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    Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students

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    • S
      StorageNinja Vendor @scottalanmiller
      last edited by

      @scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

      I think moving IT programs from CS/SE schools into being under a business school makes a lot of sense. IT is 80% business, 20% tech. Of course you need both, but universities are experts at teaching business and liberal arts, this is what they've done for hundreds and years and done well. Teaching tech is not in their traditional mandate and is something they have no historical track record for and little current capacity. Not only is the non-tech stuff dramatically more important, it's where universities have the most skill. Teaching too much tech makes universities almost certainly set up to fail while teaching something that isn't even very useful.

      At Baylor it was in the business school (Under management information systems). Gave a much more rounded degree than the stuff I've seen put in CS schools.

      jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • scottalanmillerS
        scottalanmiller
        last edited by

        And of course this came up today, most of the info is the polar opposite of what we've been saying here...

        https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2035978-bachelor-s-degree-in-computer-science

        dbeatoD 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • dbeatoD
          dbeato @scottalanmiller
          last edited by

          @scottalanmiller Yeah, that was on Monday 🙂 My comment was to make sure the OP knew that IT is a business and not just a career but anyway thanks for the feedback on you post to me 🙂

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • jmooreJ
            jmoore @StorageNinja
            last edited by

            @storageninja I went to Baylor and thought they had a good program. It was mostly business with a bit of programming mixed in. I often "had" to help the girls figure out visual c++

            scottalanmillerS S 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • scottalanmillerS
              scottalanmiller @jmoore
              last edited by

              @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

              @storageninja I went to Baylor and thought they had a good program. It was mostly business with a bit of programming mixed in. I often "had" to help the girls figure out visual c++

              I was about to make a comment about Visual C++ being really young, and in a way it is. But Visual C++ came out in 1993! I guess that that makes sense, they needed it to build Windows 95 on top of. But still, so long ago.

              We were doing standard ANSI C in college, though.

              jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • jmooreJ
                jmoore @scottalanmiller
                last edited by

                @scottalanmiller Yeah it has been out a really long time. Probably not real useful for IT directly but it helps with problem solving which is more important in my opinion.

                scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • jmooreJ
                  jmoore
                  last edited by

                  For a program in IT I am going to have to say business, calculus, and a bit of programming for algorithm analysis and problem solving.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • scottalanmillerS
                    scottalanmiller @jmoore
                    last edited by

                    @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                    @scottalanmiller Yeah it has been out a really long time. Probably not real useful for IT directly but it helps with problem solving which is more important in my opinion.

                    Python and R are the languages of problem solving.

                    jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                    • jmooreJ
                      jmoore @scottalanmiller
                      last edited by

                      @scottalanmiller I have no real experience in R but python works and is popular these days. Baylor did c and c++ mostly when I was there and those helped my problem solving a lot I felt along with all the calculus I took. I also am of the opinion that those lower level languages help with problem solving better than higher level languages like python. I like python but I just dont feel like it would have helped me as much as c++ in that regard.

                      scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • scottalanmillerS
                        scottalanmiller @jmoore
                        last edited by

                        @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                        @scottalanmiller I have no real experience in R but python works and is popular these days. Baylor did c and c++ mostly when I was there and those helped my problem solving a lot I felt along with all the calculus I took. I also am of the opinion that those lower level languages help with problem solving better than higher level languages like python. I like python but I just dont feel like it would have helped me as much as c++ in that regard.

                        I'd say the opposite, the reason being that when working with C or C++ you are spending your time dealing with the language and not with problem solving. Your time is spent on the infrastructure of coding itself. With high level languages like Python, you have far more time and fewer distractions so that you can focus on actual problem solving.

                        It's a lot like how people recommend using a Raspberry Pi to learn Linux. All it really does is make them spend their time learning the Raspberry Pi and they forget what they were actually there to learn in the first place.

                        W 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • W
                          worden2 @scottalanmiller
                          last edited by

                          @scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                          @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                          @scottalanmiller I have no real experience in R but python works and is popular these days.

                          It's a lot like how people recommend using a Raspberry Pi to learn Linux. All it really does is make them spend their time learning the Raspberry Pi and they forget what they were actually there to learn in the first place.

                          I would say it makes more sense to use the RPi to learn what nooks and crannies we can stick computers into. Not simply embedded systems, but one that dynamically responds to I/O variances, etc. It's also a pretty good intro Python platform.

                          scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • scottalanmillerS
                            scottalanmiller @worden2
                            last edited by

                            @worden2 said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                            @scottalanmiller said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                            @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                            @scottalanmiller I have no real experience in R but python works and is popular these days.

                            It's a lot like how people recommend using a Raspberry Pi to learn Linux. All it really does is make them spend their time learning the Raspberry Pi and they forget what they were actually there to learn in the first place.

                            I would say it makes more sense to use the RPi to learn what nooks and crannies we can stick computers into. Not simply embedded systems, but one that dynamically responds to I/O variances, etc. It's also a pretty good intro Python platform.

                            They are handy for helping people to understand what is a "computer" and what is a "PC". Breaking people of hardware dependencies or assumptions. But I dislike using them to teach anything else because they are so distracting. People struggle to figure out where the RP ends and the "fill in the blank with what they are trying to learn" begins. People end up associating aspects of ARM platforms or RP design or embedded systems with the thing they only see there.

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
                            • jmooreJ
                              jmoore
                              last edited by

                              I can see your point about the language but if that was the case then it did not last long. The fundamentals of the language are easily learned and after that it was just problem solving. Thats how my classes went. We would pick up enough language as we needed and then concentrated on problems. I was also doing calculus and physics at same time and those were harder than computer science.

                              scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • scottalanmillerS
                                scottalanmiller @jmoore
                                last edited by

                                @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                                I can see your point about the language but if that was the case then it did not last long. The fundamentals of the language are easily learned and after that it was just problem solving. Thats how my classes went. We would pick up enough language as we needed and then concentrated on problems. I was also doing calculus and physics at same time and those were harder than computer science.

                                Then you weren't getting real computer science 🙂 I've done all three, they are very similar. Real CS is hard stuff. Lots of schools slap CS labels on anything they can find, though, to save money.

                                jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • jmooreJ
                                  jmoore @scottalanmiller
                                  last edited by

                                  @scottalanmiller You dont think Baylor's cs program was real cs? We did problem solving with c++, algorithm analysis, data structures, assembler x86, operating system design, 3 levels of calculus, linear algebra, advanced calculus, ordinary differential equations, and partial differential equations. I did physics as second major but those dont really contribute to this discussion.

                                  scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                  • scottalanmillerS
                                    scottalanmiller @jmoore
                                    last edited by

                                    @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                                    @scottalanmiller You dont think Baylor's cs program was real cs? We did problem solving with c++, algorithm analysis, data structures, assembler x86, operating system design, 3 levels of calculus, linear algebra, advanced calculus, ordinary differential equations, and partial differential equations. I did physics as second major but those dont really contribute to this discussion.

                                    Not if it wasn't challenging 🙂

                                    SUNY requires (or required in the 1990s) making virtualization as part of the freshman coursework for CS at the community college level. Real CS is HARD stuff. All that calc, diffy Q, C and so forth are required for non-software, non-CS workloads, too. CS would be all above and beyond that.

                                    jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                    • scottalanmillerS
                                      scottalanmiller
                                      last edited by

                                      OS design, DB design, that stuff is CS. But data structures, for example, is second semester freshman software engineering. It's good stuff to have, but it's not CS. It's foundational.

                                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                      • jmooreJ
                                        jmoore @scottalanmiller
                                        last edited by

                                        @scottalanmiller I never said it was not challenging, you just have to be dedicated. I just felt that computational physics, astrophysics, plasmas, and solid state physics were harder for me. I dont feel that cs at the undergraduate level is above the higher level math and physics

                                        scottalanmillerS 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                        • scottalanmillerS
                                          scottalanmiller @jmoore
                                          last edited by

                                          @jmoore said in Where Does University Need to Focus for IT Students:

                                          I dont feel that cs at the undergraduate level is above the higher level math and physics

                                          Not above, but should be on par.

                                          jmooreJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                          • jmooreJ
                                            jmoore @scottalanmiller
                                            last edited by

                                            @scottalanmiller I would agree with it being on par. I know data structures is taken early however I was just giving examples of classes I could remember.

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