Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.7.0.10 $; site ccvaxa Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!ccvaxa!aglew From: aglew@ccvaxa.UUCP Newsgroups: net.cse Subject: Re: Value of Computer Science degree Message-ID: <6400005@ccvaxa> Date: Sun, 2-Mar-86 02:06:00 EST Article-I.D.: ccvaxa.6400005 Posted: Sun Mar 2 02:06:00 1986 Date-Received: Tue, 4-Mar-86 04:48:57 EST References: <256@hropus.UUCP> Lines: 32 Nf-ID: #R:hropus.UUCP:256:ccvaxa:6400005:000:1793 Nf-From: ccvaxa.UUCP!aglew Mar 2 01:06:00 1986 Just a comment about EEs vs. CSs: I was one of the first EEs at McGill to start taking "Honours" Computer Science courses. The School of Computer Science, which was very theoretical, discouraged me from taking their courses because I didn't have the necessary math background. I think they underestimated how much math an EE takes. The "Honours" Computer Science courses were jokes. The next year an "advanced" computer science class in filesystems and databases was opened up for the first time to engineers. It was taught by a visiting European professor, very theoretical, very mathematical. On the first in-class test, the marks distribution was bimodal: CSs around 30%, EEs around 80%. Same thing in a Discrete Math course - the CS students complained that they were being asked to solve new problems that they couldn't just look up in the literature. By the time I left school, the School of Computer Science had once again started providing special courses "adapted to the needs of engineers" taught by second-rate professors and teaching assistants. Rigour is not the exclusive preserve of CSs, nor does creativity solely belong to BAs. Most engineers chose to become engineers because they have this wonderful hard-to-articulate need to BUILD something. I became a programmer because systems are what I'm best at building, but my friends who became power engineers and microwave engineers did so because that's where their creative skills lay (I think the microwave engineers also like modern art). As for hackers - look for any small, underfunded, computer lab that has a resident undergraduate flunking his courses while he learns the machine. Trouble is, if he flunks too many courses, he gets expelled - the universities are still, literally, <> hackers.