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Comment by tayo42 | Hacker News Reader

sounds like they are aligning the degree with the realities of a programing career. did calculus really make you a better software engineer? Most development happens at such a high level that not knowing OS and compilers probably can get most people by. How much of development is made up of frontend js programmers, mobile developers, web developers writing php/wordpress stuff. If you do want to be good at it, it is a specialty.

If you do want to do science, there are still masters and phd programs. Undergrad is job prep for most people and colleges are doing a disservice by pretending it's not.

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> did calculus really make you a better software engineer?

I am no math whiz but I would say yes. Having the basics down at least at one point in you life is pretty helpful.

I am not the type to develop new lock-in functions for encryption and I do not use LaPlace tables to create models of control loops to configure pid controllers. But the understanding helps me to know about important stuff I have to look out for.

That said, you can still design amazing software without that knowledge, but the foundation certainly helps. Even if this knowledge might not be directly applicable to your day-to-day job.

C'mon. This is Stanford. No OS, compilers, or pointers? Really?

This is somewhat misleading. You have to pick a specific track, and there are hard requirements in each track. For instance in Graphics you make a ray tracer and 3D renderer in 148 and a 3d mesh editor and a video game in 248.

In theory you dig heavy into algorithms and probabilistic running time, and other things.

In the systems track operating systems is a required course as is compilers.

Why should those be mandatory? The department is fucking huge now and allowing people more space to take electives or having separate tracks with different requirements helps with staffing issues.

I TAed for the undergrad compilers course when I was a grad student there. My PhD is in the field. I really don't see compilers as a reasonable mandatory course for engineers today.

> Undergrad is job prep for most people and colleges are doing a disservice by pretending it's not.

This is a completely inverted way to frame it. Higher education shouldn't be perverted by the whims of the labor market. Universities don't need to change their curriculums. Companies need to change their hiring standards.

If only higher education weren't already perverted by the realities of greed and incompetent bureaucracy leading to our little student debt problem inconveniencing a handful of students in the country /s

This is very a bold straw man.

It shouldn't be, but for most people entering into it, becoming highly desirable on the job/employee market is the chief motivator. If a university doesn't cater to that demand, the students will go elsewhere.

I don't disagree. And maybe students should go elsewhere. Maybe our society should rethink what qualifications it seeks of prospective entrants to the labor force.

What should not change, however, is the fundamental nature of academia. That model is inviolate and has propelled much progress in our species' collective knowledge. In fact, I think the hijacking of higher education as an assembly line to furnish credentials wholesale is an unforgivable adulteration of that institution.

Agreed, but debasing a valued asset for short-term gain is as old as the human species. In the past, it was coinage that was shaved and alloyed. Stanford's reputation and the CS degree's reputation are valuable assets today, so it's hardly surprising that some amoral administrator decided to trade them away for increased enrollment.

> did calculus really make you a better software engineer?

Ten years ago, I might have agreed with you, but with data mining and machine learning coming to dominate the practice of software development, calculus is more relevant than ever. I took undergraduate calculus about 30 years ago, and I’ve forgotten so much that I recently dug out my old textbook (that I still have for some reason) and started to re-read it just to make better sense of a lot of the machine learning documentation I’m coming across these days.

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