Re:Why Many Computer Science Programs Are Stagnating
by greyskull on Saturday July 04, 2015 @09:27PM
(#9832188)
CS is not Software Engineering, and should be treated as such. People who do nothing but coursework will be lousy developers, and people who don't get a proper CS instruction will have a harder time becoming proper software engineers. The problem is, getting a CS degree is by far the most major and common option available. Considering the number of people diving into CS to become programmers, I wish there was a bigger focus on _software engineering_.
My program was lackluster from a development perspective. No real projects, the coding-centric courses all had really poor execution, and a lack of instruction on how to actually program and design; however it was excellent for CS fundamentals and foundation. I ended up okay because I spent a lot of time in internships and just learning on my own, which balanced out with the abstract stuff from school, but I witnessed quite a few people graduating who could barely understand how to work with APIs.
EDIT: Just to add some background: I graduated last fall, got into one of the top popular major software companies in the U.S., and reaffirmed that the 4.5 years I spent getting my degree did not seem worth the time spent. It wasn't a complete waste; the foundation is really important for software engineering, but there was a lot of cruft and "took a class because of requirements" that went on.
My program was lackluster from a development perspective. No real projects, the coding-centric courses all had really poor execution, and a lack of instruction on how to actually program and design; however it was excellent for CS fundamentals and foundation. I ended up okay because I spent a lot of time in internships and just learning on my own, which balanced out with the abstract stuff from school, but I witnessed quite a few people graduating who could barely understand how to work with APIs.
EDIT: Just to add some background: I graduated last fall, got into one of the top popular major software companies in the U.S., and reaffirmed that the 4.5 years I spent getting my degree did not seem worth the time spent. It wasn't a complete waste; the foundation is really important for software engineering, but there was a lot of cruft and "took a class because of requirements" that went on.