Re:Why Many Computer Science Programs Are Stagnating
by rdtsc on Saturday July 04, 2015 @09:29PM
(#9832191)
CS has its fundamentals -- a queue is still a queue, a binary search tree is still a BST, a graph is still a graph, and it is useful to know how to traverse it. So those parts should stay there. Obviously there is exciting new work happening (distributed systems, CRDTs, others..) but a lot of those are still built on fundamentals.
But there are also classes tied to specific languages and technologies that are often not as relevant anymore. When I went to school in early 2000's we still had to take 2 assembly language classes for a CS degree. Those were very useful, but it probably could have been just 1 class and instead take another networking and/or protocols class.
There were other instances of that. There were almost a whole AI class wasted on Expert Systems. Those were cool but in 1980s not in 2000s. There was even a class tought in COBOL, it was an elective, but still... (I didn't know what it would be, signed up for fun, after the first class, almost half the people dropped it including me).
Another major driver for changes or lack of is faculty. Remember in US faculty is tenured for life. They can't be easily fired for not picking up the latest technology. They can still be teaching COBOL and Expert Systems. So that is what some do -- they just teach whatever they wrote their PhD thesis on, so you get a mix of whatever happened to be awesome anytime from late 60s up to 2010 (depending on how quick the tenure process takes). I personally saw some faculty do a fantastic job picking up latest interesting stuff, trying to stay relevent. Some, not so much.
But there are also classes tied to specific languages and technologies that are often not as relevant anymore. When I went to school in early 2000's we still had to take 2 assembly language classes for a CS degree. Those were very useful, but it probably could have been just 1 class and instead take another networking and/or protocols class.
There were other instances of that. There were almost a whole AI class wasted on Expert Systems. Those were cool but in 1980s not in 2000s. There was even a class tought in COBOL, it was an elective, but still... (I didn't know what it would be, signed up for fun, after the first class, almost half the people dropped it including me).
Another major driver for changes or lack of is faculty. Remember in US faculty is tenured for life. They can't be easily fired for not picking up the latest technology. They can still be teaching COBOL and Expert Systems. So that is what some do -- they just teach whatever they wrote their PhD thesis on, so you get a mix of whatever happened to be awesome anytime from late 60s up to 2010 (depending on how quick the tenure process takes). I personally saw some faculty do a fantastic job picking up latest interesting stuff, trying to stay relevent. Some, not so much.