Jon Simpson

Go to University, Not for CS

30 May 2010

Computer science is shallow, and nearly every place it’s taught is at the mercy of “industry”. They rarely teach deep philosophy and instead would rather either teach you what some business down the street wants, or teach you their favorite pet language like LISP. Even worse, the things that are core to Computer Science like language design, parsing, or state machines, aren’t even taught unless you take an “advanced” course. Hell, you’re lucky if they teach you more than one language.

Hyperbole aside, I think there’s a good point here - some of the most interesting and interested students I’ve taught have had staid joint honours courses. Perhaps some blame lies with the standard format of the UK degree.


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