actually, the most important thing to teach, which not all schools are teaching is "how to learn"
for example teaching multiple programming languages has the benefit of learning how the languages are related to each other. a student that learned several languages over the course of their studies will be much better at picking up yet another language when they start working.
in my university each different programming concept was taught with a different language. object orientation with modula, functional programming with scheme, etc. we pretty much learned a new language every term.
and the point was not to learn those languages. that just happened as an aside. but that aside produced the benefit of making the students comfortable working with whatever language the job might require.
I probably did not express myself clear enough in my previous post. I certainly support teaching different languages as long as they are very different - such as Prolog + Haskell + C for example. I simply do not see the point of teaching multiple language that are basically the same (C++ + Java + C# + Python for example).
yes, that's a good point. but the benefit holds even if the languages are basically the same, because students don't know that until they learned a few of them.
Wouldn’t it be better instead of learning a ton of languages, to learn how to “engineer” systems? By that I mean, learning how to build and manage complex projects?
learning how to build and manage complex projects doesn't conflict with learning new languages along the way. unless you work on a project that takes longer than 6 months you can still start new projects with another new language each term
And this is at the opposite end of the spectrum....
On one hand, you have computer science majors who know theory but can’t code their way out of a wet paper bag.
On the other hand, you have the computer science majors who can do leetCode in their sleep but don’t have the stamina to see a project to 100% completion and easily get distracted by the oooh shiny.
And let’s not forget the computer science majors who can code and know theory but don’t know anything about business or how to communicate and deal with large organizations.
Out of those three - I speak from experience in two. I always knew how to “program” as a professional developer. I was a hobbyist before going to college.
> On one hand, you have computer science majors who know theory but can’t code their way out of a wet paper bag.
If their plan in life is to do research on theoretical CS, does it matter? That being said, I doubt that these are that many of them considering that most CS degrees focus on programming.
> And let’s not forget the computer science majors who can code and know theory but don’t know anything about business or how to communicate and deal with large organizations.
They have a CS degree, not a business or management one.
Out of all the CS majors, what percentage do you really think are going to be in an ivory tower doing “research” and not working for for profit businesses?
Have you never been on discussion boards where brand new CS majors ask for advice on how they can convince their boss to move from their $x million dollar oracle implementation and Java stack to some open source NoSQL database and Node?
I don’t see too many people posting on HN - a site sponsored by VC company that funds for profit businesses - talk about their “research”.
Yes it matters because there are 55,000 people graduating in computer science every year (https://danwang.co/why-so-few-computer-science-majors/). How many of those do you think will be doing research versus getting a non research job?
It's not as if for profit businesses do not have research departments, consider Microsoft Research for example.
And they employ a grand total of around 1000 people. How many of those do you think were hired with just an undergrad degree in CS coming straight out of college?
I fail to see how this is relevant.
Why the use of the term "ivory tower" and the quotes around the word research? Are you implying that CS research is not real research or something?
No, it is real research but the vast majority of opportunities for CS grads are outside of research and most businesses are looking for people who can contribute to profit making projects.
Ivory Tower research is the type of research that MS does. Very little of it has ended up in shipping products. Compare that to Google, Apple, or Amazon (AWS). MS is littered with failed research. The best thing that Jobs did was kill the research department at Apple and focus research on shipping products.
for example teaching multiple programming languages has the benefit of learning how the languages are related to each other. a student that learned several languages over the course of their studies will be much better at picking up yet another language when they start working.
in my university each different programming concept was taught with a different language. object orientation with modula, functional programming with scheme, etc. we pretty much learned a new language every term.
and the point was not to learn those languages. that just happened as an aside. but that aside produced the benefit of making the students comfortable working with whatever language the job might require.