Smackie The Frog: A Pondering

24.09.03

A Pondering

Should CS students be required to actually know how to use computers? Should we be required to know how to USE the computer, or simply how to fulfill the coursework that is presented to us? This is the question that entered my head as I was sitting around.

I help lots of people do simple stuff on their computers all the time. Map drives, copy files, install programs, configure various things. Fix problems. Some of these people are even CS students. It amazes me that people who are being trained to work with computers for the rest of their lives don't know how to handle these easy tasks. So I talked to my brother about it.

Phil is taking CS101 this semester. He said that in Computer Science, at least what he has heard from me and experienced himself, is not really about computers. Ken Goldman states on his website that calling Computer Science "Computer Science" is like calling Carpentry "Hammer Science". My problem with this analogy is that carpenters have to know how to use a hammer extremely well to be able to tackle the task at hand. But it is possible to get into 400 level CS classes without ever having to "hack" at all. You are provided a nice installer for a Java environment. You are walked through, step by step, how to log into the Linux computers, and use Mozilla and GCC.

But could they set up java on your own? Do they know that if you add java to your path, you can run a java from the command line by simply typing "java foo"? Could they compile jikes on the Linux computers to run their java programs? Could they do an nfs mount from a Unix computer to a Unix server to move files?

It could be argued, probably rather persuasively, that this is not computer science. It is systems administration type of stuff, that a CS student need not fill their mind with. But I would counter that it is impossible to do the "science" part effectively without understanding the systems administration part. Both are important to creating a sucessful programmer.

A while ago, Prof. Cytron mentioned on his site that he was thinking about having the CS101 students do one of their labs in the Linux lab, and I think that would be an excellent idea. It got me thinking about other ways to bring general computer knowledge into the CS department. Perhaps making students test out of CS100. But that seemed like a bad idea when I thought about it some more. Then I realized that CS101 has every Wednesday off, and that voluntary help sessions are often held. I thought a cool idea would be to take some of these Wednesdays and do stuff not related to the class, but to computer useage in general, tying it into the class. One day show how to set up emacs and java from scratch. Show how to run command line unix arguments. Show how to map drives and mount volumes to make copying labs around easier. I'd even go so far as to maybe one day bringing in some stock PC parts, and showing them how to put together a computer from scratch. Sure, we talk about memory, but how many students have seem was a DIMM looks like? Or even a processor?

Okay, I realize that this stuff will probably never happen. But I still think it is very important that CS students know how computers work at all levels, and how to use them in many different ways.

Perhaps we could just make Slashdot required reading.

Posted by Nathan at 24.09.03 20:23

Comments

God no. The further we keep students from the wasteland of Slashdot the better.

Posted by: Chris Hill Festival at 24.09.03 20:40

Okay, you are probably right.

Posted by: Nathan at 24.09.03 20:42

I'm with Chris on this one. Slash dot's a big waste of time. It recycles stories from better sites and every discussion quickly falls back to the eternal slash dot discussion about how some half-baked, unfinished open source project could solve the world's problems if only Microsoft would let it.

Posted by: david at 24.09.03 22:59

I hope everyone knows that the Slashdot comment was completely a joke...

Posted by: Nathan at 25.09.03 00:40

There once was a wise (and now dead) programming guru who had very clear thoughts about this: “Computers are as much about Computer Science as Telescopes are about Astronomy”. Another of his favorites was: “The question whether Computers can Think is as relevant as the question whether Submarines can Swim”.

I hate to say it, but unfortunately Anglo-Saxon CS students are horribly biased because of their native language. I my part of the world Computer Science will be referred at as “Informatics”, which clearly detaches our beloved science from those peculiar boxes. Remember? First solve the problem, then do the programming.

Yes, of course CS students should be able to put their hands on computers. I even think they should assemble hardware, should install software, integrate it all, tune it, make it work. Labs would be a perfect place for that, and there will be enough assignments during their scientific training to make them acquainted with all the ins-and-outs of the available technological building blocks.

But computers are about people. I think it’s equally important you understand how computers will be used by people, how they do their business with them, what impact they have. You should be able to communicate with people and help them solve their “business” troubles, whatever their business will be.

A teaser (and a question of conscience): Should you be able to repair computers?

So my first advice would be to cancel the notion “Computer Science” from English language (but somehow I’m afraid you’re not going to that :-) My second advice would be to focus on how people should deal with large quantities of information and how computers can be useful in this all.

But that shouldn’t prevent you to have fun with Linux. :-)

Greetings from
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