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by recursivedoubts 22 days ago
First off I don’t like the tone most people use when they say “trade school”. Most cs students go to a job out of school. Of the roughly 10% who go on to grad school, 10% will pursue a PhD.

So 99/100 students in undergrad will not be pursuing higher computer science. We should acknowledge that and the new circumstances where writing code by hand is harder to do in corporations who use AI.

Universities can provide a place to do so.

I also happen to think that writing a lot of code is an excellent way to prepare yourself for computer science theory.

1 comments

“education” is not the same as “job training”. there’s more to education than learning skills you can apply at your job. it’s learning how to think critically, study literature, problem solve, collaborate with others, etc. etc. skills that I believe all humans could benefit from, irrespective of their job. yes, trade schools are more immediately valuable in the strict capitalist sense, but I wish we lived in a world where everyone could spare a few years to grow as a person, not immediately start optimizing for salary. alas, could be wishful thinking
Learning to code is not job training. It is learning to think. Learning to code is a prerequisite for learning deeper computer science concepts.

As far as the liberal arts go I agree that it would be nice if people had time to study them. Unfortunately, the universities abandoned them long ago.