
Stanford's Most Popular Major Is Now Computer Science - benigeri
http://mashable.com/2012/07/01/stanford-top-major-computer-science/
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suresk
I cringe a little bit in some of these education threads. On one hand,
students who chose to major in something that isn't very marketable right now
are lambasted for making a poor decision based on what sounds interesting to
them, and they get blame heaped on them for being in debt and having nothing
to show for it. On the other hand, when people choose CS - a field that has
very good earning prospects right now - their intentions are immediately
questioned and we ask "Are they just doing it for the money?"

It must kind of suck to be someone entering college right now without natural
interest for and aptitude in a STEM field.

~~~
aphexairlines
What's wrong with people choosing CS for the money? The more people become
literate in our field, the better off we are as a society, probably.

~~~
newsoundwave
While that's true, I feel like there's going to be plenty of awful programmers
in the group that's just in it for the money (although that's not to say there
won't be passionate programmers who are also awful - they're just more likely
to want to improve themselves).

With much of CS and programming being so collaborative, those that just don't
have the talent or the heart for it generally cause more hassle and grief for
the rest of us.

Of course, I'm also not assuming that I'm not an awful programmer myself, but
I really do love CS and try to improve myself all the time.

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taskstrike
CS weeds out the bad programmers so they never graduate. If you can pass
Stanford's CS program you are probably pretty smart.

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jianxioy
This is totally untrue.

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raygunomical
Why's that? Do you have any information to back this up? I'd be interested in
that.

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jianxioy
Because you're making a fallacious assumption with Computer Science in
relation to programming/building webapps, just like many others here. You're
assuming just because one is good at CS, he/she must be a good programmer.

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guelo
The funny thing is most of those kids probably just want to learn how to make
iphone apps and pretty websites but before they realize it they're stuck
figuring out sorting algorithms and regex theory.

~~~
Jach
Sorting algorithms are high school material, I think they'll handle it.
Especially if the professor is kind enough to say "...And never use these out
of the classroom without a good reason to (and there is no good reason to use
BubbleSort). Just use the built-in sort()."

Actually using regexes seems _a lot_ more common in the working world than in
academia; as for the theory the basics of finite state machines are about as
hard as sorting algorithms. (Or do most CS programs these days cover even more
ways to implement a regex parser?
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4194707> I have no idea what most CS
programs do other than produce BigCo BigLang employees, Stanford's _sounds_
better than that from all I've read and heard.) So no, instead of sorting
algorithms, maybe they'll give up at suffix tries or Haskell Monads or Lisp
macros or relational databases or garbage collectors or JITs or Bayesian
networks or operating systems or... And while I don't know much about iPhone
apps, I think Android apps are at least as hard as InsertionSort() and
probably more frustrating. You even have a consulting business around them--
does anyone have a business around sorting algorithms?

Who knows what their motivations are? Someone at Stanford should do a poll.
I'd bet the same amount on "want to make something easy-sounding and specific
like phone apps", "want to make lots of money doing who knows what" (maybe
even as concrete as working for BigCo or doing a startup), and "because it
sounds interesting/friends are doing it/other social reasons". If we're going
to imagine them as fairly dim, it's easier to imagine they have no concrete
goal in mind. (Edit: and according to my sibling comment, since majors aren't
declared until later we probably shouldn't be imagining these students as
dim.)

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guelo
I wasn't trying to imply they are dim, I'm sure at Stanford they're brighter
than the average students. My comment was more about CS degrees in general. I
have talked to quite a few CS grads that were expecting more of a software
engineering degree and were disappointed with what they thought was too much
useless theory. I probably could have picked better examples to make my point.

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Jach
Ah, thanks for clarifying. I've heard and read similar complaints, though they
usually take the form that the CS programs just do a bad job with both the
theory and the applications. I've read some and asked some to break down "a
bad job" in theory, it leads to complaints like "outdated", "seems useless",
"is useless", "needlessly complicated when we have X", "bad teacher",
"presented slowly", "nothing bleeding-edge/it's all from the 60s", and so on.
Breaking down a bad job in applications is mostly "didn't teach me X."

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svsaraf
Recent Stanford alum here. I think it's difficult to parse out exactly why CS
is becoming popular at Stanford now.

I would argue that the principal reason for the popularity of CS is because of
the amazing teaching in the introductory courses, not the recent tech
acquisitions or news coming from Silicon Valley.

Very few departments at Stanford put in the kind of effort to bring students
along that I've seen in computer science (most prominently, the use of an army
of qualified undegraduate students to serve as TAs for the introductory
courses). Almost every engineering student I know has taken an intro CS
course, and an easy majority of everyone else has at least attempted to do so
as well. They're fun, easy, and accessible.

I would be interested to see the same sort of effort put into say,
introductory physics or chemistry. The now-second most popular major, Human
Biology, also represents a very big effort to reach out to students.

~~~
vishaldpatel
That is amazing because most universities tend to have the dullest CS teaching
crew. I mean, serious insomnia treatments.

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Heinleinian
I'm amazed there could be negative reaction to this. Just think of it this
way: every year there are literally armies of smart young people, who are
fully capable of being top-notch programmers or engineers, who graduate and
become lawyers or go to wall street. Many of them spend their time on things
that add _negative value_ for the economy. Every single one of those people
who goes into engineering is an entire career that helps the US economy
instead of hurting it.

(Note: if you like, read "western capitalist democracy economies" instead of
"US economy").

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robyates
_“A quarter of all undergraduates and more than 50% of graduate students [at
Stanford] are engineering majors."_

I can attest Stanford really feels like a tech school in disguise, especially
at the graduate level.

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mukaiji
Actually, I was surprised that the number is that low... but maybe it's
because i'm around techies all day and tend to consider the fuzzies as cute,
inconsequential thingy that hang around our campus like butterflies do around
a pond :)

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capkutay
Luckily, many people can major CS but only the competent can pass...given its
a respectable program.

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giardini
It's Stanford! Like medical school, once you're in, _nobody_ fails.

If you need tutoring, money or a sympathetic shoulder, there's plenty
available.

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mukaiji
Oh, people do fail. They just withdraw, keep attending the course, and retake
it for a grade the quarter after. As long as they get the subject eventually,
it's all that matters, right?

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rodly
What are the implications of this popularity for us non-Ivey league current
Computer Science majors?

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SafeSituation
I would say that the only difference that you have to overcome is the tight-
knit community of alums. As a CS/OR major from a Top 4 school, I haven't ever
gotten an internship offer simply because I was at the school I'm at. Stanford
especially is good at fostering connections in the startup community for their
students, but Princeton has NY and Harvard has Boston.

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sopooneo
What is an OR major please? Google didn't help.

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ayla
I don't know about Stanford, but in several other schools, it stands for
Operations Research.

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vlad
It would be interesting to know how many applicants got interested in Computer
Science from watching Stanford's excellent iOS courses on iTunesU.

Additionally, it would be interesting to learn how many students declare
Computer Science before they enroll and how many students switch into Computer
Science because "all their friends are doing it" now that it's the most
popular major.

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BadassFractal
Or how many people went into CS after seeing The Social Network.

vvv - luckily programming polices itself. Those who are not seriously
motivated will unlikely survive a serious CS gauntlet.

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heretohelp
_shudder_

This is a caveat of trying to popularize programming.

Sometimes I wish it was still purely for 'nerds'.

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azylman
Why should you care why people got interested in computer science? As long as
they're capable of doing it (and if they graduate from a place like Stanford,
they probably will be) why should you care about their motivation?

I personally think anything that makes more people interested in technology is
"a good thing".

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hkmurakami
If people pursue a discipline because "the industry is hot", rather than
because of genuine interest in the subject or enjoyment of learning /
improving, bad things happen to them when the industry inevitably cools down.

I think about the CS majors during the times of the .dom boom, or the
architecture majors during the housing/construction boom, and wonder how many
students were stuck with a degree that was difficult to find a job with, _and_
were not inherently interested about in the first place.

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cluda01
The approach to problem solving you acquire from any rigorous scientific
endeavor will benefit you for the rest of your life. These benefits will
probably still apply regardless of whether or not you go on to be a
practitioner.

I suspect we can find more than a few data points here.

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mukaiji
Mehan Sahami. Eric Roberts. Julie Zelenski. Jerry Cain. (bonus: keith
schwarz). Look no further for explaining the rise in popularity and quality of
the Stanford CS intro course. I had the privilege of sitting in the class of
each of these guys and they were all respectively the best professor/teacher I
ever had. Period.

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samstave
What was the most popular prior?

~~~
abi
HumBio (Human Biology) for quite a few years and I think before that, it was
either International Relations or Economics. HumBio is really popular because
of pre-meds and other people who want to get into bio-related jobs/grad
programs.

~~~
SiVal
HumBio also tended to be the major of no major, the major people declared and
the classes they took when they were required to declare a major but hadn't
yet figured out what they wanted to major in. The first couple of years of
classes were considered relatively easy yet still mostly applicable to many
other majors.

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aristidb
Bubble?

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hexagonal
Bubble. No way are all those kids going to be real programmers.

~~~
benigeri
Or so you think...

~~~
Danieru
Worst case we have a surplus of maintenance programmers.

What could possibly go wrong.

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bootload
_"... the new focus on X, for the moment, suggests how much faith we’re
putting — for our careers and our overall future — in the Y world. ..."_

Replace X with engineering or book binding and Y with steam powered or
printing and it looks similar to other eras of technological growth.

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miguelv
And how many of them "reach the end"? How many of them are women?

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mkramlich
I think the rise in CS at Stanford is due to a confluence of several factors,
not any single one thing:

* The Social Network & The Death of Steve Jobs (capitalized for a reason) & The Rise of Elon Musk, Mr. PayPal-Tesla-SpaceX & the other software billionaires doing exciting things getting media coverage

* the software/startup "bubble" -- the perception of it anyway; the crazy big acquisitions of young one soft-product companies with low/no revenue and only 1-3 years old, etc.

* crappy job market right now for 18 year olds, or even a twenty-something graduate with a non-STEM degree

* iOS & Android app development, the tutorials, how easy it appears you can make money at it. iPhones as a gateway drug leading in that direction for some percentage of it's more ambitious users. Rise of Apple in general and the Mac, an additional vector leading in this direction.

* the recent rise in online "courses" by Stanford, etc.

* the high pay and perceived higher job security of this field, at least right now

* more serious people (or those with smart advisors) who sense the future trend of greater software automation, mobile apps, robots, drones, embedded logic, etc.

It's probably a mix of the above, different for each person. All adds up.

