| Careful about your labels! I went to brown in the late 90s and considered a cs degree before moving to math. Even then among academic programs brown was considered a bit low brow in that it spent a fair amount of time on software and systems engineering: this was all part of the cs department, but it wasn’t science per se. Today most cs programs are in fact software engineering programs; well and good, but they give themselves the same name as the original meaning which was, while engaged in engineering, more theoretical. I can think of so many counter examples to what I just wrote I’m sort of excited for the comments, but tldr: in the late 90s, if you wanted engineering skills you hired MIT, Caltech, not Harvard. (Stanford alums didn’t move east and even then were not generally hirable for cash) I’ll note my current perspective is probably aligned with your complaint - we need more engineers and quality engineers than we do theoretical cs undergrads by at least two orders of magnitude. The best schools taught their engineers theory, and I think that goes with the history of the discipline - most of the greats were tinkerers at least, more usually engaged in real engineering work while working on theory. The other way: getting theorists to become great coders - seems less common. And in fact my era at brown produced a number of influential engineering folks like brian cantrill, so despite its non exalted status, it did the world some good! |