Quote:Original post by MoundS

Quote:Original post by swiftcoder
Really? Most places computer science is about learning Maths. Logic and problem solving are across campus, in the Philosophy department.

Logic isn't limited to philosophical logic...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_logic

A lot of that stuff is at the foundation of computer science, and at least where I went, all of that was taught in the math and CS departments, not philosophy.

Sure, we had all of that in Mathematics courses, and a little bit (truth tables, karnaugh maps, etc.) in circuit design, and a bit more (set theory, recursion, proofs) in algorithms.

But I don't see that set theory and karnaugh maps are universally applicable in the way you suggest - whereas the formal logic we had in philosophy is.

Quote:

Quote:a Computer Science degree is overkill for your average programming career

That's like saying a college degree is overkill for the average person.

Not really. it is more like saying that a degree in marketing is overkill for a secretarial position, or a degree in astrophysics is overkill for a pool shark.

A CS degree teaches you little to nothing about programming. If you don't know much programming going in to it, and you don't program fanatically on your own time throughout, you are going to be a terrible programmer when you graduate. A knowledgeable computer scientist perhaps, but a terrible programmer.

Programming is generally only explicitly taught in 1st year classes, and development process is almost never taught unless you have a software engineering course (which the CS faculty tend to view as 'impure').

If you have a really progressive school, they might even bring in industry types once in a while to extol the virtues of a career outside academia [smile]