Interesting Links for 19-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• Star Wars medley on bass. I rather liked the laid-back feel of this.
  • starwars music video viaSoonLee
• Learn To Code, It’s Harder Than You Think
  • software coding education viasupergee
• What to say about fucking weirdo feminists
  • feminism
• What's really going on with "Baby it's cold outside"
  • song women society meaning
• Baby Cakes by Neil Gaiman,

Comments

[steer]

Learn To Code, It’s Harder Than You Think

So much wrong in one article:

Given the skills shortage one would expect graduates from computer science courses to have very high employment rates.

Computer science is very much not about learning to code. I work in one of the leading CS depts in the UK (technically refer to ourselves as a dept of computing but same thing). We teach barely more coding courses than a typical mathematics or physics dept.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency found that computer science graduates have “the unwelcome honour of the lowest employment rate of all graduates.” Why is this

Why is this? A massive cherry picking of articles. The author must have searched long and hard to find one stating that computer science was the least employable subject in the UK. It's consistently about mid way up.

There seems to be a ‘double hump’ in the outcome of any programming course between those who can code and those who can’t.I've taught and marked coding courses since 1999 and have never seen this double hump

[fanf]

My main complaint about the article is that it is missing the point of the effort to popularise computing, especially at school. It is to get kids to try it out, and find out if they have the aptitude and interest, when they might otherwise dismiss it out of hand. It's at the Lego or Meccano stage for feeding into engineering, or the frogspawn stage for feeding into bioscience. Yes it gets harder later, all worthwhile pursuits do, but the early stages should concentrate on fun and quick wins.

Eben Upton repeatedly says he doesn't expect most kids to make a career of it, but at least they have had the opportunity to get a taste of the basics.

[xenophanean]

Absolutely agree. You learn a wide range of subjects: Maths, English, Science, Arts, Humanities in GCSE (in England) because they're highly relevant to the world around, and so everyone should know at least a bit. People who with aptitude in specific subjects go on to higher learning, and the best of them get jobs in the field. Computer programming is an incredibly useful field to have at least a little knowledge in for the modern world, so it should be taught to everyone, at least to start with.

[alitheapipkin]

Quite. The analogy used about training to be a doctor made me think this too - yes, people don't have a few hours free training to be a doctor, but lots of people do take first aid courses.

[steer]

Yes, this is another good point. We introduce children to art and music early but we don't expect them all to be painters and musicians. I'm certain you can teach programming in a way many children will feel connected and entertained. (Then, as a child I entertained myself by learning ZX Basic from the manual provided with the computer, probably most children wouldn't enjoy that.)

[skington]

Really? Computing Science degrees aren't about teaching programming? What are they about, then? When I was at Glasgow University and had friends doing CS degrees, I got the impression they were doing things like compilers, operating systems, various types of programming language (I think it would have been C/C++ and ML at the time), algorithms and big O notation, maybe some electronics. Has that changed? Are there two types of computing degree now?

Also, it amuses me that the very study the author quotes to show how nobody has a degree in computing actually has 54% of the respondents having done formal computing training at University, which is impressively high given how many people in the field - I'm going to guess pretty much everyone over 40 - were self-taught on home computers in the 1980s before even going to University / Universities didn't do much in the way of teaching computing at the time.

[steer]

I got the impression they were doing things like compilers, operating systems, various types of programming language (I think it would have been C/C++ and ML at the time), algorithms and big O notation, maybe some electronics.

Sure -- but algorithms, complexity (the big O notation and others), compilers and operating systems are not programming. You will also learn (probably) protocol design, logic, statistics, lamda calculus, machine learning, maybe discrete and combinatorial mathematics, perhaps database design and perhaps interface design.

Are there two types of computing degree now?

You can take vocational courses aimed at making you a programmer... most traditional CS courses (including the one you describe above) are not.

[andrewducker]

A bunch of that stuff is useful for a programmer though - although not in a huge amount of depth. I've always found it useful to understand one level up/down from the current one I'm working at. If you're going to write good code then having a basic understanding of compilation and the OS it's running on doesn't hurt, for instance.

[steer]

Yes -- the analytical mindset and mental tools to understand the operation of computing systems at all levels is really the aim.

Teaching programming languages only doesn't seem that sensible for a three year undergraduate course (to me at least).