Thursday, May 31, 2012

Computer Science Curriculum

Teach Programming Instead of Computer Science

A basic problem with the Computer Science curriculum is that it does not teach students what they're interested in or what they need to know professionally.  Most students would probably prefer practical programming experience but they get CS degrees since that is all that is being offered at their college. The schools don't want to be a "trade school" so they instead require students to learn difficult and often unnecessary material. Besides making it more difficult for the students who do succeed, it ends up scaring off many people from a career in software development all together. Its time for more options to be offered and for some disruption in the education system:

Higher Education's Online Revolution (WSJ)

2 comments:

  1. Could not agree more! I did CS and I am a terrible programmer. The reason-they are more interested in teaching you about Turing Machines than good programming practices!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not saying that Turing Machines or the basics of the Theory of Computation are that difficult, but it won't help me professionally. Good programming skills however, will.

    ReplyDelete