[ILUG] Whatever happened to real computer scientists?

[kevin lyda]

On Sun, Apr 16, 2006 at 11:31:36AM +0100, Ian O'Connell wrote:
> >Beats me. I studied physics, and to the physicists I studied with and was
> >taught by, "computer scientist" was a synonym for "lazy idiot". Only
> >something you figured out with a pencil, a piece of paper and several years
> >of calculations was worth calling science.
> Hrmm rather similar to what i was taught , and given the fact a mate
> of mine in 4th year cs has some form of an intro to dns course ,I'd be
> of the opinion its quite true :)

Er, to defend my fellow CS majors, most decent universities teach CS as
a form of applied mathematics.

That doesn't mean teaching students how to program, or how TCP/IP
works, or how to soldier things.  It means we're taught about algorithms,
data structures, proofs and various other ways to evaluate algorithms
(time and space efficiency being the obvious ones).

Obviously the practical application of those things involves learning a
few programming languages and few problem spaces (hardware and networks)
along the way.  But that's akin to a physicist needing to know how to
use a spanner or a some basic carpentry in order to test out their
theories.

Sadly far too many universities have morphed CS into software engineering
which is like calling an electrical engineering degree physics.
Teaching people how to program in Java and/or C++ w/o any courses going
into language theory is great for producing people who can code today,
but not all that good in producing people who can code 20 years from now.
Teaching people about TCP/IP and the protocols on top of it is great
for internet related companies, but it's not all that great for people
presented with some of the more obscure and yet widely used networking
technologies.

Kevin

-- 
Kevin Lyda                     <diamond> kevin is my comic idol
kevin at ie.suberic.net