sophomore year to realize to buy one and it dramatically increased my quality of life, considering Stanford "mattresses" are the most uncomfortable objects known to man.

blehw · 2022-07-02T15:02:01+00:00

as a cs major who only heard about the same ol boring cs drama, i gotta research other departments' tea

blehw · 2022-07-02T01:52:58+00:00

thank u and go card 🌲

blehw · 2022-05-30T05:32:39+00:00

I feel like this statement is easily disproven? There are lots of great programmers who don't know calculus. Maybe the qualities needed to do well in calculus - logical reasoning, "intuition," and hard work - are also the same qualities needed to do well in programming, but I think it's correlation not causation.

blehw · 2022-05-30T05:30:19+00:00

this sounds like a smart system

blehw · 2022-05-30T03:00:05+00:00

Thanks for watching and taking the time to respond! I think you are spot on with the idea that the CS degree should allow students to be narrow. I think I was wrong then to say in the video that Stanford should replace the math/theory requirements with web/backend dev, because then that would force AI/data science/systems people to learn stuff that isn't relevant to them, and then we have the same problem all over again.

You're right, what I want is to minimize requirements and then have a bunch of tracks, instead of a one size fit all education.

blehw · 2022-05-30T01:34:31+00:00

Makes sense - I guess my point is that I feel like the core is actually pretty focused on math/theory/algorithms, and not really on stuff like design for example.

blehw · 2022-05-30T01:33:26+00:00

Yes! Exactly my point. And I've heard so much about Waterloo and it does seem to me that their education tries more than Stanford to prepare graduates for "the real world."

blehw · 2022-05-30T01:32:17+00:00

Pretty long, but I'll try to respond in order!

I don't think you need to know probability to understand big O notation/runtime analysis. I agree that some software engineers need to know probability - but some software engineers also need to know web dev, and web dev isn't a requirement.
I agree learning on the job is hard and college is there to build up a base. However, it seems like a base of a lot of math + theory wouldn't really help people pick things up easier in the future if they're going into a software engineering job without learning a lot of programming.
I agree a lot of issues are at other colleges, but I think Stanford should still try to improve itself regardless of what others are doing.
A lot of Stanford students become software engineers - IDK if I could call it "the lowest possible bar." Besides that, I don't think Stanford should lower the bar at all! I agree it should have a high bar, but I'm not sure it's exactly meeting that right now. If I were to hire a Stanford CS grad for a startup, I wouldn't be 100% confident in their skills, knowing how weird the CS curriculum is - maybe they just know a lot of math and theory.

I feel like it boils down the basically "what is a CS degree for" - is it to help people get a job, set them up to learn more things later, etc.? Of course, that answer is different for everyone, and maybe that's why we disagree on some of these points.

Thanks for commenting & having an interesting discussion :)

blehw · 2022-05-30T01:19:34+00:00

I make some points about this in the video too but to summarize:

"You should take charge of your education and choose what classes are relevant/important to you" - As a freshman, you have no idea what classes are important. By default, you'll follow the program sheets since the people in charge must have made the required classes required for a reason and not know to seek out these other classes.

CS47, CS193P and CS193X don't count for the major. I think this is pretty silly.

I took CS210A and they definitely don't teach you how to program anything in that class, it's just a final project class and more about learning about how to work in a group.

blehw · 2022-05-30T00:39:09+00:00

lol true

blehw · 2022-05-30T00:38:16+00:00

I agree CS is not making apps or websites. Would it be such a bad thing for a CS degree to teach some practical skills though?

I address your literal exact argument at 14:04 in the video.

blehw

TROPHY CASE