[geeks] New Tech Schools: Digital Harbor in Baltimore

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Thu, 12 Apr 2007 14:41:01 -0400 (EDT)
der Mouse <mouse at Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA> wrote:

> >>> You can graduate with a BS in Computer Science from a *reputable*
> >>> school nowadays, having *never programmed a single line of code*.
> >> Nothing wrong with that.  Computer science has about as much to do
> >> with programming as knowing the chemistry of combustion does with
> >> building an internal combustion engine.
> > I would suggest that the analogy should be more that computer science
> > has to do with programming as knowing the chemistry of combustion has
> > to do with *designing* an internal combustion engine.
> 
> I'd say that's a defensible point of view, but only if you consider
> programming to include designing the software as well as coding it.

You don't?  That's a very odd point of view from my experience.  I personally
don't think much of programmers who don't design software.  To me that's a
recipe for disaster unless the problem is simple enough.

You seem to be talking about what we used to call "coders".  People who knew
almost nothing about computers, but who banged out code according to pseudo
code, or used a spec and a language like COBOL.

> > That said, if you're designing an internal combustion engine without
> > having a fundamental (at least instinctive) knowledge of the
> > chemistry of combustion, your engine is going to be shite.
> 
> True.  And, oddly enough, software written by people with no theory
> clue is (almost?) invariably shite too.  

Doesn't this conflict with what you said above?

> (Many people have no training
> but have self-acquired theoretical clue, complicating the picture.)

Pretty much anyone with solid engineering or computer science coursework has a
lot of self acquired clue.  In a good school, you can't graduate without it.

> >> The real problem - to the extent that there is one - is people
> >> confusing computer science with programming, designing software
> >> systems, and/or sysadminning.
> > Indeed.  At least in computer science classes, you are taught some
> > things that are at lest *somewhat* useful when writing code.
> 
> Actually, some of the people who confuse CS with those other
> disciplines are schools that purport to teach CS, meaning that
> sometimes, you can study what the school calls CS and actually end up
> getting programming or software design (or, rarely, sysadmin).

Personally I don't see how you could teach software design without teaching
real computer science, but I do know what you mean.

A lot of these little trade schools teach just programming with no theory at
all, not even the pragmatic stuff.  Some of them claim to, but I've seen the
coursework and it is a little shallow.

A friend of mine went to one, and his data structures class consisted of them
being trained to pick the right structure for the job, with no study at all
on how the structures were actually built and programmed.

He has a general idea when to use a linked list versus a tree, but no idea
why they work better on one problem than another.

He could have gotten that knowledge for free in about 15 minutes.



-- 
shannon / There is a limit to how stupid people really are, just as there's
-------'  a limit to the amount of hydrogen in the Universe.  There's a lot, 
but there's a limit.  -- Dave C. Barber on a.f.c.