The changing face of Computer Science education
14th June 2011
The New York Times has a great article today on changing attitudes towards CS, driven in part by movies like “The Social Network.” Apart from the movie’s (glossy and inaccurate) depiction of what it’s like to be a hacker, there’s something else going on here: the fact that CS students can jump in and apply their knowledge to build great things. At Harvard, countless undergrads taking the introductory CS50 class are producing games, websites, and iPhone apps — some of which are good enough to turn into commercial products. I don’t know of any other field where this is possible after taking just a single semester’s worth of courses.