At my high-school in Romania we silently eliminated religion (yeah, surprised?), philosophy, 1 lesson of geography, 1 lesson of french and maybe something else.. and at the end we got 2 cs theory lessons and 6 full lessons of coding in the lab per week. We all had a linux shell on the school's server and most used vim to code C with gcc and makefiles.
That had a lot to do with what kind of programmer I am today even if I was one of the worst students in the class.
Religion class aside, it seems a loss to do away with geography, philosophy and foreign languages. I love that you guys had a shell and learned so many great tools, but I think programming is also enhanced by being exposed to many non-CS topics.
Don't worry, they drill more geography in you before high school than they do here throughout high school. Teaching foreign languages starts from kindergarten. By high school if you're inclined and had good teachers you should know enough to have an ok conversation in at least two different languages. Plus you get exposed to so much to English / Spanish (you hear the original soundtrack for every movie for example) that you could learn a lot just from listening. I'm not sure about philosophy though, that would be a loss.(salutari)
According to census data from 2010, foreign language majors have a lower unemployment rate (5.2%) than computer science majors (5.6%). Geography (6.1%) and philosophy and religion (7.1%) don't fare as well, but are doing about as well as computer engineers (7.0%).
Worst off are clinical psychologists (19.1%), best off (0%) are actuaries, pharmacists, school administrators, and surprisingly, geologists and astronomers (!).
We don't need more Continental philosophers. We need all the Analytic philosophers we can get. A curriculum that emphasizes rigorous thinking skills and logic is an invaluable foundation for CS as well as every other valuable human endeavor.
Philosophy also teaches one to carefully define terms and examine underlying assumptions. Clearly stating the problem often makes the solution obvious.
This is the wrong way to think about education. Learning is learning, regardless of job placement, and while I recognize the need for stronger STEM education it shouldn't come at the expense of equally important topics.
Learning is good only if it either enables you do to something useful or you enjoy it. If you don't enjoy it (many people don't), focus on learning that lets you do something useful. High job placement gives an indication that a field is useful.
As for learning you do because you enjoy it, treat it as consumption (i.e., the same way you treat an X-Box).
You cannot know what you will find useful in the future. A broad education helps inform your decisions on a huge variety of subjects, even without realizing it. Learning only what you think you'll need for your future profession is a really terrible idea.
With certainty, no. So what? The right question to ask is this: Is P(need subject X) x (cost of not knowing X) < (cost of learning X)?
Since the cost of learning X tends to be high (at least if you learn it in school), and the cost of not knowing it is very often nothing but the cost of learning it + cost of delays, this inequality is very often not satisfied.
I'm not talking about certainty. I'm saying that humans are impossibly bad at figuring out the first two variables in that equation, and only slightly better at figuring out the cost of learning.
And the opportunity cost of not knowing things can be staggering.
If you just want to maximize your wealth, maybe that approach is workable, since there are more tangible numbers involved, but if you're optimizing for happiness, it's much, much harder.
Disagree. There would be no computer science without philosophy (but not the other way around).
> ...imagine how boring CS would be if people were ignorant of all of those other subjects.
If we eliminate philosophy from our curriculum, et cetera, I poise that kids entering high school this year will be obsolete by the time they have graduated. Because CS without philosophy is really just machine learning, right?
A shell, gcc, makefiles...and not a clue of context of the world surrounding the toolbox to change it. Sounds like they were trying to churn out perspective-deprived automata.
That had a lot to do with what kind of programmer I am today even if I was one of the worst students in the class.