You certainly do at Lancaster Uni. Whether you're doing the software engineering option or not, you learn Java and Assembly throughout the whole first year and other languages later.
computer science module
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You certainly do at Lancaster Uni. Whether you're doing the software engineering option or not, you learn Java and Assembly throughout the whole first year and other languages later.
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Indeed, I think programming (or at least the principals and one implementation) is an important part of a Comp Sci degree.
Yeah, that's what they preached to us: principles rather than languages.
I left having learnt no language to a commercially usable level, but with the ability to pick up any language I try relatively easily.
Agreed - I personally felt more comfortable with the modular programming languages rather than the so-called parallel/functional languages (occam/miranda if you must know
) but all of the programming / database stuff has been of use in the real world.Comp Sci may seem a bit strange to 80% of the students, 80% of the time, but it does try to cover a wide variety of interests that may lead to a wide variety of jobs. (Yet I suspect 80% of the graduates go into programming roles
)TBH, I doubt Google will hire you if you get a degree from an ex polytechnic. Google will search for very mathematically orientated CS degrees. These are few and far between. Cambridge, Edinburgh or 2 that stick out.
Computer Science is just a branch of mathematics.
At my University you did to full years of mathematics, that made equal maths and equal CS courses. Except 80% of the CS were pure mathematics anyway.
That is a software engineering/computing/ programming degree.
A good CS degree will hardly teach much object orientated stuff. Some fundamentals yes, but not a commercial programming ability. One would learn more important skills like algorithmic complexity etc.
A CS grad student should be wanting to prove NP = P etc.
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What a load of tosh. Knowing OO concepts and principals is very important for any CS grad. I would be totally on the other side of the fence. Any CS grad without understanding of OO concepts should be very annoyed with their course.
What you are describing is a Maths with Comp Sci Degree.
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Rubbish.
Why would they. Its not like they are going to program the next MS product. CS is a science, not an engineering degree. I agree OO concepts will and should be taught, but not with a very high priority. A lot of the CS coding i've done may not have been more than 100 lines... but they were the hardest algorithms I've ever developed.
It should be pointed out that you can go a long long way without ever programming a single line of code or ever touching a computer to be a computer scientist. Paper and pen is sufficient. Much of the most important work in computer science was conducted before computers ever existed.
Would you hire someone with a maths degree? Presumably they'd be just as useless having not covered OO development in their degree?
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A large proportion of CS grads do exactly that or software dev in a similarly large corporation.Engineering skills are very important to modern CS grads as they will most likely get an engineering based job.
Depends. If they've got maths but can prove they are a good developer as well (it often goes hand in hand
) then probably.Saying that.. we took a punt on someone last month that had maths and we had to let him go after 3 weeks as he just couldn't code complicated stuff to save his life. Throw him an algorithm to do and he would nail it but anything else...
Then you shouldn't be looking for a CS grad.
A Computer scientist could learn to apply their abilities to whatever programming language/software the company used if need be but that would be a waste of resources. A computer scientists does not care about implementational details. A Turing machine is a Turing machine, holes punched in cards or letters typed to form JAVA/Ruby/embedded C- who cares.
Depends. If they've got maths but can prove they are a good developer as well (it often goes hand in hand
Saying that.. we took a punt on someone last month that had maths and we had to let him go after 3 weeks as he just couldn't code complicated stuff to save his life. Throw him an algorithm to do and he would nail it but anything else...
Looks liek you made a mistake. The Maths dude did everything expected of a mathematician. he "nailed algorithms". He could write these algorithms down on a piece of paper and pass it onto some tech monkey straight from school that know your C++ software and gets paid tuppence, while the Maths dude can go back to designing algorithms
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You do realise that not all Computer Scientists are researchers? And even if they are they do need an engineering mind to put their ideas into practice?
Depends. If they've got maths but can prove they are a good developer as well (it often goes hand in hand
Saying that.. we took a punt on someone last month that had maths and we had to let him go after 3 weeks as he just couldn't code complicated stuff to save his life. Throw him an algorithm to do and he would nail it but anything else...
Surely then a CS grad from a top university would have very similar skills?
I understand what you're saying that a CS grad should know how to program and, in most cases, they will. However, CS is not fundamentally about programming.
I think that nowadays a CS degree is a bit of a bastardisation of a classic maths based CS degree and a software engineering degree.
The way I see it is that the relationship between maths and, say, mechanical engineering is very similar to the relationship between computer science and software engineering.
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I am thinking that D.P. is an academic
Most definetly.