[PLUG] Slightly OT: PCC software engineering program

[Jason Van Cleve]

I take no exceptions to your explanation, but how did my posts prompt
it?  I realize programming is but one facet of a CS degree.  And if I
seemed to imply that CS grad's are thus lesser programmers starting
out, then the fact as well grants them pardon for it; although I
apologize if this unintended suggestion was cause for offense.  By my
sword, I am no troll!

By the way, a very good friend of mine who graduated with me from the
PCC software program went on to get a four-year CS degree at OIT.
Whatever he learned about algorithms, parsers and compilers, he told me
himself that it did little to advance his skill as a programmer (an
opinion your comments seem to support).  But as to the original topic of
this thread, time will tell whether the BS degree will take him farther
than my associate's degree.  I must hope, if there is a "glass ceiling",
that it depends on the market, and that the market will soon thrive
again.

--Jason Van Cleve


On 05 Aug 2003 17:49:32 +0000
Jeff Schwaber <freyley at gmx.net> wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-08-05 at 21:55, Jason Van Cleve wrote:
> > On 05 Aug 2003 11:51:27 -0700
> > Brian Beattie <beattie at beattie-home.net> wrote:
> > 
> > > Who or what industry uses "coders" who can't design?  or maybe I
> > > don't know what a coder is.  In my 25 years of programming I don't
> > > think I've ever done any work that did not require some design. 
> > > Though I've been in the embedded systems/systems programming area.
> > 
> > A lot of app's can be slapped together without a formal design
> > phase; they just take a lot longer and tend to be full of bugs. 
> > When I was Director Of Tech' at a dot-com, I had a CS grad in my
> > charge, who came in with a steamroller approach to coding:  just
> > open a new file and start typing.  Very concrete thinker (no pun
> > intended), but a very hard worker, so he got stuff done--albeit with
> > much backtracking.  I've known a number of programmers like that,
> > some even in the CSET program at PCC. Most of them don't go very
> > far.
> 
> I've been deliberately ignoring this thread for a while, but you
> finally got me. Maybe it's a troll, but either way, you are radically
> misunderstanding Computer Science.
> 
> There's a reason large technical schools have both a computer science
> and a computer programming (and information systems, etc) degree.
> 
> Computer science is a theoretical subject. It involves computation,
> complexity, algorithm analysis (yes, design too), and many other
> things. Parsing, language and compiler design, neural networks,
> artificial intelligence, _these_ are the subjects of Computer Science.
> Software engineering is usually relegated a secondary role in a
> theoretical Computer Science degree, which you can view as good or
> bad, but it is.
> 
> But this is not to say that Computer Science degrees know
> nothing--what they know is different. I have never yet met someone who
> graduated with a Software Engineering, Computer Programming, or other
> similar degree who could really analyze the time constraints of an
> algorithm, and similarly, of code. Or who understood that there are
> tradeoffs between algorithms, and why. Quicksort is the one people
> always use, even though in some situations there are better
> algorithms. 
> 
> I am, of course, talking about people right out of college. People
> with much experience have a totally different look at the subject.
> 
> I happen to be an anomaly--a CS major who can program. But I didn't
> learn how to program from my school. Several of my friends graduated
> from the CS degree lamenting their inability to program.
> 
> But man, we could talk about, and analyze stuff, that would make your
> head spin.
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
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