
Stanford CS enrollment increase "downright scary" - andreyf
http://computinged.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/guest-post-eric-roberts-on-the-dangers-of-escalating-enrollments/
======
dstein

      When expensively educated, fashionable young graduates
      start showing up in your field, you're in a bubble.
       - Kevin Marks
    

I fully attribute the increase to The Social Network movie coinciding with the
ballooning of Facebook's market cap. Flipping tech startups is the hot new get
rich quick scheme. Just like flipping houses and subprime mortgages before it.

~~~
meterplech
I think people who got into programming very early in life can be naturally
condescending against those who found it later. There is some reason behind
this: if you were programming Basic at 6, made your first mini game at 8, and
had your first webapp in the dotcom boom at 14 you probably have a ton of
programming experience that those who learned later don't have.

But, it still seems odd to me. Most fields want to encourage smart, young,
undergrads to enter them. Sure, they might have shallower passion for the
field at first, the point of the article was that many people were developing
real love for the field.

While Stanford undergrads are expensively educated and (maybe?) fashionable,
they are also incredibly smart. Most importantly, learning programming isn't
like selling subprime mortgages. For someone to buy your startup you must have
added some value to the world. Trading subprimes arguably does not, or has a
net negative effect.

~~~
sixtofour
"For someone to buy your startup you must have added some value to the world."

Not necessarily so. All it takes is the buyer or investor to believe he'll
make money.

There were a lot of dot coms back in that bubble that had no business
existing, yet everyone wanted to throw money at companies that added nothing
to the world but paychecks.

------
famousactress
As someone who's been regularly interviewing Stanford students and grads for
internships and full-time positions, it's worth pointing out that lots of
these CS students don't want to program. I've been surprised at how many of
them are getting a CS education as a platform for a career in product
management, or even marketing.

It makes some sense, given the makeup of the companies that are exciting to
work for nowadays. I think especially if you want to join an early-stage
startup, there are lots of benefits to having a technical education, even if
your role isn't expressly technical.

~~~
larsberg
This sentiment is identical to what I experienced interviewing and hiring
Stanford CS grads, even though it was back in 2002-2005. Not all, to be sure
-- one of my top-performing college hires was a Stanford CS grad! -- but it
was certainly the trend. Unlike MIT grads, who were just drooling to find a
good problem and required intervention to worry about things like career
trajectory, etc.

I think it's more of a cultural bias from certain universities than a global
economic trend in the field.

~~~
spitfire
That's good to know. I've always suspected MIT students to be hard nosed
technies above all.

------
patio11
Capitalism happens? Seriously, anecdotal fresh-out-of-school salaries for
talented CS people are near $100k. Anecdotal fresh-out-of-school salaries for
talented English majors are near... well, they get discounted frappuchinos at
any rate. This is Mr. Market saying "Thanks, I've got enough literary
criticism -- can I please, please, please have more code monkeys?"

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"well, they get discounted frappuchinos at any rate"

I've noted your past fixation on English majors and their lack of financial
success, and not sure why you single them out. Lit crit-saddled academia and
coffeeshops aren't the only path for the English major. Writing is not only a
noble pursuit but a lucrative[1] one (even if you skirt the legacy publishing
industry), with as much a combination of hard work and dedication to craft
(and luck) as, for example, selling bingo card generators for a living, or
mobile phone games, or b2b CRUD apps, or facebook farming simulators.

Aside from fiction writing, there are ad copy and marketing writers, technical
writers, screen and television writers, bloggers, journos, etc. Most of those
are salaried positions, not necessarily part time/contract work.

It's really not that bad out there. For the record, I've never worked at a
coffeeshop :D

[1][http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/will-write-e-
po...](http://www.bnet.com/blog/technology-business/will-write-e-porn-
for-1-million/9888)

~~~
jraines
True, but I'd wager the most lucrative forms of writing (outside the lottery
win of a fiction bestseller or successfully navigating the Hollywood game) are
only minimally related to the passions that drive people to major in English.

Majoring in English to write marketing copy is like majoring in CS to write
soundboard Android apps. It'll help, but ...

~~~
Duff
Majoring and doing well in English develops good analytical and analysis
skills. You learn to read between the lines -- it's not a trivial field of
study.

Also, going to college is supposed to be about training your mind. Writing an
Android app doesn't require a CS degree, but getting a CS degree instills
certain habits that enable you to succeed in programming.

If you want job training, go to welding school.

~~~
noonespecial
Humf. I took many semesters of welding and it taught me a great deal about how
the human world is bodged together at the very lowest levels. Welding as a
major is as hard a science as Mechanical or Electrical engineering. Its two
parts mechanical engineering, one part chemistry and one part electrical
engineering. Lives almost always depend on your work, there's rigorous
certifications and civil engineers treat you with almost religious respect.

I'm just sayin'.

~~~
veritgo
I'm really liking this thread. Everytime someone tries to dismiss a major or
course as being somehow inferior, another person chimes in with a view point
that blows said dismissal out of the water.

I'm sure there are CS majors now in the workforce that just crank out their
requisite number of lines each day, the work that many like to deify as an
analytical blend of art and science becoming a routine drag.

And there are welders who take pride in their work and are treated with
religious respect by civil engineers.

Maybe it's more about the person than the major.

~~~
hga
CMU is big into big robots (as opposed to e.g. MIT's Randy Brooks' little
robots), and in one book or article on their program one of their CS
undergraduates who was "perfect" at welding stainless steel was mentioned. "I
don't think we're going to let him graduate", one of his professors said in
jest.

------
forensic
Who are we kidding. This is a symptom of the economy. There is money in
software.

What does the economy of the future look like? Millions and millions of
programmers. Manipulating technology is where value comes from and software is
the most efficient way to manipulate technology.

I just hope we have enough robotics and computer engineering people to improve
the platforms all these programmers are going to work on.

The web browser is pretty limited in its ability to improve human life. We
need other platforms to target.

~~~
slewis
"improve the platforms all these programmers are going to work on"

I'm intrigued. Do you have specific ideas in mind? Do you mean like self-
driving cars? Or in home helper robots? All of the above?

~~~
forensic
How about cars with software interfaces so you can download software that will
assist with driving. Download driving software from an app store. Everything
from red light timers to voice activated mileage calculators to self-driving
apps. Little toy apps that let you take pictures of the license plates of
douche-bag drivers and tweet about them, to sophisticated safety apps that
apply the brakes if you're going to run someone over.

How about bathrooms with some hardware installed that controls valves on your
shower, drain, toilet, sink, etc. Has some sensors: temperature, pressure,
whatever. Has an exposed "reset" button that, when pushed, allows it to be
connected to through WiFi. You connect on your laptop through WiFi and
configure it like a router, or you give it your wifi password and configure it
through an internet webapp.

You could have it do things like automatically adjust the temperature of your
shower so it never goes cold. Put a limit on the temperature of the water
coming out so your kids don't get burned. Tell you when the drain is getting
clogged. Shut off the water when the toilet is overflowing.

Put a few hardware controls in the plumbing, expose the controls to a software
interface, launch an app store and let people make apps for your toilet and
shower. We need this.

Ditto for smart houses. Create little wifi plugs that you install in your
light fixtures and then have a software interface that lets people write apps
to control lights from your iPhone, or from a remote web interface when on
vacation.

Plug a little hardware device onto your blinds that will open/close them based
on a software interface. Hooks up to your wifi. Lets you program it to open
with the sunrise and close at sunset, or whatever the programmer wants. Have
toy apps that communicate with neighbours using morse code for $4.99 on the
app store.

There is infinite potential. A wifi connection, a microprocessor, and some
piece of hardware to plug everyday things into. Every single morning I wonder
why someone has not invented a simple hardware unit to plug into your shower
that lets you regulate the temperature. I want to have an interface on my
iPhone where I set the temperature of my shower in degrees fahrenheit and then
push "start" and the shower turns on and heats up to my desired temperature
automatically.

~~~
rgbrgb
Sarcasm?

~~~
forensic
No...

------
larsberg
The same thing appears to be happening here at the University of Chicago --
increased numbers of undergraduates in the sequence as well as greatly
increased Ph.D. student applications over the last couple of years. And not
just money-grubbers in the undergrads as well; many refuse to interview with
the previous staples for our graduates -- the finance industry here in Chicago
or "big companies" such as Google and Facebook (one of them said to me during
a lab, "I mean, really, PHP? Who wants to work with THAT?").

I haven't seen as many Ph.D. students from other disciplines coming through
our intro sequence and regretting their current path. But, I do see quite a
few juniors and seniors who only started taking CS classes as a sophomore or
junior (usually because their advisor told them the classes were too hard and
would make it difficult to do their Core Curriculum) and really wish they had
evaluated the major earlier before they made choices that prevented them from
switching majors and still graduating in four years.

~~~
btilly
_one of them said to me during a lab, "I mean, really, PHP? Who wants to work
with THAT?"_

You speak as if disdain for PHP was a bad thing. I know a lot of very
experienced and competent programmers who feel the same way, and it is not a
slight on their competence that they do.

~~~
larsberg
I apologize if it came across that way! I was impressed by their desire to
work with cool tech and on interesting problems instead of being dominated by
economic fear and just going wherever they were most likely to get a big
payout (whether or not joining Facebook _now_ will get you a big payout is
another question <grin>).

------
zmitri
This is a good sign! The general public is just realizing how important
computer skills are, no matter what you are trying to do. A well rounded CS
major can learn something new and apply those skills to something else. I
think public schools and high schools need to start integrating and making
CS/programming courses necessary just as basic math and science courses are
required -- then once people reach university age, they can focus on different
topics without having to take CS courses to learn the basic skills they
require to approach those topics like a CS major would.

~~~
agscala
I don't think that CS should be included in a high school curriculum.
Programming is a valuable skill, sure, but I don't think that it will be
applicable to 95% of students. There are such a broad range of jobs in the
world, and very, very few end up doing programming, despite increasing numbers
for university CS course registration.

~~~
noahlt
I don't think that calculus should be included in a high school curriculum.
Differential modelling is a valuable skill, sure, but I don't think that it
will be applicable to 95% of students. There are such a broad range of jobs in
the world, and very, very few end up doing differential modelling, despite
increasing numbers for university calculus course registration.

~~~
younata
At my high school, Calc was only offered as an AP course. If I so wanted, I
could stop taking math after Algebra 2 and still graduate.

~~~
scott_s
Then perhaps there's ambiguity in the phrase "included in a high school
curriculum." I consider calculus to have been included in my high school
curriculum, but I chose to take it.

~~~
jlazarow
Wouldn't AP CS then satisfy such a definition of "in the curriculum" then?
(Granted I know a lot of schools don't offer that class - it still exists).

~~~
scott_s
Yes, per how I was using the phrase. My high school had an AP and non-AP
version.

------
pjhyett
I know it's in vogue to throw the word bubble around, but I'd be interested to
see the CS enrollment stats worldwide. The first generation of kids that spend
more time in front of their computer than the TV are starting to hit college.
More screen time is bound to create more people interested in how they can
program the thing they sit in front of all day.

~~~
bad_user
I kind of wish for that to happen, but for children of friends / relatives
that do sit in front of the computer all day I do not see it.

The problem is that many things are taken for granted (normally) and there are
lots of distractions available -- when my parents bought me my first computer
(in 95) I only had games like Doom to play and no net available, and I got
bored easily. Loved sitting in front of the computer, and there was nothing
more interesting than learning to program it.

Kids nowadays only stay on chat/facebook/myspace all day and/or play games,
which is understandable to a certain point since there's lots of stuff to do
with a PC that's attractive even to non-technical people. You don't need to
program it to feel good about yourself, to show off, to have some fun or to
get some work done ... that's the difference between now and the nineties.

~~~
hack_edu
I too had my first machine at a super young age in 1994 and learned to program
just the same. Our only difference was that I was still on chat/IM all day
back then too, a distraction, but not as big of one as doing anything on a
25mhz Mac with a 33.6kbs modem.

What really made me learn to program was the NEED to figure out how to work
the machine and network to be as fast as I could. I do doubt I'd be as
interested in learning the innards on a smartphone or netbook...

------
jonmc12
I graduated in '01 with an EE degree. At that point in time, engineering,
including software, seemed like a field where you were ushered down a career
path towards a pigeon-holed role at a large company. The advice was to get
into a) technical sales, b) product marketing, or c) consulting if you wanted
to start a career towards being an entrepreneur.

Now, its much different - the technology is more empowering and much cheaper.
I can build stuff, and if I can build stuff people want, its a direct path to
starting a company. Constrained by my ability to build stuff, I committed
myself over the last 2.5 years to focusing on becoming a better engineer.

What is interesting, is that many of my peers that I thought were done coding
have come to this same conclusion. In the last 6 months I have had 3 friends -
1 a successful consultant at a big firm, 1 a successful tech salesman and a
fortune 100 company, and 1 a VP of engineering at a mid-sized firm. Each of
them is coding on nights and weekends now.

Why? 1) Paul Graham - 'build stuff people want' and the subsequent success of
that strategy, 2) It is really hard to hire developers to build stuff, 3)
Facebook, Twitter, Groupon, Zynga and other companies that used tech to change
the world in insanely short periods of time.

So, from what I am seeing, its not about people gold-digging (as many comments
have suggested) - its that the skill of engineering has turned from a boring
career skillset into an incredibly empowering tool. I imagine many undergrads
are seeing it this way too.

------
kyan
I was a section leader for CS106A/B/X at Stanford and Eric Roberts was my
undergrad adviser. I graduated in 08 and all through my 4 years, the number of
students majoring in CS and taking CS106A/B/X was increasing rapidly.

Personally, I think that it's fantastic. Programming is a great skill to be
exposed to even if you're not a programmer. There's no shortage of hard
problems to be solved in CS and the more the merrier as far as I'm concerned.

From my experience of teaching at least 100 kids who have taken the CS106s, no
one has done it for a higher salary out of college - a lot of non-CS majors
take it to satisfy the Engineering GER (a requirement) and the rest take it
out of interest.

~~~
cpr
I only knew Eric as a TA/grad student at Harvard (I was undergrad--this is
back in the Stone Age--mid-70's), but he was already then a fantastic,
enthusiastic teacher. I imagine he's only gotten better.

------
benwerd
Rinse and repeat everywhere, and we're likely to see an overabundance of
computer scientists in three or four years.

Developers: may I suggest getting a second degree?

~~~
illamint
Seriously? Just because there are waves of people enrolling in an
_introductory_ CS course at an extremely high-level CS school like Stamford
doesn't mean that any reasonable percentage of those students will actually
end up getting degrees. I'd estimate that less than 10% of the people enrolled
in the intro CS course at my university ended up getting a CS degree.

Sure, there's bound to be an uptick; demand for developers is huge and all,
but it's still a rigorous course of study and I think you need to be pretty
driven to "get" it all. I'm not even remotely worried, because even if there
were an overabundance of "computer scientists", there would still be a dearth
of _good_ computer scientists.

~~~
benwerd
You actually make a fair point: I forgot the difference between the UK
education system (which I went through) and the US.

In the UK, you pick your entire major over a year before you ever go to
university. In fact, it depends on your A-levels, so you're effectively
picking your major at age 15 or 16. Whereas, of course, in the US, you have
far more room to pick and choose.

Nonetheless, this uptick in interest is almost guaranteed to result in far
more computer scientists. I agree that the number of good computer scientists
is a fraction of that, but you'll still have far more chance of standing out
from the crowd if you have a bunch of additional skills.

------
kenjackson
Can't they just accept fewer students? Seems odd to get worked up about
something you directly control.

~~~
larsberg
I don't think they're like CMU, which has a separate school of Computer
Science you have to be admitted to in order to be a CS major. If Stanford is
like the University of Chicago, the only thing stopping students from majoring
in CS are the registrar-imposed limits on the number of students physically
enrolled.

~~~
RyanGWU82
Stanford doesn't even have those "registrar-imposed limits." Classes almost
never fill up; they just get larger rooms or add TAs. Students don't usually
register for classes until after the term has started!

I was an undergrad at a more traditional school where we registered for
classes months in advance. I was amazed that the Stanford system was so
informal, but in practice it worked just fine. It's wonderful to be able to
audit a few classes before deciding on exactly what you're going to take; you
may learn that you can't stand a professor, or love a surprising subject.

~~~
schwap
Wow, as an undergrad who has endured years of stressful schedule twiddling
followed by a 2-week sprint to figure out how I'm going to replace all the
crap courses I naively selected months ago, that sounds like paradise.

~~~
cbcase
It's not exactly paradise. Because classes are only ten weeks total (slightly
less in spring), you can't exactly spend the first week or two shopping around
without doing non-trivial work for every single class you're shopping --- an
approach which doesn't scale, to say the least. There's still a sprint the
first few days. But still, it's nice.

------
b3b0p
At my school the first 2 CS courses were always packed... in the initial weeks
of courses beginning at least.

I had a professor in one of those courses once say something like this:

    
    
        Look to your left, look to your right, 
        because one of you won’t be here by 
        the end of the year.
    

Both these courses were considered weed out courses. They were Java based and
most majors I had heard required at least one or both of them.

$100k in San Francisco is less than $50k where I live. I rent a single
bedroom, no debt in Oklahoma. My good friend lives in San Francisco, single
bedroom apartment, doesn't even need a car. I take home after taxes, expenses,
etc about 50% to 25% and I make almost half of what he makes. Anecdotal, yes.
Maybe not typical, but it does show that cost of living is a major factor on
salary.

------
buckwild
Maybe there is a more simple explanation. I speculate it is just that
computers (and programming) are becoming more of a required skill in many
fields. I know psychologists and MBAs who use programming to data mine. I
myself am a bioinformatician and heavily use programming to answer scientific
questions.

It could also be that kids are being introduced to programming at a younger
and younger age. I started learning programming in my early teens, but I have
a little cousin who has a Java class in her private school. She is about 8 now
and can program Java better than I can...

------
snikolic
I think this is cyclical, and to be expected. I had a conversation ~2 years
ago with the head of a CS Dept in Boston who was anticipating this. He
explained that enrollment in his department had grown by an order of magnitude
(or more) during the dot-com bubble and shrank by a similar amount after the
bust. Just as Lehman et al. was occurring, he was bracing for the same thing
to happen again...and here it is.

~~~
hga
It depends. MIT has seen something quite different, EECS enrollment from at
least the '80s to the dot.com crash was ~ 400 students per class of ~ 1050.
Then it crashed hard down to as low as 180 and only very recently got over
200. MIT hasn't seen anything like Stanford's increase but that probably has a
lot to do with the different student bodies and the very different
introductory courses (e.g. they no longer have a hard introductory course
suitable for non-majors).

~~~
hga
Update: enrollment in 6.01, MIT's "CS1" course for majors, just jumped to 380
this spring from 250 last spring.

------
cube13
The courses that were mentioned were all 100 level courses. Can anyone who
went to Stanford(or knows the courses) comment on how technical they actually
are?

It's a good sign if these are actual technical courses, but if they're just
Word/Excel "programming" non-technical courses, we're just seeing a lot of
people padding their resume in a bad economy.

~~~
wmf
Come on, you think a _computer science_ class at _Stanford_ is Word/Excel?
Fortunately, they created a search engine that let me find the class in
question: <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs106a/> It's Java programming.

~~~
cube13
>Come on, you think a computer science class at Stanford is Word/Excel?

Intro, non-technical course? These are more common than you think.
CS105(<https://agora.cs.illinois.edu/display/cs105/Course+Syllabus>) at UIUC
is a course that covers exactly that(it was 101 when I went there). It's meant
for non-engineering or science students to cover a general education credit.
CS101(which was 105) is in C and matlab, and that covers some more techincally
difficult stuff. This is meant for technical non-CS majors.

CS125 is the true intro CS course, which covers data structures, recursion,
etc.

~~~
wmf
That sounds pretty sad; I wonder why that class isn't in the MIS department or
something.

~~~
cube13
Keep in mind that neither 101 or 105 actually count towards a CS degree in any
capacity(either major or minor), so those aren't courses that anyone getting a
CS degree would take anyway.

------
troymc
I'd attribute part of the increase to what I call the "Top Gun Effect."

When Top Gun (the Tom Cruise movie) came out, there was a big increase in the
number of students signing up for aerospace engineering courses and programs.

The trigger doesn't have to be a movie, just something in popular culture. In
this case, I think it's all the positive media around Facebook, iPhone, iPad,
Kinect, Google and more (including at least one Oscar-nominated movie).

~~~
adestefan
The increase in aerospace engineering was driven by the launch of the first
Space Shuttle, not by Top Gun.

~~~
troymc
The launch of the first Space Shuttle happened April 12, 1981.

Top Gun, the movie, came out about _five years later_ , on May 16, 1986.

Maybe the Space Shuttle launch did cause an increase in interest in aerospace
programs, and maybe it didn't. I don't know. What I do know is that Top Gun
did cause an increased interest in aerospace courses and programs.

------
juiceandjuice
This is more likely due to a generational shift than anything.

People between the ages of ~23 and ~28 are sort of the go-betweeners with
roots (and maybe even parents) in generation X but firmly planted in
Generation Y. 22 and younger is firmly Generation Y, transforming into Z or
whatever you want to call it. Right now, people around 18 have lived their
whole life with the internet, and probably half of it with broadband.

------
narrator
I blame "The Social Network" movie. That was the first movie that made
software development look like a fun way to party, make tons of money and get
hot chicks. The Palo Alto dev house pot smoking scenes and the fictional Sean
Parker antics were quite amusing in that regard. That, and there's easy money
in software these days.

~~~
hga
But note that the movie came out October 1st of last year, so it could not
influence the first of the three Stanford "quarters" in this academic year
(summer is the 4th quarter). It very well might have had a effect but in the
previous academic year they'd already almost returned to their previous
enrollment peak. Plus it can't explain the sharp mid or high 70s% increase in
their "CS3" course CS107, since anyone inspired by the movie would right now
at best be taking the 2nd course in their sequence.

------
ninguem2
>A 20% rate of increase is healthy and manageable.

At this rate, all of mankind will be Stanford CS students by the end of the
century.

------
ChrisArchitect
not one mention of The Social Network movie or if a chunk of this influx is
looking for a career at making iPhone apps?

------
phamilton
At my school, CS is the 6th most popular major (out of 135). That's a big
deal, especially since we aren't necessarily a tech school (BYU). They haven't
had trouble placing grads yet, but they are starting to get worried too.

Meanwhile, EE and CpE are pretty low. Definitely below the job market's
demand.

~~~
Apocryphon
What's CpE?

~~~
msg
Computer Engineering? I think we split them this way at Utah State: Electrical
Engineering, Computer Engineering (systems/hardware emphasis), Computer
Science (software/algorithms emphasis).

------
ThomPete
Great, that just means more gold diggers for us merchants to sell tools to.

~~~
zackattack
what sorta tools you sellin, boss? :)

------
spydertennis
As technology becomes more ubiquitous, the people who understand technology
will become more valuable. This is a symptom of more people knowing what the
internet is than did 20 years ago.

------
amathew
For a person considering going back to school as a non-trad student for either
a BS in Computer Science or Computational Math, is this a bad time to be
getting a degree in CS?

~~~
hga
Well, be sure to e.g. factor in the terrible age discrimination in the former
field (I have no knowledge of Computational Math as a career). Conventional,
salaried programming careers end around age 35-40 and get totally impossible
at 50 unless you can go the consultant route, specialize in one of the fields
that respects gray hairs (e.g. embedded to some extent) or walk on water.

I had a friend who did that, finishing at about age 40 (and looking it due to
premature gray hair). She never found a job, which is a terrible shame since
she has "the spark" for programming which is rare in men and very very rare in
women (she's the 3rd I've ever met in my 50 years on this earth---and as
someone who until a year ago could pass for a college student my personal
anecdotal data on age discrimination is rather solid).

On the other hand, if you're going to go the YC sort of route to start your
own company, weight the risks of course but go for it! You'll get a mental
toolbox which will do you well when you need to tackle difficult problems, and
in many ways this field is like von Clausewitz's description of war,
"Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult."

As Microsoft and its competitors' history shows consistently writing software
that works is harder than most people think. pg commented in one of his essays
that a whole lot of the dot.com bubble era's failures were technical---well,
their business model also may have had no chance, but they never got to the
point of trying that. Friendster lost to Facebook if for no other reason than
that for too many years they didn't solve their capacity problems which made
the site painful to use.

------
Apocryphon
Anyone know if the life sciences ever experiences this as part of hype for a
biotech boom? I'm sure they have a constant stream of enrollment for the med
industry.

~~~
itg
I took a few life science classes in college. I would say about 80% of the
class was pre-med. Only a handful were in it for a PhD/industry.

------
chopsueyar
This isn't the guy from "Best of the Best"?

------
reedF211
For anyone still saying "there is no bubble"...

~~~
jackowayed
There is no programmer bubble. There is a massive shortage of highly competent
programmers that has very low correlation to the trend of more people taking
intro CS classes.

There may be an investment bubble, but I don't think the average person taking
CS106A this quarter has any idea of that beyond maybe that Facebook is a bit
overvalued.

People are taking CS 106A (and B) because

* They're humanities majors that want to fulfill their engineering requirement to graduate

* Our intro CS classes are very well-regarded as fun and approachable.

* It's interesting, and people see that computers are getting more and more important.

Honestly, almost none of the people in A this quarter plan on using CS in
their jobs. People in B are considering a CS major/minor and/or just enjoy CS.

People in 107 are probably going to major or minor in CS (or EE), so there
will be an increase in majors, but not a huge one. Not enough to create a
bubble, at least not yet

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tytso
One of the problems that I see is that perhaps "Computer Science" is too
broad. MIT has been mocked by some for having a "humanities" department, where
Theater, Foreign Languages, Literature, etc., are all combined together, but
given how complex the world has become in the world of computer science
disciplines, I'd argue that a "Computer Science" degree is almost as broad.

Consider the different sorts of work that a CS undergraduate might pursue:
Alice could become a CPU architect, working at Intel or AMD on the next micro-
archtecture for the next generation of x86_64 chips. Bobby could work on
creating a new secure PHP framework that makes security exposures much less
likely. Candice could on writing J2EE applets for Ford. David could become a
GUI engineer. Elaine could be writing the engine for an amazing new MMORPG.
Frank could be working on new compiler optimizations for the Go language.
Gerald could be a product manager for an amazing new consumer electronic
device that's actually not derivative of other products. Hermione might be a
webmaven who can create a website using Drupal, Wordpress, or what ever else
is appropriate/demanded by her clients. You get the idea.

All of these require radically different preparation for a successful career,
and one interesting question is where should that preparation take place? On
the job? At a trade school? At an undergraduate CS program?

Some CS programs focus heavily on Java programming these days. Others still
have a very heavy Systems bias (although I lament that MIT is no longer
requiring undergraduates to build a CPU out of TTL chips :-). Some try to
spread themselves super-thin, and have a peanut-butter coverage of all of
these topics, and assume that if student needs to learn the intricacies of the
Java standard libraries, they can do that on the job. Others will assume the
same about what Virtual Memory is. (No kidding, I was sitting in 1st year
introductory CS graduate class at MIT when a student raised her hand, and
asked in lecture, "I'm sorry, what is Virtual Memory?". My jaw dropped.)

Similarly I think there's going to be a huge variety in salaries based on both
the very wide range of talent available --- both in terms of quality, and
their scope of training/skills/experience. If a company only wants the very
best and brightest, asking for $100k/year even for a recent college graduate
isn't insane. I've done phone screens for people who have been out in the
industry for years, and they flubbed amazingly basic questions --- so much so
that I wondered how/why their previous employers had hired them. My personal
conclusion is that the market is extremely tight for certain classes of
software engineers (for example, really good Linux Kernel engineers), and some
companies react by hiring anyone they can get, and other companies react by
holding the line, only hiring competent engineers, and paying more if that's
what it takes.

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michaelochurch
Who is coming in to the programs? And what are their motivations?

You can't evaluate whether this is a good or bad change based on the numbers
alone. For example, the legal profession has been swamped with excess entrants
and it sucks. On the other hand, programmers tend to be job-creators more than
job-takers, even as employees ("intrapreneurs") so I think this is probably a
good thing.

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forgotAgain
I wonder what the career counseling office could contribute to the discussion?

~~~
hinathan
If so, that might mark a first.

