|
Most CS programs are still way to heavy in theory. Then there are all the professors with esoteric projects with limited real world applicability.
|
|
|
|
|
The theory is important even to those of us labouring in the salt mines.  Complexity, set theory, data structures, multithreading, etc. are all important. Over the last 30 years, all of those subjects (and many more) have come up in my work.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
|
|
|
|
|
Some theory is important, but I still maintain there is too much.
As but one example, many CS graduates have no idea how to debug effectively, how to do an estimate or plan a project.
A more concrete example is the PhD colleague who kept insisting we use a B-Tree vs a simple trie-like algorithm that was brain dead simple. Yes, he was right that insertion speed was faster with his code in worse case, but since we controlled the raw data, we never had worse case and, most importantly, insertion speed didn't matter in this application. (He didn't stop with me and eventually got fired.)
|
|
|
|
|
Do you have a CS-related degree?
|
|
|
|
|
No, in part because of the over emphasis on theory, especially true in the 1980s, and the emphasis on mainframes, which didn't interest me. In the late 1980s/early 1990s, I considered going back to college and getting a MS in CS, I found that nothing had changed--when I visited my local university, there was a huge and obvious disconnect between what they were doing and what was going on, out in the "real" world. (Around 1997 a coworker was working on his degree at the same University and said it was arguably worse than what I'd observed.)
TL;DR:
In the late 1990s, the local community college reinvented their CS program. They went full Microsoft. I worked with several graduates and was very impressed at their practical knowledge. The local university (from above) got sufficiently embarrassed that they completely revised their program, with several big missteps on the way.
Several years later, the community college got university status and eventually started an MS CS degree program aimed at people with non-CS undergrad degrees, but with computer experience--you took a series of accelerated core CS classes and then you started your master's program. By then I was 50 and decided to pass. But, had it been around in the early 90s, I would have done it.
(I think a big difference is that the original university had the research approach, while the community college turned university retained its more vocational approach--not just by habit, but it was part of their mandate when they got university status [with the result that they still have an excellent auto repair program smack in the middle of campus].)
|
|
|
|
|
So you're someone without a CS degree who says that people with CS degrees have no real world experience, are too this, too that, blah blah. You know how many times I've heard that? From people with no CS degrees? All the time.
You know what I hear from people *with* CS degrees? "People without degrees don't understand fundamentals blah blah".
Trust me, nothing you have said here is anything I have never heard before, and it is just nonsense you tell yourself in an attempt to self-validate.
|
|
|
|
|
You're making a straw man argument; claiming I wrote things which I didn't write and then refuting that misrepresentation.
|
|
|
|
|
You stated more than once that courses were too based on theory, profs had no real world experience. I then extrapolated that to mean that people who sat those courses had those faults passed on to them. Whilst you did say the "courses" and "profs" were theory based and not the students, I hardly think making explicit your obvious inference is a "straw man argument".
|
|
|
|
|
I was very careful in describing an extreme situation of the university close to me at the time (1980s through the 1990s) as having professors out-of-touch with the real world*. This did affect students who made no effort to supplement their education. Most the ones I worked with did, though most complained about this disconnect (and several colleagues switched majors to some kind of engineering** and a few to math.)
It actually got so bad that one colleague said he was hesitant about putting his CS degree from that university on his resume since he knew of its negative reputation in the local tech-business community.
I also compared this to the local community college, and which became a university, which had a much more pragmatic approach, which I attributed to them starting from a vocational perspective rather than a research perspective. They still taught theory, but I felt it was more balanced and was greatly impressed with the graduates from that college/university.
The good news is that the former university completely revamped their program about 2001 in consultation with local tech companies to ensure they were going in the right direction. I think it, and another university 30 miles to the north, still has too much theory, but it's much better than it was and the college/university offers an alternative (as do several other state universities.)
Also understand that I'm not arguing "no theory", I clearly stated that many universities teach too much theory at the expense of more practical things that really are required to work effectively. I can't count the number of times I've worked with recent graduates who complained, "why didn't they teach us this stuff?" (And, to be fair, one issue is the general education requirements in the US which leave less time for core curriculum.)
*For example, it was only in the late 1990s that a few professors allowed assignments to be done on PCs instead of Unix System V. Even then, they were supposed to use Borland. This frustrated many students who used Visual Studio at home and wanted to learn Windows. It also frustrated local tech companies who wanted Windows developers.
**The college of engineering there was excellent and was much more willing to embrace newer technologies. In the mid-1980s, this created a major rift between it and the CS department.
|
|
|
|
|
It's a pathetic state of affairs when I constantly hear that "they didn't teach me that in college" from the person I'm mentoring. Then again, looking at the Course Descriptions from where he graduated, well, it's very sad.  I imagine there are many schools (even High School) with a better curriculum than that crap.
And given what I hear about the teachers, I think the larger and more important issue is that there simply aren't people qualified to teach CS. As I noticed 30 years ago when my friend was going to UC San Diego (which has/had a decent CS dept.) -- you go to college for the paper and to learn what's obsolete, but you learn CS by being self-motivated to learn what's current and coming.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
|
|
|
|
|
What's so bad about that curriculum? I pretty much see all the important aspects of CS; data structures and algorithms, operating systems, boolean circuits, processor architectures, object oriented programming, functional programming, automata and formal languages, numerical computation (nice, didn't get that at my university), linalg, programming languages and compilers.. they're even nice enough to offer some software engineering and project management stuff for those who want it. What more do you want?
|
|
|
|
|
harold aptroot wrote: What's so bad about that curriculum?
While it sounds good in theory, in actual practice it seems to have taught all the wrong things with archaic languages and tooling, and I use that term loosely, and omitted much that is a whole lot more relevant.
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
|
|
|
|
|
Marc Clifton wrote: It's a pathetic state of affairs when I constantly hear that "they didn't teach me that in college" from the person I'm mentoring.
My father told me once... it is no shame to say "I don't know how to do it", but always contine the sentence with "if you teach me, then I'll do it"
Not knowing something is not bad, not willing to learn... that is worst.
I always say the same... college didn't teach me a lot of useful things. But I learnt how to learn by myself.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
|
|
|
|
|
Though Facebook is rarely mentioned alongside Apple, Microsoft and Amazon in discussions about conversational AI, the company has published a hoard of papers that underscore a deep interest in dialog systems. "You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone."
|
|
|
|
|
Makes sense, there are plenty of mindless drones on Facebook!
About time they added some intelligence, even if it's just artificial 
|
|
|
|
|
I think a random text Generator will do the Job  
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
|
|
|
|
|
Is that kind-word-and-gun-quote from Babylon 5?
I remember Markus saying something similar, although he didn't have a gun. He beat the bad guys with a minbari prolongable stick. So he spoke of "some violence" instead.
Ciao,
luker
|
|
|
|
|
I think I remember hearing it on there as well, but its attributed to Al Capone, who probably had a lot of experience testing the theory.
TTFN - Kent
|
|
|
|
|
Long live the programming language that is still running strong well into the second half of its third decade. What might help it is a provision for VB-based .NET Core and .NET Standard libraries in an upcoming VS 2017 release. Because I know it's a question you're all pondering
|
|
|
|
|
Good grief. Why? So that droves of the incompetent can start writing crap code on *nix? I never thought about it before, but I've never encountered any *nix devs that actually program in any flavor of BASIC. That seems reserved for Windows devs.
(Apologies to the rare VB'er that is not one of the incompetent.)
Marc
Latest Article - Create a Dockerized Python Fiddle Web App
Learning to code with python is like learning to swim with those little arm floaties. It gives you undeserved confidence and will eventually drown you. - DangerBunny
Artificial intelligence is the only remedy for natural stupidity. - CDP1802
|
|
|
|
|
javascript+google/copy/paste is now the default way for crap code to get into production.
VB is not needed for that any more.
Also - nobody codes any more.
We just look up config settings to work around library version conflicts.
|
|
|
|
|
Couldn't put it better. And NPM allows their logical diarrhoea to spread much further.
"If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough."
Alan Kay.
|
|
|
|
|
Ex-VB'er here.
I've seen crap in VB and even bigger crap in C#.
Actually, most of the devs I know write crap code in any language.
|
|
|
|
|
Sander Rossel wrote: I've seen crap in VB and even bigger crap in C#.
In my experience, the language doesn't seem to matter a great deal in terms of the poor code quality you often encounter.
Kevin
|
|
|
|
|
Sander Rossel wrote: Actually, most of the devs I know write crap code in any language.
Over the years, I've written code in about 100 computer languages. Some was good stuff, but yes, I've written crap in about 100 languages. 
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
|
|
|
|
General 
News 
Suggestion 
Question 
Bug 
Answer 
Joke 
Praise 
Rant 
Admin 
Submit an article or tip
