Comment by mjdiloreto
6 days ago
The end of an era. This is nothing less than a travesty honestly. The current (now former) curriculum at NEU was uniquely exceptional, and now it will be conformingly adequate. Anyone who complained about the difficulty or lack of "job-market applicability" of the Fundies classes entirely missed the forest for the trees. The point is the design _process_, and using Racket forced this. It also demonstrated the magic that is possible with computer science. The Dr. Racket editor has features that do not exist in any other editor (e.g. visually tracing references, and so much more). The teaching language just got out of the way and let professors teach the essentials of program design, without the burden of language idiosyncrasies. My mind was honestly blown when Olin Shivers coded the Y combinator directly and showed us how to add recursion to a language. It felt like having occult knowledge, and it made me an acolyte to computer science. I mourn the loss of this curriculum for future students, especially considering the premium price tag they now pay.
Taking Shivers' Fundies I class was mind blowing, even as a student that had been programming for several years already. They should have put him and Barzilay (who I had for PL and then later TAed under) in charge of the curriculum update.
I always enjoy seeing Olin Shivers name come up in threads about Northeastern. I had him for Fundies and have many fond memories of his lectures, I was truly inspired. It's no exaggeration to say that class and those lectures helped me find a passion and a career I enjoy. It's a shame they're phasing out Fundies, hopefully whatever they come up with will still be able to have that same impact on young students.
He also wrote the best Acknowledgments section to a manual ever: https://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html
Too bad there isn't an online version that anyone can take.
I spoke briefly with Felleisen at the end of this year, and sadly it seems the zoom recordings from the pandemic are lost to time. The course sites will likely stay up but the lectures were where it mattered
I'm going to provide a controversial take here as CS grad from a similarly-tiered program: there is a huge chasm between top-4 cs programs and everyone else. The top 4 are obvious: Stanford, MIT, CMU, Berkeley.
Then there are the cs programs of the ivy leagues, not as strong, but usually you have a rich parent or uncle who has already speed-tracked you into a hedge fund, so lets put those aside.
I didnt go to a top-4 cs program and the reality is -- there is no longer a real job market for any cs grad outside the top-4. If it were not for ZIRP it could be there never was! There is definitely not a job market for the sheer masses graduating with cs degrees, and it will take a decade to absorb the fresh graduates.
The curriculum does not matter here, so I think all this discussion is beside the point. No curriculum stasis or change will magically lead to jobs for fresh graduates.
I say this from three perspectives
1. Reality - just ask people if they found a job (ignore nepo-hires, also ignore startup founders with nepo-vc investments)
2. What politicians say. Both Dems and Reps have tacitly (or loudly) noted that local graduates do not cut it. It used to be subtle (https://www.fisherphillips.com/en/news-insights/biden-admini...), but it isnt any longer https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyv7gxp02yo
3. How people act. Foreign workers want the jobs more and are willing to do anything and learn anything to get it. My office is 95% non-us workers. They work hard.
Retired CS prof here (from a below (ok way-below) top-4 program). There is no longer a job market for CS grads outside of top-4? Is this true? I had no idea, as I understood it, CS major numbers are still rising.
GP is just making stuff up. There are plenty of jobs for CS grads still outside the top-4. Will there be some constriction in the market? Probably, code generating LLMs are getting more popular. But there are plenty of systems that are a bit too important to leave to random code generators.
5 replies →
You understood correctly, CS major numbers are still rising.
CS major numbers == supply
I'm speaking about jobs == demand
bad faith doomer. One thing you also forget to mention is that non-us workers are just that, not in the US, and that matters now that more places are putting an emphasis on in-person work.
Your head is stuck in FAANG land.
At the end of all of this I wonder what will become of such great professors like Felleisen, Hescott and Lerner. A real shame