May the Harvard Force be With You!

I actually understood some of that without looking at the subtitles.  How nerdy is that?

A recent article discusses a worrisome trend in computer science education:

It is all about programming! Over the last few years we have noticed worrisome trends in CS education. The following represents a summary of those trends:

1. Mathematics requirements in CS programs are shrinking.
2. The development of programming skills in several languages is giving way to cookbook approaches using large libraries and special-purpose packages.
3. The resulting set of skills is insufficient for today’s software industry (in particular for safety and security purposes) and, unfortunately, matches well what the outsourcing industry can offer. We are training easily replaceable professionals.

These trends are visible in the latest curriculum recommendations from the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Curriculum 2005 does not mention mathematical prerequisites at all, and it mentions only one course in the theory of programming languages.

Any individual who has spent as many years working on a CS degree as I have can tell you that there is a distinct difference in the way that Computer Science is taught now as compared to how it used to be taught. I’ve certainly noticed a difference. It’s important to quantify that difference before we decide if its a positive trend or a negative trend.

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