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Cherry picking applied software engineering (and glancing over your curriculum, specifically web programming/app development) as the only modern relevant subset of computer science seems a bit dramatic. I personally don't really care how/where people learn how to code, and like you, I don't care much for the "priesthood of the technologist" I see so often in our industry. But so confidently suggesting that ".. academic CS departments is not what we need as a society" is no different "cargo-cult" thinking than the poster who suggested that many don't take vocational training seriously. You are blogging about and representing a vocational training service, obviously the readers on HN are going to be skeptical. Choosing the path of academia in education and as a career is a perfectly valid and respectable choice. Suggesting that the works of groups like the ACM, IEEE are not addressing real societal problem is pretty harsh, regardless of how elitist they may or may not be, and regardless of whether those individuals are making a significant contribution to society or not. There's no need to shit on smart and passionate people in specialized / esoteric fields in computer science simply because their work can't be easily app'ified or conjured into an mvp (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/, http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~ravin/ ...) I studied computer science in my undergrad. I didn't go to learn how to code nor did I expect my university to teach me how to code, I already knew how to do that. Many of my friends discovered a passion for CS because of their overlapping math/logic/theory breadth courses, not despite it. Assuming the typical CS student is someone who only enrolls to learn things like applied programming grossly oversimplifies and generalizes a person's intentions and motivations for learning, even though I'm sure there are many with that primary motivation. Online/alternative learning programs, like your company, are a great approach on education which have lived happily in parallel with universities for years. It's not a replacement though, it is an alternative. I don't think the shortcomings in some universities warrant the "academic butchering" as suggested so boldly in the post's title. To suggest that we should start systematically shutting down CS departments simply because their current curriculum doesn't produce good programmers in a way that aligns with your model/curriculum, is a scary and dangerous thought. When you take away university departments, you chop the legs off entire disciplines. |