From: nospam@example.net   
      
   On Wed, 26 Feb 2025, Scott Dorsey wrote:   
      
   > D   wrote:   
   >>   
   >> This was a painful read. =( I thought I saw this due to the fact that I   
   >> teach at the vocational school level and not university level. Are yo   
   >> useriously telling me that this b.s. goes one (and comes out of) the   
   >> university level?   
   >   
   > In the US there is not so much of a clear distinction between college,   
   > university, and trade school.  We have for-profit trade schools that   
   > now call themselves universities, and colleges with full university   
   > programs.   
      
   > I can think of a number of places that call themselves universities that   
   > have CS programs that are basically programming programs... they exist   
   > to teach kids to write code so they can get a job and only teach the   
   > currently popular buzzwords and have no actual CS anywhere.   
      
   Ahh... I did not know that! Sounds very confusing and like you have to be   
   very careful about the school you choose in order not to get tricked with   
   4 years of B.S.   
      
   > I can think of one place that calls itself a college which has a CS   
   > program that is almost entirely theoretical... lots of proofs and lots   
   > of algorithm analysis.  Enough programming to be useful but it's expected   
   > students will learn that on their own.  A full year of graph theory, two   
   > years of continuous mathematics.   
   >   
   > And there is a standard ACM curriculum and there are places that follow it,   
   > but there are a whole lot of places that don't.  I think the ACM curriculum   
   > is very balanced between theory and practice and includes things like an   
   > assembler class and a digital logic class which are not themselves useful   
   > but which need to be taught in order to explain just what a computer actually   
   > is.   
      
   This sounds like my all engineering program. It had physics, math, discrete   
   mathematics,   
   analog and digital electronics, digital logic, assembler, java. The idea was to   
   build from the ground up, learn to string nand gates together, then move to   
   assembler, then to java and algorithms, and after that the specializations   
   started so it depended on if you wanted to continue the low level programming,   
   mid-level, or high level "fluff".   
      
   > But all of these places call themselves CS programs even though they have   
   > a huge diversity in what they actually teach.   
   >   
   > We also have a bunch of IT programs which are really business school programs   
   > with some computing added.  I think those are pretty much worthless, but they   
   > get a lot of students.   
      
   I think maybe those programs try to sell that you can get a nice FAANG job with   
   300k starting salary with very little effort. ;)   
      
   > --scott   
   >   
      
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