Do High Schools Know What 'Computer Science' Is? 564
theodp writes "The first rule of teaching high school-level Computer Science should be knowing what CS is-and-isn't. Unfortunately, many high schools offering 'Computer Science' really aren't. Using her old California high school as an example, now-a-real-CS-student Carolyn points out that one 'Computer Science' class (C101) touted keyboarding 'speeds in excess of 30 words per minute at 95% accuracy' as a desired outcome, while another (C120) boasted that students will learn to use hyperlinks to link to other sites. While such classes fill a need, she acknowledges, they should not be called Computer Science. What's the harm? 'Encouraging more girls to take computer classes as they are now might have the opposite of the desired effect,' she explains. 'More girls might get the impression that computer science is only advanced application use, which might turn them off to computer science.'"
Computer science... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I took a keyboard typing class in 10th grade to help fulfill my "tech" credits (all of the "tech" classes were a waste of time at my school, minus the introductory programming classes.) My grandmother had taught me how to type on a fully mechanical type writer, so I was able to obliterate even the teacher in typing speed on a keyboard.
Easiest A I ever learned.
Re:Computer science... (Score:5, Funny)
Easiest A I ever earned.
Fixed...obviously, I struggled a bit more with English :)
Re:Computer science... (Score:4, Funny)
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That was 1 error in 25 characters in that sentence. You've exceeded the 95% accuracy rate, so you did in fact earn that A.
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High school has to deal with a wide range of talents. From geek to tech school student. My CS class was done on ancient TRS-80s and first taught typing, then BASIC, and a final project to create your own program (anything you wished) of at least 100 lines.
For me and my friends it was a ridiculously-easy course. For most of the other students, they barely passed. I imagine today's CS courses are much the same, dealing with a wide range of students, many of whom will probably never program outside this on
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Reading responses here, I'm becoming more and more aware of the fact that my high school's CS program was actually pretty dang good. You had the choice of C++ or Java and learned the programming techniques at your own pace. There were 20 or so modules and the only requirement was that you do your best. If you were good, you might complete a module every week or so. If not...considerably less. Or if you were like me and a couple others, you would complete all of them in half a semester and be given some
Re:Computer science... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm old, so the class I took in high school was called Typing. We had a 50/50 mix of IBM Selectrics and manual typewriters.
It's probably the most useful class I took in high school. But just because the modern version uses computers doesn't make it Computer Science. They should just keep calling it typing if you ask me.
We had Computer Programming classes too. The first level used TRS-80 Model III/IV BASIC. For the advanced class, which I never took, they used Apple II to do Pascal!
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When I took typing, the class included
* Keyboarding skills
* Lots of practice - that's how you get up to speed, and how you get a decent looking letter out of a manual typewriter
* The proper form for various business documents such as letters
* How to properly fold a letter to get it into both sizes of envelope
* How to annotate the bottom of the letter to indicate a copy went to someone else, and who actually typed the letter
In short, a bunch of (now largely obsolete) secretarial skills.
The equivalent set of
Computer Science = Algorithm Development (Score:5, Interesting)
I hold a BS in Computer Science.
I believe the field should be called "Algorithm Development".
It is called "Computer Science" because it was computers that allowed the useful embodiment of many algorithms. But the reality is (often literally, during coursework), that the platform, hardware or software, is largely irrelevant to the mathematical development of algorithms.
Today, as the article notes, anything related to using computers is often labeled "Computer Science". Rather than trying to get the rest of the world to stop using a term that is actually somewhat intuitive, I think CS should change its label to something that is actually a more intuitive description for itself.
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Where I went to college, only about a quarter of the BS in Computer Science was algorithm development. The rest was understanding the concepts behind how the hardware and OS worked. Both parts could be considered in-part algorithms - maybe bringing algorithms up to half of the BS, but it went beyond that.
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I hold a BS in Computer Science.
I believe the field should be called "Algorithm Development".... the platform, hardware or software, is largely irrelevant to the mathematical development of algorithms.
I think this is more true than many "computer scientists" would admit. As a sysadmin (and occasional developer) I've been amazed at how little understanding comp.sci. grads have of the system as a whole. Some have no clue about the various interactions of the hardware components or other processes on a host, no apparent clue how to improve performance of an app and waste time reinventing functionality that is already available in the system libraries. Learning algorithms is a good thing but very incomple
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Computer Science is growing up. The sign of this is that it's becoming clear that there are many different fields and perspectives housed under the one tent. In fact there're so many now, to limit Computer Science to any small set of studies or viewpoints is to argue against how far we've come. Just as Biology was once the collecting and studying of living organisms (and now spans fields as disparate as Taxonomy and Epigenetics), Computer Sscience includes entire areas of study bordering on and overlapping
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What about basic electronics, operations mgmt, etc...
There may very well be a place for a field called "algorithm development", but it should be a specialization within the
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In my experience, a 4 year CS graduate should be able to do a lot more than that.
a graduate should:
*Be familiar with how computers work from the hardware to OS, processes, sockets, etc.
*Be highly proficient in a structured and object oriented programming language.
*Be familiar enough with functional, structured, object oriented and event driven languages that they can become proficient in any language they need rapidly.
*Be familiar with all major software design and development methodologies.
*Be capable of m
Re:Computer Science = Algorithm Development (Score:5, Insightful)
You may be able to occasionally get a 4-year CS grad with this skillset, but it will be because they are highly motivated to learn on their own, not because they took courses that (competently) cover this material.
There's no way in hell all this could be taught in the 12 or so classes that a 4-year student has available after the core curriculum classes.
You would be lucky to find someone with the skills you want in someone that has 5 years on the job.
Apparently you live in a different world than me cuz this sure doesn't match my experience - and I've been around long enough to have used punchcards instead of sticky-notes.
Re:Computer Science = Algorithm Development (Score:5, Informative)
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It seems to me that the real problem is that many if not most universities don't have a real distinction between "Computer Science", which is really the study and analysis of algorithms; and "Software Engineering", which is the application of algorithms in the design and building of applications. "Computer Engineering" is usually a separate hardware "micro electrical engineer" program. I'm not saying every University is like this, but it seems typical. "Computer Science" *should* be the theoretical sci
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Rename the class (Score:5, Funny)
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I think you mean discrete math, unless they're teaching how to do math without drawing attention.
That's steganography.
How is this a gender issue? (Score:2, Interesting)
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They Are Encouraging Girls to Take These Courses (Score:5, Interesting)
My own anecdote, I went to a high school in middle of nowhere Minnesota and we had Computer Science AB advanced placement. It was about twenty guys, I don't remember a single girl. We learned C++ in very simple forms and when I was forced to take the typing courses I wanted to kill myself. Did you know that typing courses are often a requirement to computer science courses? I was dumbfounded. As if the fact that I wasn't hitting 60 words a minute was reason to prevent me from learning about pass by value versus pass by reference (one of the basic concepts we covered). Still, even that wasn't much computer science and seemed closer to "C++ in a semester" style of teaching. You knew a language but you didn't quite get the really generalized concepts.
Re:They Are Encouraging Girls to Take These Course (Score:5, Funny)
Still, even that wasn't much computer science and seemed closer to "C++ in a semester" style of teaching. You knew a language but you didn't quite get the really generalized concepts.
You could say, he didn't teach you pointers.
[Puts sun glasses on]
Yeaaaah!
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Uh huh... why we would have resolved the question of P==NP by now if only there had been better gender balance. What twaddle.
In other words you don't know. Well there aren't in any school I know of - but go ahead and provide some examples.
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You == troll.
Okaaaay, so I'm the troll because I base my arguments on facts, and you're not because you build strawmen and can't be bothered responding rationally to simple arguments.
I'm pretty sure it's the opposite, because you are the one who based your argument on a lie (that there are no programs to encourage males to enter nursing) and then followed up by fabricating arguments I had never made, and claiming a conspiracy theory to subjugate males.
You do realize that simply making declarations doesn't make them true
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If I only would have known that a career in woodworking was not properly represented by that slab-sided tool box tray or bird house that I made in shop, how my life could have been different...
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Is she implying that they are too superficial to look beyond a the name of a class offered in high school when planning their field of college study?
That's not superficial, especially in high school.
I don't need to know that "Psychology 101" probably doesn't have a lot to do with "Automotive Mechanics" which might be something I'm interested in.
The same thing applies for all classes. You expect to learn Math in Math class. You expect to learn Science in Science Class. You expect to learn Spanish in your Spanish class. However, what most experts would define as "Computer Sciences" are not taught in computer science classes.
Mostly what she is insinuating
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You expect to learn Math in Math class
And yet the first few years of maths classes tend to be teaching arithmetic. I'd love to see primary school maths renamed arithmetic - we might have fewer people hating maths before they actually encounter the subject then.
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The reason the lack of accu
I wouldn't even consider Programming 101 to be CS (Score:2)
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This is also where departments separate the men from the boys (and women from girls).
Is that also where they separate the sheep from the goats?
Re:I wouldn't even consider Programming 101 to be (Score:4, Insightful)
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While it's good to have some programming language in your back pocket for CS studies, the issue IMO is that those really are not "tools of the trade"... I hardly programmed at all for my own Master's in CS. The tools of the trade are pencil and paper mostly.
Now, programming language design and compilers is certainly a subfield of CS, and some of the most interesting languages ever have come from academia (thinking of Lisp, Prolog, Haskell)... but "programming skill" is not per se an academic discipline.
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Teaching a kid an IDE is not Computer Science. But the you thought programming was computer science.
Silly monkey.
Re:I wouldn't even consider Programming 101 to be (Score:5, Funny)
This is also where departments separate the men from the boys (and women from girls).
And the large furry creatures from Alpha Centauri from the small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri.
programming in java isn't cs either (Score:2)
and they only know java. you'd think a good cs program would encourage students to implement principles using many tools.
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you'd think a good cs program would encourage students to implement principles using many tools.
The good cs programs do teach in multiple languages, IDEs, OSes... at least mine did.
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We did do work on linked lists and some basic sorting and binary search algorithms, so I'd say it certainly touched on computer science. Obviously it's high school, so I think you only want to go so far, anyways, rather like how you don't really learn the dark depths of quantum mechanics in high school physics.
What does being a girl have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
> 'More girls might get the impression that computer science is only advanced application use, which might turn them off to computer science.'
Substitute "students" for "girls" and you've got the actual problem. Thinking that it's only a problem for recruiting women into CS is a big mistake.
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Probably non-gender specific, as you suggest, but from the linked article: "The following post is an excerpt from a research paper I wrote this semester examining the use of high school computer science classes to increase the number of women in computer science."
Re:What does being a girl have to do with it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where are the research papers about how to get more men into Nursing? Or men into elementary education? How about Men into being stay at home dads? Men being "Admin Assistants"?
Why does it seem that "gender equality" only a one way street?
Re:What does being a girl have to do with it? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There used to be lots of men assisting nurses in hospitals...they called them orderlies. Got rid of them to save money I think.
Computer science ... (Score:5, Informative)
My prof drilled into me (and my degree matches because he fought for it) that it's Computing Science. Computer science is doing science on a computer -- Computing Science is is the science of computers.
Ah well, just some random nit-picking and pedantry. Either way, basic computer literacy is not "Computer Science".
Volunteer & Make it Fun (Score:5, Interesting)
I recently volunteered at a local high school for a lunchtime talk for a CS club.
It was advertised as "Learn how to send secret messages to your friends that even the CIA can't break" or something like that, nothing about CS.
In 45 minutes (60 would have been better), they learned how to represent base-26-ish in binary (5 bits), do a XOR, flip pennies to generate a one-time-pad, and encode/decode a secret message.
Non-CS students showed up. No experience was required - I could have done this with 4th graders. Many left happy - it's not clear how many realized they just learned some computer science.
No computers were employed in this exercise. It was sort of silly that we met in the computer lab - an art room would have had better table space. A whiteboard was useful.
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Science is measuring the natural world, developing theories based upon data and then seeing the theory correct.
I do this all the time at my job - develop a theory about how the code actually works, and perform a series of experiments to refine my guess until is has acceptable accuracy. One might quibble over whether the code base is part of the "natural" world, but I'm certain it's not the result of Intelligent Design!
As far as whether CS is engineering: real engineers roll petards up to castle gates, all these johnny-come-latelys like train drivers are just abusing the term.
No (Score:2)
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High School computer classes have only ever taught proficiency in specific applications and that hash't changed in the 20~30 years schools have had computers...
In my high school we had a course in computer science that taught basic data structures and the theory behind the object-oriented paradigm, as well as how to program in C++. I used what I learned in that course to implement similar data structures in other languages. How that could constitute "proficiency in specific applications" is beyond me. And I didn't even go to a big school, my graduating class had 80 students.
Computer Science == Applied Mathematics (Score:3)
The problem is not limited to high-school. It was not until my post-grad studies did I start learning real computer science. Most of what I learned in my undergraduate studies was IT.
At its heart Computer Science is Applied Mathematics and is closer to Physics than IT. With that said I am currently working in IT as are many with advanced CS degrees so maybe that is where the confusion stems from...
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Actually, I would say that at its heart Computer Science is Logic (that is, Mathematics), and is therefore actually closer to Logic, or Mathematics.
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Mod this AC insightful. That is exactly it. That is why I suspect Pascal is often used, because it has one of the least abstracted set of logical operators out there.
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It also has pretty solid barriers between you and some really sharp edges. You can't run amok with pointers or incorrectly index arrays -- well, you can, but just not like you would in C.
It teaches you syntax and structure, but doesn't let you hurt yourself too badly. And, really, once you know Pascal, you can pick up pretty much any procedur
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I wouldn't want to code full time in Pascal (mind you, nowadays, I seem stuck perpetually coding PHP, bleh), but as you say, it does teach some fundamentals, in a fairly easy syntax. Learn Pascal, and C is more like Pascal without the safety harness.
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Right. And then people come out of college with post-graduate CS degrees and get jobs at companies that develop business applications, and they have no idea how to write a simple MVC application.
Colleges need to push Software Engineering.
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I had no idea how to write a simple MVC application before I got my first IT job. It took me all of a day to understand the concepts and a couple of days to produce a simple prototype of the application I've now implemented. I have also helped my colleagues who also weren't taught a specific area of software engineering with their issues with MVC. It's not that hard to do, save your arrogance for something that is.
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Universities don't, why should highschools? (Score:3, Insightful)
In my experience, universities don't know what computer science is so it isn't a surprise that highschools don't. Most universities seem to think that programmers are computer scientists which is approximately like saying architects are civil engineers.
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How many universities did you attend?
I agree that there are universities which do a poor job with computer science, or abuse the term. But I would be interested to know how many of them actually do it, and whether they are using a different name for their curriculum. My degree was most definitely in computer science.
Although I'll readily admit I often did not appreciate it as a student. It has been after a decade of working that I now am grateful to have been compelled to learn software and hardware theor
Misleading? (Score:4, Insightful)
But to get on topic, no, they don't. If you aren't teaching programming or theory, you aren't CS. You are just a class about computers. I'm also a tad confused as to why this would "turn girls off" (or boys, or anyone). I suppose it would mislead them, but then what other degree would they expect to cover actual CS/programming? A lot of times students are in the wrong major because they have been mislead by whoever that it is about something that it isn't (psychology, for instance) but I really don't see what else there is, other than perhaps Software Engineering. (I understand this is about high school, I'm looking at the long run for these students) If these schools have AP Comp sci courses, those should set the students straight.
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I'm not entirely sure most high schools know what math is, either. Or science in general.
Exactly. This isn't a problem specific to computer science. Every subject taught at the high-school level will be hugely disconnected from what that field actually is. High-school math classes are not "real math" (solving theorems, etc.), they are really just practicing with some basic mathematical tools and tricks, some of which are useful in real life, some of which are necessary (but not sufficient) for studying deeper mathematical topics, and some of which are just busywork.
High-school history classe
Computer Science vs. Business Applications (Score:2)
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You had OOP principals. How did that work? Did your principal inherit from an abstract Administrator class?
Physical sciences (Score:3)
Isn't this a bit like complaining that high school chemistry isn't really science, or high school physics isn't really science? Of course they're not, you need to have a certain set of basic skills and knowledge developed before you can do real science.
Not a problem (Score:2)
99% of programmers wouldn't know what to do with a stochastic analysis of parsing algorithm families. And as long as Moore's law holds, it's not worth teaching them how to make things faster or cheaper, because that's coming from the supply chain.
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Perhaps if you enlightened us cavemen with your brilliance by posting a few links perhaps we might be able to learn from your genius oh sandals-with-white-socksed one.
Worse when the teachers dont know. (Score:2)
Do we even use the right terminology? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems like what we call "real computer science" (like algorithms or theory of computation) is actually math. I don't see anything scientific about it at all.
Programming seems more like engineering than anything else (sure, it uses algorithms; but not much more than building a bridge uses math, and we call would call designing a bridge "engineering").
The only things I can think of that I would call "science" are: (1) benchmarking a complex system to get some empirical results; and (2) troubleshooting problems.
I'd be interested to hear why we keep focusing on the word "science" when that seems like a relatively small part of what we do.
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Anyone who thinks CS is just about algorithms or computational theory doesn't have a broad base in CS. There is a huge amount of research in fields like computer vision, natural language processing (my focus), computer graphics, networking theory, and other topics that are unquestionably (in my opinion) CS but also not direct analogs of anything in m
simple answer (Score:4, Insightful)
Do High Schools Know What 'Computer Science' Is?
- No.
Do your employers know?
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I dont know about the first rule of C.S. (Score:2)
Not in the Slightest (Score:2)
Biggest problem they could think of? (Score:2)
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Shouldn't we be discussing things like the general dumbing-down of society that occurs when we tell people "now you know some Computer Science[TM]!" who have only learned application use?
There, fixed that for me.
It *was* more rigorous back then.. (Score:3)
I didn't want to fall into the classic old geezer thinking that everything was harder back in the day...So I peeked at the curriculum for some of the local high schools. And damn, it was harder in my day. In my high school classes back then we learned about Turing and Godel and their impact on how computers are designed. We didn't write much code, but I remember blackboard sessions on sorting algorithms, queuing, floating point operations, etc..
So I wonder.. 25 years ago, did other adults look at the high school curriculum and think the same thing? In the 1960s there was a push for "new math" which apparently included set theory and base-n computation, both of which would be very helpful in computer science. And I can imagine that even though Simpson and Newton-Raphson methods were centuries old, the computers of the 1960s were not necessarily accessible to students.
It reminds me of a story by Roger Zelazny. There is a mythical creature that didn't have hands. It loved to play chess, but because of his lack of hands (and IIRC, lack of opponents), this mythical creature had to play chess games in his head. He got to be very good at mental chess.
The upside of this is that there are are some very bright high school students out there. Twenty five years ago the people who were interested in computers were just a handful. In my class there were five or so. In a given high school there are probably still that many but it's harder to spot them because typing classes are masquerading as computer science.
California High schools are doing it wrong.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:California High schools are doing it wrong.. (Score:5, Informative)
While it's cool that you went to a school that provided such a rich and interesting IT curriculum, none of the things you mentioned are actually Computer Science. You're proving the point of the article, in fact.
Don't make the bar to high... (Score:3)
If you set the bar such that computer science in HS requires a high level background of math and computer skills, then you'll scare away the average student. Having a CS101 class in reality be a "introduction to computers" is perfectly fine in my book, as you don't want to start off with Day1: Introduction to Pointers. As that will scare of 99% of the non computer nerds. When i was in college (back in '93), there was a CS101, Intro to Computers and there was a CS102: Women in Computing.
While the first one was a "how does a computer work? How to use a computer?" the other class (CS102) was aimed specifically at women (and only allowed women to take). It was taught by our female professors in an environment to encourage women to pursue a college career in Computer Engineering or Computer Science. As a reference my CS+CPE graduating class in '98 had 2 women in it (and 100 men). While some women out there had the background in computers to jump right into the standard initial CS courses, many others were turned off by the daunting requirements and misconceptions about taking CompSci/Engineering.
This type of course layout is used in all sorts of curriculums. Ever take a cooking/woodshop/swimming class? They don't start with advanced techniques.
The harm is... (Score:2)
When these students go to college and think that they want to major in "Computer Science" because "computers are fun," they will be set up for disappointment and confusion when a professor tries to explain to them the differences between sorting algorithms.
If we want to do a better job preparing students for college, then we should not try and "pretend" that computer science is only about using a computer. I could draw a good parallel example with the subject of chemistry. Until I encountered a high schoo
Needs moar standardization (Score:2)
Perhaps the problem is that there is too low availability of such programs or entities that can create such a standardized curriculum.
seems to be a name thing as I have seen computer s (Score:2)
seems to be a name thing as I have seen computer stuff fall under lots of names and topics in the HS level.
And they just lump all of it under 1 area vs having parts in 3-4 different areas.
Does Anybody (Score:2)
Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
Computer Science (Score:2)
Well yes, and ... (Score:2)
This does not surprise me in the least. But then I'm a mathematician and I have pretty much the same sort of reaction when I see what they teach in many high school mathematics classes -- it's a pale shadow of real mathematics; mostly just a hodge podge of poorly taught arbitrary skills and facts that may or may not have a lot of relevance to actual mathematics. There is a disconnect where many people don't see the difference over the difference between "facts about mathematics" and actual mathematics. It t
If it has Science in the name, it ain't science (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no science in Computer Science. That isn't a bad thing, it just means that it isn't science.
Everything a high school student needs to know about Computer Science can be summed up with one sentence, "Computer Science is a branch of mathematics, so if the prospect of getting a math degree strikes fear into your heart, pick a different field of study.".
I graduated from high school back in 1997. I knew about two dozen kids (all guys, go figure) that were going to college for computer science. One got a degree, the others all switched (mostly to MIS). I tried to warn them, but they didn't believe me.
Re:And high school biology students (Score:5, Insightful)
They are useful skills in much the same way as knowing how to steer a car is a useful skill to an automechanic. They are, of course, important prerequisites, but to me, computer science, even at the high school level, should be much more than "How to use a keyboard 101".
When I took it in high school, we started with some basic theory of how a computer works, and then moved on to Pascal programming to demonstrate those concepts, along with good coding techniques, flowcharting and various other concepts that would, in fact, be valuable to someone looking for a career in computer sciences.
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Amen. We had introductory computer science in my HS, and we had a class called... wait for it... "typing". We learned on manual typewriters. This was the 80s, mind you, and schools are usually behind the curve anyway. IIRC, there was some rationale about the manuals helping you learn better; but I bet it all boiled down to money. I wonder now if my loud keyboarding stems from the fact that I learned on a manual.
I actually don't recall what language we used in our CS course. It was probably BASIC. That'
Loud Keyboards (Score:3)
I learned on a manual typewriter too. I love loud keyboards and got myself one of those Das Keyboards with the blank black keys. When I get to the end of a paragraph or I finish a good chunk of code and finish the SVN commit command I like to hit Enter with a big loud CHUNK!!!
That way the whole office knows that I am working. :-)
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Hey now... I was in high school in the late 90s and our computer science class was centred around Turbo Pascal. I learned a lot writing Pascal programs, and for my final project my lab partner and I wrote a graphical RPG including an on-screen scrolling-text display we wrote from scratch. The year after I left, they switched to C++.
I know Javascript, BASIC, Pascal, a bit of Perl, but not any C. And while I feel that every CS student should come away knowing it, I'm also thankful to these other languages for
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Not even God could have ever touch-typed on that machine, so I evolved a technique (that I still use) involving thumb and two fingers of both hands, plus (rather more recently) the little pinkies for shift, ctrl and enter keys.
Sure, I don't rattle out 800 words per minute (or whatever the standard is), but I don't need to, so I get by. I spend much more time think
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I know how to use a gas pedal, I must be an auto-mechanic.
Re:And high school biology students (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I suspect Torvalds, Stallman, Knuth etc. can "fix a computer,"
Actually, this is the biggest misconception of all. I'm currently a PhD candidate in computer science. I know a lot about algorithms, data structures, computational theory, etc, but I don't know how to fix MS Windows 7 when it doesn't do x, y, or z properly (except of course to install *nix instead). Granted, I know how to work the menus and dig through the options better than a lay person, but that doesn't mean I'm intimately versed in how Windows works, nor do I have any interest in learning it.
Computer Science seems to have lost its soul in some sense. At my university, if I approach a professor with any problem that is NPC, they immediately say "that's an Ops Research problem". Working on robotics algorithms? "That's the EE or ME department". It's been a real challenge to build a committee because most CS profs at this school don't think that CS covers anything more than AI and logic theories.
The point that CS needs to be defined is actually quite salient. Developers often complain that CS students can't program. Some CS departments are less concerned with teaching good programming practices and more concerned with teaching theory. Students expect the former and get the latter. Other schools consider CS to be the art of design. They focus on software engineering and often leave out much of the mathematical rigor in the process. Other schools focus on the logical and mathematical underpinnings, but don't teach programming or software engineering. Then there are the schools that teach only programming with very little else in the curriculum. Should CS encompass all of the above, or should it be a subset of those things? Is software development the same thing as computer science, or are they fundamentally different, somewhat overlapping disciplines? How does operations research fit in? What about numerical computation, high performance computing, networking, etc., etc.? The field has become enormously fractured and everyone, including Knuth, Stallman, Torvals, et al. has a different opinion about what it should be.