ZS;DR
That being said he is completely wrong on all counts. Sadly, I have to agree. If you go to a university and you can already code you probably won't learn much about programming.
No, you won't. Computer science isn't supposed to teach you how to program- that is what reading a book is for. Chances are you'll end up going to some crappy Java school that's just now realizing standardizing on one language controlled by a corporation that had no clue how to actually turn a profit was a bad idea.
What a great argument. He doesn't provide any reason why Java is an inadequate educational tool, instead choosing to tout that it is "controlled by a corporation"- it must be horrible right? Ahh yes, the fact that Sun didn't turn a profit on Java, when considering how well other commercial paid programming languages did is telling of what a horrible language Java is. In fact, it's kind of a moot point to begin with because no university "standardizes" on a particular language. Their choice of introductory language has pretty much no bearing on later courses. For the next 4 to 10 years I think most university CS departments are going to be horribly behind, not just for the usual reasons of being out of touch with the current practices, but because they bet the wad on the wrong horse entirely.
If OOP is the wrong horse entirely, I welcome our Zed overlords to enlighten us as to where the industry is heading. Yet again, this wouldn't matter even if it were true anyway. You don't go to university for four years to learn a single programming language and nothing else- his argument is almost non-existent.
The culture stuff is somewhat correct, yes there is a lot of culture at university and you may become more aware of the world because of it. If you are going to university for the "culture" however, you would be far better off travelling instead.
Universities are the last place where people actually attempt to expand human knowledge through research and are willing to teach you their subject.
Obviously wrong and I think he knew this; was just trying to make a point. It's the one place where you can go study something entirely and totally useless like Art History or History and Philosophy of Science and nobody is going to ask you why.
I wonder if Zed has ever been to university. Arts majors are the laughing stock. I have a sneaking suspicion he was an Arts major himself and is thus oblivious to this fact. Computer science is shallow, and nearly every place it's taught is at the mercy of "industry". They rarely teach deep philosophy and instead would rather either teach you what some business down the street wants, or teach you their favorite pet language like LISP
Wait.. computer science is out of touch with industry, and at the mercy of industry? Unless he thinks the industry is intentionally reducing their pool of qualified job applicants there must be some devilish plot to teach Computer Science students absolutely nothing afoot. Even worse, the things that are core to Computer Science like language design, parsing, or state machines, aren't even taught unless you take an "advanced" course. Hell, you're lucky if they teach you more than one language.
Again, did he even take computer science? For a start language design is not core to computer science. Parsing and state machines were covered in my first year, and you were expected to use whatever language the Professor used (Algol, LISP, C89, Java, Python, Prolog and C++ were among them). Another way to explain the shallowness of Computer Science is that it's the only discipline that eschews paradox. Even mathematics has reams of unanswered questions and potential paradox in its core philosophy. In Computer Science, there's none. It's assumed that all of it is pretty much solved and your job as an undergraduate is to just learn to get a job in this totally solved area of expertise.
Gödel's incompleteness theorem anyone? Not to mention all of computer science is based on math. On top of that, there is an untold number of unsolved problems in computer science- what is he smoking? There's an envelope of knowledge so vast in most other disciplines that just when you think you've learned it all you find something else you never knew. This is what makes them interesting.
I think it is pretty much confirmed he didn't study Computer Science and is not somewhat bitter about it. Such naïveté is kind of amusing when contrasted with the topic of the post. Maybe Zed needs to go to university?
I went to a state school and was very surprised by the quality of CS education there. It covered a wide range of topics which certainly could help round out a programmer. The Automata and Formal languages class(covers parsing and state machines a subject the article thinks is lacking in CS curriculum) is not only required, but also extremely rigorous(I should know I failed it twice). The algorithms, operating systems and languages class are no walk in the park either. Many students change major or drop out from the classes. In addition their are many required math courses(linear algebra, graph theory, statistics and probability, discrete mathematics or equivalent).
My biggest criticism was the institutions lack of real world focus.
>>40
Universities aren't trade schools. ``Real world focus'' is the cancer that is killing higher education everywhere. It's because of people like you that we have Java schools.
>>50
Maybe kindergarteners should be forced to write code eight hours a day just so they learn early. There's a time and a place for these things, and university is not supposed to be a hatchery for your {b.i.o.u ENTERPRISE BEST PRACTICES} cogs.
Blame employers for not providing adequate training, not universities for not debasing themselves.
A good computer science curriculum has a place for both theoretical and applied computer science topic. I'm not suggesting a specific software stack be taught. What I am suggesting is that things like security, cryptology, software design(this ought to be a class about identifying and avoiding bad design), graphics, and A.I. should be as required as learning about Turing completeness.
>>53
Bad design is essentially software stack-dependent. OOP defines its own types of good design, languages that support OOP define how well they adhere to this and thus have their own notions of good and bad design. Functional programming is the same way, as are any other paradigms like imperative or that newfangled aspect-oriented.
You can't have a "good" design or "bad" design based independently from your requirements and platform. They're necessarily mutually dependent.
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-05 22:57
>>54
Programming is neither science nor engineering. It's closest umbrella genre is a mix of math and engineering, you are just semantics trolling.
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-05 23:06
>>55
Agreed, design is related to programming language. I was referring to how Computer Science shouldn't emphasize LAMP or J2EE specifics, unless they want to quickly be outdated as new software stacks and technologies gain popularity.
>>56
You just read posts to say what would be most convenient for your counterargument rather than what they actually say?
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-06 0:08
>>58
lol yea my response doesn't make sense. I guess the ad hominem attack just triggered my knee jerk response to type whatever words I felt like. Truly I don't know what software engineering is, the wiki article makes it seem like they teach a lot of the popular 'processes' in big software bureaucracies. A friend of mine who is majoring in it says there is a lot of overlap with CS classes and they also have to take EE classes. If software engineering is in fact supposed to be general education in software development then all of the above would apply.
>>59
Seek professional help. /prog/ is tiring enough without hypersensitive man-children throwing tantrums.
Name:
Anonymous2010-06-06 3:03
>>60
Seek professional lurking. Any good /prog/ denizen knows that having non-ironic attempts at actual discussion here is less enjoyable than having your dick chopped off.