[brudgers]

An MIT professor can be naive. A history major learns how to read and analyze documents...and how to write. An art major learns how to create art. An even more significant difference between these and many contemporary STEM subjects is that an undergraduate is expected to know how to create original work...there's no copying art homework especially not in an advanced class.

These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other.

[HarryHirsch]

These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other

That's simply not true. The reason that software is eating the world is that the rate on investment return is so much higher. Every time I read a publication from Phil Baran's group I have to pause several times to think it through, it's very deep, very subtle. Website is here, btw: http://openflask.blogspot.com/

It's actually worrying that computing has overtaken science and engineering. Back then, Arnold Beckman made a fortune in scientific instruments and enabled the world to do better science. Nowadays, Google and Facebook sit on huge corpora of natural language texts, and the only thing they do is build better AI for better targeting of ads.

[brudgers]

It is entirely true that I think that, these days.

[HarryHirsch]

Don't do that. That notion does not conform to observable reality.

[brudgers]

One might find familiarity with Hume useful here.

[analog31]

These days I think that the creative element of programming is why software is eating the world at the pace it is. Undergrads can look at each other's code and say Wow! while one titration is fungible with every other.

Seeing past this level of understanding is an attrition gate in any subject. What I mean is, the students who got past freshman chemistry to become good chemists are the ones who saw the creative element in chemistry.

Those same students may have taken the programming course and seen different codes as fungible with one another. Or in math, proofs, or in English, essays. I know people who came away from the freshman programming course, with the conclusion that "it's all just memorization." Clearly it means they didn't get it, but it also means it's a widespread impression.

As for chemistry, for reasons we don't know, part of developing creativity as a chemist is to get what they call "hands," which means being able to take care of yourself in the lab without wreaking havoc on everything. You need to have a sense of what can and can't be done in a practical process, in order to see your way through a difficult project.

[brudgers]

The 'good' chemists I know eventually wound up at places like Coca-Cola making sugar water after a post-doc or teaching titration...after a post doc.

[analog31]

Every field has its own sugar water, and its own titration.

Advertising and GUI design are the sugar water of computer science.

The "coding interview" tells me that at least some aspect of programming is akin to titration.

[michaelscott]

I could give GUI design a tenuous connection if pressed, but what on Earth does advertising have to do with computer science?

[analog31]

As I understand things, it's possibly the biggest employer of people with computer science degrees, as well as the biggest revenue driver for the software industry.

But perhaps to generalize, the relationship between "look at how creative this discipline is" and "look at what people actually do with it in the real world" is an issue facing every academic field.

[michaelscott]

Perhaps this is a local thing; almost no one in advertising where I'm from comes out of university computer science.

Agreed on the generalisation though. I'd even wager that the "creativity of this discipline" idea is what is attracting new students to fields that aren't too viable after graduation.

[brudgers]

Google hires a lot of computer scientists. Advertising is it's core business.

[mcguire]

Facebook, as well. Along with all the other ad-supported businesses.