Mike, On your gmail, while viewing this thread, you should see a "Forward all" link at the top, beside the first message in this conversation. That should allow you to forward all the messages in this conversation. On 23 February 2011 14:28, Michael Muraguri <mickie.mic@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
If anyone can, please find a way to get this thread AS-IS to lecturers n concerned parties like CHE. It realy would help. Is it possible to 'export' this thread 'as-is'? I've tried to forward but can't seem to get the whole thread. Anyone who can, please spread it. I had a few of my old CS lecturers to show it to.
Let's take action.
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 1:54 PM, Simon Mbuthia <simon.mbuthia@gmail.com>wrote:
Hi guys,
Impressive ideas being shared here. Going back to my very first message, I sought to know "*from employers and supervisors of Computer Science degree holders what they think most graduates lack that would be worth considering when coming up with a computer science degree program**.*" Not to imply that what has been discussed so far is irrelevant, but rather to get some kind of aggregation of what's been shared such that it fits into the italicized and emboldened sentence above :)
I really appreciate your input.
Me.
On 23 February 2011 12:03, julianne anyim <julianneanyim@gmail.com>wrote:
I must say am so encouraged after reading this :)
On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 12:34 AM, kennedy waweru <kenne2ke@gmail.com>wrote:
RAD!! thank you for putting this accross, I hope people will start to understand that which they so easily speak against.
I could not agree more here. People do not understand the objectives of an academic degree as opposed to a certification. I often find people comparing the two and throwing mud at one based on merits of the other.
My question would be simple
- Who is Charles Babbage and who trained him about the concept of the computers today? - who is john von neumann and how much did he contribute to computing? how? can he be considered a computer scientist of an IT guru? mind you he was a mathematician by profession. - very soon we will see computers made of memristors, do you know that that concept was developed by an academician a long time ago?
The problem is that many people do not really get the objective of a computer science degree. The evidence of this is one who expects to be *taught* a certain programming language instead of the underlying programming paradigm. We have over 400 programming languages!!!! who's gonna teach you that??
But a good computer science graduate who DID NOT LIVE ON THE LECTURER'S NOTES ALONE can seamlessly transfer from one programming language to another in a matter of weeks! if he so wish. Just give him/her a book! But ideally, he/she should be exploring new ways of solving computer problems and leave the implementation to IT graduates. Ideally, he should not be too engrossed in Adroid features but its underlying theoretical applications.
Who develops all these programming paradigms? Who is expected to innovate (come up with new paradigms) if not the computer science graduate? Please, put the blame where it belongs and in my opinion it belongs squarely on us students. Just observe and see how many students really read books. Or simply visit the university libraries and they will tell you for sure that the peak times are during or right before the exams. Ideally, programming languages *concepts *are taught and the most prominent are highlighted individually eg
1. introduction to programming might cover unstructured leading to structured programming (universities choose a programming language *of their choice* to introduce such concepts). The learning outcome here is a graduate who can seamlessly code in any structured programming languages like C, pascal, COBOL, basic etc but more importantly understands the reasoning underlying such methods of solving computer related problems 2. OOP and modular programming paradigms should also be taught touching the underlying concepts and hence highlighting the shift from C to C#, C++, Java etc event driven programming as a small concept based introduction 3. functional programming concepts 4. compiler construction etc
What is the expected result? Well, some of our own Linus trovalds! or even our very own bill gates!! That is a computer scientist for you. not a graduate who depends on other programming languages to code applications, an IT graduate should do that.
So please, understand the objectives of the course before bashing it and loading it with baggage it should not carry.
Of importance is also to distinguish between the objectives of IT degree and computer science degree. The products of these two degrees are meant to be different. So, if you wish to be and end user support and familiar with the latest technologies so that you can apply them then you might be better off taking an IT course and offcourse supplement it with certifications for every new technology.
Computer science is for scientists. You might develop a concept paper like Charles Babbage and john von neumann and let the engineers implement it and that is computer science for you, mind you many of these innovators were mathematicians.
Before you develop a course, please read widely on the objectives and compare with international standards like ACM and IEEE Computer Society. They have developed the minimum areas of knowledge that may be of help. This forum may just give you insights that at personal and completely unprofessional that are influenced by non-academic reasoning derived from such technical courses like CCNA and CISA that are tailor made for products of a certain company and hence do not equip you to innovate. Such courses have their place and academic courses have their place, it is important to consider their objectives carefully before you mix the two.
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-- Regards Mike Muraguri Software Engineer Skype: mickie.mic M: +254 - 722 - 799 445
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