who makes more money? CS or EE?

villager · October 6, 2010, 4:43pm

Sakky,actually i think its CS that offers more latitude for a business minded person than Engineering.Most engineering businesses require significant capital to start off.CS only requires an internet connection.

BCEagle91 · October 6, 2010, 5:17pm

I’m going by what I see in industry, research, etc. Not sure what you
mean by picking on.

Well, that’s why I’d like to write a book explaining the various areas.
Basically it would just be taking the ACM educational documents and
translating them into something that’s understandable by the average
person.

Chance favors the prepared mind.

Great. If you don’t like your current situation, change it.

Well, you pay your money and take your chances. But making an educated
choice will probably leave you with fewer regrets down the road as you
will have fewer people to blame.

Not for IT work. Some of our IT staff don’t have college degrees.

Fine. Their loss.

Me too. We’ve lost engineers to HFTFs.

Fine, if they want that degree, then I have no problem with that. I was
a CIS major and broke into engineering without an elite degree. Many things
are possible. It’s the land of opportunity.

Well, we lose opportunities with the decisions that we make over time.
With time, your options decrease. Shoulda, coulda, woulda.

I would say that you have the possibility. I don’t think that consulting
and banking jobs are guaranteed for all MIT grads.

Stanford allows you to leave and come back. I’ve heard that once admitted,
always welcome.

Blake Ross had a truly massive success before he attended college. I
don’t believe that his prospects would have dimmed one bit had he not
been admitted to Stanford.

You originally wrote this:

I do not recall myself making this analogy.

Take the required courses and prove that you can do the graduate work.

Well, that’s partly because we have all of these cushy corporate jobs.
There are other cultures where starting your own business isn’t that
uncommon.

Yes. You do what you have to.

They chose the wrong major.

I entered a support job without a theory background. I then took on a
project management job over a bunch of engineers while getting my
MSCS. Then I dropped from project management to developer. There are
people that learn the theory on their own. And there are jobs where
you don’t necessarily have to know the theory if you have someone else
on the team that does know it. But you and your team will be at a
disadvantage in various ways.

How many people actually do that compared to the number of people that
download MySQL?

That’s an ad hominem argument.

It’s complicated.

I’d say study the WTM.

New features can be that complicated, as well as buggy, incomplete, etc.

Well, then it isn’t wasted for those that run mixed environments.

Then what is your complaint?

I could care less.

Then what is your point?

Well, you can’t satisfy everyone. Some CS workers open up restaurants
too. You rooting for hospitality courses in CS programs?

villager · October 7, 2010, 5:12pm

If the majority of math or CS or whatever majors wont do a job tailored for that major,should the guys designing that program tailor it to suit them,and forget about the real stars,the future mathematicians,computer scientists etc?This is extreme democracy

sakky · October 10, 2010, 6:29pm

Seems to me that you’re arguing that it is inefficient when CS students end up with IT jobs. I don’t see that as being any worse than most poli-sci students taking the non-poli-sci jobs that they generally take.

The fact of the matter is that most college students end up in careers that have little to do with whatever they majored in college. I don’t know why CS is being singled out in this respect.

Good luck with that. I would simply say that only a small fraction of college students major in preprofessional majors such as engineering or CS. The vast majority of them major in the liberal arts for which, as you said yourself, no clear career pathway exists. Hence, it’s not clear to me why you would be so interested in writing a book that clarifies the difference between CS and IT so that students interested in those topics do not “waste” resources by majoring in the wrong subject, when it seems to me that a far greater “waste of resources” (if that is indeed a waste) exists within the liberal arts majors.

And what, pray tell, is the best way of developing a prepared mind? Many people have argued that the best way to prepare one’s mind is in fact to study the liberal arts. You are free to disagree with them, but then you are disagreeing with the bulk of the educational establishment.

Exactly. That shows that people rarely truly know what their future career desires are going to be. What I like to do now is not guaranteed to be the same as what I may like to do in a few years.

Hence, the logic then is, why would I choose to turn down MIT in favor of some lower-level school that offers IT as a major, if I am not even sure that I will still like IT by the time I graduate? If nothing else, at least MIT has a marketable brand name that I can leverage to pursue whatever job I may actually want when I do graduate.

And the educated choice may well be to prefer the school with the better brand.

Then to follow that logic, why even bother going to college at all? Heck, why not simply drop out of high school and pursue an IT career?

Is it? Seems to me that they’re making far more money than they would as engineers. How are they losing?

Which gets to the point I’ve been making throughout this thread: most college students do not end up in careers that are closely related to their major. So, again, I don’t know why you’re picking on the CS major specifically. Go take on all of the liberal arts.

Which is why the risk-averse choice is to prefer the well-branded school, regardless of whether they have the specific major that you want.

Hey, just because you major in IT at a low-tier school doesn’t mean that you have a guarantee at an IT job either. There are no guarantees in life, regardless of which path you take. That’s why many people prefer the risk-averse choice of taking the school with the stronger brand.

But like I said, what if you never entered in the first place? Meaning, they admitted you, but you turned them down to doing something else, such as starting your own company or attending some low-tier IT school. Now, you have no guaranteed way of ever returning to Stanford, because you never officially entered the school in the first place.

Then why did he even apply to Stanford at all? Clearly he thought there was some value to doing so.

You don’t?

Here’s what you said, in response to my post:

*> For all of these reasons and many more, the vast majority of college

Then we have a global waste of money and talent which argues for
better guidance.*

So I ask again: do you still think that we are engaged in a global waste of money and talent? If so, then maybe you should go pick on the liberal arts, for they seem to be far greater sources of ‘waste’ than is the CS major.

And what if you don’t do well in those courses either? ** That’s my point**. Many people who want to become doctors will simply not earn good enough grades to enter med-school. But they don’t know that that will happen. Hence, they will simply be wasting their time by attempting to achieve an objective that is impossible for them.

That’s the point: college is an inherently ‘wasteful’ endeavor. Many people will waste time trying to enter the careers that they want but can’t get.

Be that as it may, the point stands that not everybody is comfortable with entrepreneurship. These people obviously have to do something, even if that does mean taking the - as you say - cushy corporate jobs.

Again, I don’t see how that’s any worse than what most liberal arts majors do. Most poli-sci students will end up in careers for which they don’t really need to know anything about poli-sci at all, and certainly not poli-sci theory. Who really cares if you understand the Frankfurt School of political theory if you’re just going to be a salesman, as I know many former poli-sci majors graduates? I again don’t see why we are singling out CS.

Well, whatever disadvantage you and your team may have suffered, it clearly didn’t hurt you that much. Hence, you are, ironically, living proof that successful software developers do not really need to learn CS theory in college.

Uh, the topic at hand has nothing to do with how many people do so, relative to other IT skills. The question is whether you could readily do so. It’s not that hard to cobble together a small Cisco home lab. Heck, there’s an entire slew of websites that will teach you how to do that.

How so? I’m not making a personal attack on the ACM - I’m simply adopting a skeptical attitude where I frankly don’t see their incentives to get the answer right. If they endorse coursework that turns out to be inappropriate for their students, why would they care? It doesn’t really hurt them.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Lots of CS students do not actually take software engineering jobs, but rather will end up in IT, whether we like it or not. A proper CS authoritative body would therefore attempt to serve the needs of all CS students, not just those who happen to take software development jobs.

What?

Yet, as you said, vendors come up with new features all the time - it is functionally impossible to keep up with all of them.

If you want to implement a new feature, you first test it out in a lab. You then slowly roll it out to your production environment. That way, you can slowly learn how to use the feature.

And therefore it is wasted for those who run pure environments.

I have no complaint. I am simply pointing out that practically nobody seems to be taking your advice that they drop out of MIT for a lower-level school.

If you could care less, then why did you even challenge this point at all? Why state objections such as “Oracle releases a new version every two years. Do you really want to
take up that much shelf-space with every revision?” Like I said, the library can simply sell off the old version. Or even keep it: just think of how much space libraries use to warehouse ancient physical issues of academic journals that nobody ever reads.

Or, even better, have electronic copies available, that take up no space whatsoever.

The point is we don’t know. So we shouldn’t assume that we automatically know, which is what you initially did.

No, but I am rooting for a more flexible version of CS. Those CS students who don’t want to learn theory should be free to substitute other CS coursework instead. Those particular CS employers who want their new employees to know theory can then check the transcripts of any prospective hires, and simply not hire those who don’t have the theory courses that they want. But nobody should be forced to take theory courses. That seems to be a far more equitable solution for all.

sakky · October 10, 2010, 7:54pm

I don’t what’s wrong with giving people greater choice. If you want to learn the most rigorous material, then by all means do so. Nobody is stopping you. Those courses would exist…as electives.

On the other hand, you shouldn’t be forced to learn those topics if you don’t want to. Again, many (probably most) CS graduates will not take highly theoretical, research-oriented jobs. So why force all of them to take corresponding coursework as if they were?

CS2011 · October 10, 2010, 7:59pm

sakky,

98% of the people I know with a CS degree are doing software engineering work, and not IT work.

If people want to do IT get a IT degree, and not a CS degree…

Engineerjw · October 10, 2010, 8:15pm

My father has a degree in CS. The pay is of course suffering because of the recession, but still high. It is definitely a lot of database/programs work.

BCEagle91 · October 10, 2010, 8:53pm

It’s expected with PS. It isn’t expected with CS.

CS is pretty focused on certain kinds of career outcomes.

The reason is that I get asked about the subject by parents and
students.

With liberal arts, there’s the expectation of grad school or going
into a job where employers want a general, well-rounded education.

I don’t disagree with this - my undergrad degree was a BA. But it was
focused on business courses and a few programming courses. For
software engineering jobs, I’d say that CS is the best preparation.

For people in that situation, put off the decision as late as you can
afford.

You state that 92% of MIT grads find work. Many apparently go to MIT
to get work. If you don’t like what MIT offers, go somewhere else.
No-brainer.

Then pick the better brand. You have to live with what they have to
offer though.

Nothing wrong with that. I didn’t get my first degree until my 30s.
I’m a big fan of starting your own business, learning on your own,
or working in what you love without a degree.

See your paragraph three up.

I’m not picking on the CS major. You seem to want a different major
shoehorned into CS. I’m just saying that if you want IT, go study
IT.

If the well-branded school doesn’t offer it, choose another school
or choose another path.

There are limited choices in life too. You take your IT at a low-tier
school or CS at your name-brand.

Reapply and take your chances. America is a place of second chances.

It was probably the orthodox thing to do. He didn’t do particularly
well at Stanford though and wondered why people would think that he
would do well there.

I answered that earlier in my post.

Answered earlier.

Do something else.

Do something else.

Then do something else.

CS is more focused.

Well, I don’t think that you need theory to be a software developer.
But you do need it to be a software engineer. Perhaps you read the
other thread that showed demand for software programmers dropping
slightly and demand for software engineers rising sharply.

If it’s not that hard, then how many people do it compared to what
they could do for free? There are things that I would say are not hard
to do but very few people do them. Why? Because they actually are
hard, inconvenient or cost more money than people want to spend.

Your argument is against the man and not against their position.

Please read the ACM document.

New features can be that complicated, as well as buggy, incomplete, etc.

How many customers run pure environments?

Then I assume that they are happy with what MIT offers and hence your
overall point is moot.

Have you ever had someone disagree with aspects of what you write
on the merits without particularly taking a position on the overall
theme? I do that all the time.

Well, organizations have to operate with some level of efficiency
which is why we have the systems that we do today.

Simple solution: pick another major.

We do have choice. In majors.

If you don’t want to take the theory courses, go to a school where they
don’t make you take them. They are out there.

GLOBALTRAVELER · October 10, 2010, 9:04pm

The responses are quite long, so it is possible that I missed a lot of points. Whether the job ends up I.T. or software engineering, the BEST preparation is a computer science degree. I would argue that a CS major needs to take some “applied” courses like computer networks and database systems as that there are plenty of I.T.-related jobs with need in those areas and one can always “pay the bills” with those jobs.

I would also advise I.T. majors to take the “CS core” that I have preached about 100 times on this board: Algorithms, Data Structures, Programming Languages and Operating Systems. When you are mixing the 1000 Unix/Linux flavors and the 1001 Java flavors, it is quite possible for compiler/data structure issues to pop up…that cannot be discovered without knowing about how languages are linked, loaded, parsed, etc.

If there are both software engineering jobs and I.T. jobs, WHY NOT prepare for both areas?

Homer28 · October 10, 2010, 9:09pm

Just a little friendly piece of advice: When your replying to someone, you do not have to quote every single point they made.

BCEagle91 · October 10, 2010, 9:25pm

How would you then follow the context? In long posts, it’s frequently hard to follow the context of a particular point. You may need to reconstruct the line of thought that you made a week, month or year ago.

jwxie · October 11, 2010, 1:14am

so you guys are still hitting this thread?

kmazza · October 11, 2010, 4:59pm

Ye and bet the majority of them don’t even live in high tech hubs.

P.S. many CS majors if ever make decent money (usually through a businessman), purchase their brides from overseas.

MaineLonghorn · October 11, 2010, 5:04pm

Another little friendly piece of advice: Good grammar matters. Your statement should read, “When you’re replying to someone, you do not have to quote every single point he or she made.”

sakky · October 16, 2010, 12:45am

Whether expected or not, the undeniable fact is that we, as society, are spending resources in training poli-sci students - or liberal arts students in general - in topics that they probably won’t use.

So? See above.

And then I don’t see what’s so wrong with CS students taking jobs where employers simply want a general, well-rounded education.

And it may well be. But the fact remains that some CS students will not take software jobs.

I agree - and apparently most MIT students seem to like what MIT offers. That is indeed a no-brainer.

Naturally. But brand has power, or at least, is perceived to have power.

Then, like I said, you should take on all of the liberal arts students, most of whom won’t take jobs that are related to their majors.

I’m simply asking why the CS major necessarily needs to be closely connected to a particular job, when it seems that plenty of other majors are not. If poli-sci doesn’t need to be closely connected to a particular job, why does CS? Maybe even more poignantly, if math - which is CS’s closest cousin - is not connected to a particular job, why should CS?

So you’re conceding that plenty of waste exists in the current system? For example, that those premed students who do poorly in their coursework will have wasted time in their premed studies and will be forced - as you say - to “do something else”?

If so, that’s my point. Most people are forced “to do something else” that is unrelated to their major. I don’t see why CS ought to be special in that respect.

Really? Like I said, a great bulk of students at top schools end up in consulting or banking - careers which don’t have an closely aligned major. Harvard liberal arts majors can become investment bankers. Seems to me that they chose the right path - after all, if they had gone to a lower-level school, they probably wouldn’t have gotten those jobs. Similarly, many (probably most) poli-sci majors at the top schools don’t actually really care about poli-sci, but instead are simply using the major to leverage themselves into a professional grad school, especially to law school.

And that’s the point - many college students simply view the undergrad major as a waypoint towards helping them get to what they really want. Many bio majors don’t really care about bio per se, but are simply trying to get into med-school. Most poli-sci and English majors don’t really care about those subjects per se, but just want to get into law school. I don’t see why the CS major should necessarily be singled out as being any different.

And that’s my question - why should it necessarily be more focused? Just because you say so? Other majors, including even math, are not “more focused”. Most math majors do not become mathematicians. So why is CS special?

Which then begs the question of how many CS students actually want to be software engineers vs. just software developers. I suspect that many would be perfectly happy with the latter.

Actually, the difference seems to have far more to do with sociological and organizational backing. Or, to give you a historical example. Merely a century ago, the vast majority of people who lived on the frontier learned how to ride a horse. Now, very few people do. It has nothing to do with the inherent difficulty of the task - indeed, with modern medical care and safety equipment, horse-riding is surely safer than it was in the past. Nevertheless, some people today die learning to ride horses, just as people in the past did. The difference is that in the old days, you needed to know how to ride a horse if you actually wanted to get anywhere quickly. Nowadays, you don’t really need to know it, because you can simply learn to drive a car instead.

And let’s talk about driving cars… On an absolute level, that’s hard and expensive. You need access to a car, which is not cheap. Then you have to have somebody teach you how to drive it. And you could easily kill somebody or yourself when you’re learning, especially when you’re learning highway driving for the first time. But the fact is, almost everybody learns it. On the other hand, a home-lab or Cisco routers and switches clearly costs less than a car. And, even if you make major mistakes with your lab, you won’t actually kill anybody.

The only difference seems to be that practically everybody learns how to drive - which then spurs you to think that driving is normal. You naturally think: “Well, if that fool can learn how to drive, then surely I can too.” Similarly, a century ago, everybody on the frontier learned how to ride a horse, which meant that you should learn it also.

The key difference is that learning Cisco routing - however safe and inexpensive it may be compared to access to a car or a horse - is simply ‘abnormal’. Nobody else really learns it, because nobody really “needs” to know it, and that’s why you don’t learn it either. Hence, whatever difficulty it entails is only due to sociological reasons.

Perhaps it is, but that doesn’t obviate the point.

If I don’t believe in the legitimacy of the ACM in the first place, why should I read their documents? What gives them the right to decide what is and is not proper?

And that’s why you test them.

The better question is, how many customers continue to run OPS today, years after an alternative was developed? The answer seems to be very few, so why should I learn OPS?

So that means that you concede on the overall theme that universities should offer IT books, is that right?

Actually, you mean a level of organizational inefficiency, right?

Speaking of organizational inefficiency, many organizations (i.e. consulting firms and investment banks) will hire people mostly on the pedigree of their degree whether than of what they actually majored in. Let’s face it - some venture capital or private equity firms don’t care what you majored in with regards to your degree…as long as your degree came from an elite school. I would posit that that’s certainly evidence of organizational inefficiency. But, like it or not, that’s what they do.

Again, why? Poli-sci majors who don’t really care about the major but are simply interested in heading to law school don’t have to pick another major. Why should CS majors who aren’t actually interested in CS have to pick another major? What makes CS special?

Again, why? Why is the CS major - which ostensibly is a member of the liberal arts (as is math) considered to be a special major? Again, most math majors do not become mathematicians. So why should we place an expectation on CS majors that they must become software engineers?

sakky · October 16, 2010, 12:49am

Sure, if it’s available. What if it isn’t, at the school in question. For example, MIT doesn’t have an IT degree. Neither does Stanford. So if I attend these schools - which are widely recognized as the two elite schools in CS in the world - is my only choice to simply transfer to another school?

Even if that is the correct choice, I would simply point out that, right or wrong, most students at those schools do not take that choice.

kmazza · October 16, 2010, 1:53am

Stanford Undergrad Computer Science Degree. A number of these lower level classes can be taken at the JC I go to down Foothill expressway

Math: a year of Calc plus another year of electives
Physics: Gen I, Mechanics, Electricity and magnetism
Computer core: a year of C++, a unix class, a networking class, and a year of computer theory with math
Engineering: Intro to Electrical Engineering, Programming Abstractions, plus elective

<ul>
<li>5 from elective choice and senior thesis</li>
</ul>

Note: medical is still the biggest industry in and around Stanford

kmazza · October 16, 2010, 2:34am

As far as the threads original question. I would figure an EE makes more money. Simply going to a big name school gives you brownie points amongst peers and a big boost BUT having the word E N G I N E E R I N G on ones sheepskin is what brings in the bucks.
Part of that IMO is the way they are put on an academic pedestal over Scientists, who I find are America’s true underdogs in and out of college.

BCEagle91 · October 16, 2010, 7:56am

Parents, students, schools and professors make that choice to do so.

Different expectation.

Employers can simply hire the polisci student - they’re cheaper.

What a waste.

You pays your money and you takes your chances.

Most of them aren’t qualified.

I don’t care to write up an answer, partly because it would take a while
to do so but it doesn’t really matter.

Some may perceive it as a waste of time. I’m sure that those premed
students go on to do something else. Having lots of science courses
behind you usually isn’t a bad thing.

Well, it is.

I assume that the people that hire them want them for their thinking
and problem-solving skills and assume that the name-brand assures
that. Given what has happened to the banking industry, perhaps they
were wrong. There was the assumption that the Nobel Peace Prize meant
something too and one or two of them almost brought down the world’s
financial system.

Sports franchises also hire college students in unrelated majors
because of their special skills. More or less the same thing.

I don’t care to write up an answer, partly because it would take a while
to do so but it doesn’t really matter.

Please read the ACM educational documents.

I don’t have the answer to your question. I do know that there are a
lot of confused students that wander into this forum that do not know
the distinctions. The ACM educational documents provide an explanation
but the typical high-school student or parent won’t understand those
explanations. So I think that there is some room for education.

Learning to drive a car isn’t simple. I’m in the middle of doing forty
hours of on-the-road with my daughter and it is nerve-wracking.

And let’s talk about driving cars… On an absolute level, that’s
hard and expensive. You need access to a car, which is not
cheap. Then you have to have somebody teach you how to drive it. And
you could easily kill somebody or yourself when you’re learning,
especially when you’re learning highway driving for the first
time. But the fact is, almost everybody learns it. On the other
hand, a home-lab or Cisco routers and switches clearly costs less
than a car. And, even if you make major mistakes with your lab, you
won’t actually kill anybody.

The only difference seems to be that practically everybody learns
how to drive - which then spurs you to think that driving is
normal. You naturally think: “Well, if that fool can learn how to
drive, then surely I can too.” Similarly, a century ago, everybody
on the frontier learned how to ride a horse, which meant that you
should learn it also.

The key difference is that learning Cisco routing - however safe and
inexpensive it may be compared to access to a car or a horse - is
simply ‘abnormal’. Nobody else really learns it, because nobody
really “needs” to know it, and that’s why you don’t learn it
either. Hence, whatever difficulty it entails is only due to
sociological reasons.

What percentage of the population is able to pass a university course
in Physics? Calculus? Differential Equations? Algorithms?

What was your point?

How do you argue against something that you don’t know anything about?

Who cares? They decide. If you have a policeman with a gun arresting
you, do you challenge him with his gun pointed at you?

And you’re going to find every problem with testing?

I have a VAX 6240 in my building that I log into every once in a while.
It was built in the mid-1980s. It’s used to develop software that is
still used by very, very large organizations today. I think that your
answer is wrong on the number of people using old versions of Oracle
software.

As I said before, I’m agnostic on the matter. University libraries
have policies that are all over the place on what they should and
shouldn’t offer. I don’t really understand how those policies work. I
do know that Boston College has a very nice library and that students
from other universities in the Boston area use it through the Boston
Library Consortium (they actually go there and use the library; not
just inter-library loan). Boston College’s library does have a pretty
good-sized section of IT books. Boston College has a ton of $$$
though.

Doesn’t matter. It is special. There are other majors that are similar.

If you want to know the why of the approach, read the ACM docs.

If you want to know the why of the approach, read the ACM docs.

sakky · November 4, 2010, 10:07am

So then why would it be such a problem if CS students are trained in topics that they don’t use? Again, it would be parents, students, schools, and professors making that choice.

But that’s the point: why is there a different expectation?. Who sets that expectation anyway?

Well, maybe so. But at the end of the day, employers don’t do that. For example, I see many consulting and banking firms hiring CS graduates (and not for CS work). Maybe they should have hired the ostensibly cheaper poli-sci graduates. But they don’t.

Yeah, maybe so. But I don’t see how it’s any more of a waste than liberal arts graduates who don’t take liberal-arts-related jobs. Heck, it’s almost certainly less of a waste, simply because of the relatively small number of CS graduates produced compared to the hordes of liberal arts graduates produced every year.

Uh, qualified for what? There aren’t exactly a proliferation of liberal arts jobs out there. How many political scientist jobs are there? How many sociologist jobs are there?

But you did decide to write this particular response, which surely took some time. Interesting.

If you really didn’t have time, then you could simply choose not to respond at all.

Sure, so why can’t CS grads do the same?

And similarly, I could say that CS graduates who don’t take CS jobs could surely move on to do other things, and that having some CS knowledge probably isn’t a bad thing.

Again, why? Why exactly do the ACM ed documents need to exist anyway? I am not aware of any ‘Association of Political Science’ or ‘Association of Sociology’ educational documents that dictate what students in those majors must study. Why exactly does CS need to have a governing educational body that produce documents that dictate what students must learn?

Or how about some room for flexibility. Most poli-sci majors do not expect to become political scientists. Why should we expect CS majors to become software engineers?

Yet at the end of the day, we grant driver’s licenses to plenty of teenagers who are mediocre high school students. So clearly it isn’t that hard to learn.

But that’s the question: why is it? Because you said so?

Yeah, whatever the rationale may be, the unavoidable truth is those employers still demand name-brand degrees, and, whether that’s right or wrong, they’re not going to stop. So if you want a job with those employers, you need to obtain the elite degree that they demand.

Which means that now you’re only reinforcing my point. Obviously a small percentage of students can pass those courses. But that’s the point - you don’t really need to know those things. An IT guy practically never uses that knowledge. And many CS guys end up in IT.

That you don’t really need to know much of the material in a CS major to do the jobs that many CS graduates end up taking.

Obviously you won’t, but, frankly, you’re not going to find it through deep theoretical CS knowledge either. If your Cisco router’s new feature blows up, CS knowledge isn’t going to help you. Cisco isn’t going to let you see the source code and trace the bugs. All you can do is report the crash to TAC and then hopefully they will offer a patch in a later release. But there’s nothing that you, as an IT guy, can really do other than not use that particular buggy feature.

Then I’ll put it to you this way. OPS was first released in 1988. In 1988, Cisco was selling the AGS class of routers. Neither I nor any other IT guy I know is aware of a single customer who is still running AGS in a production network. Heck, even back in 2000, we didn’t know any customers running AGS in actual production networks. Heck, most Cisco guys today have never even heard of the AGS router, much less ever having seen one in real-life. Heck, most of them don’t even know that there was a time when Cisto didn’t use numerical designations (i.e. 2500-series, 2600-series, etc.) for their routers.

Yet I recall you said that hardware has a longer shelf-life than software. So if customers are still running OPS, then even more customers should still be running AGS, right? So where are all of these AGS routers then?

Fine, then I see that you have no problem with university libraries offering IT books. It still mystifies me why you had previously objected.

But that’s the point: why does the ACM have the right to decide? No governing body in poli-sci strictly defines what every poli-sci student needs to learn. Why does CS need such a governing body when other majors do not?

Completely tautological and circular reasoning. So you’re saying that if I want to understand why CS is special, I have to consult the documents written by a governing body that is itself special. In other words, we’re not talking about logical deduction, we’re simply talking about axioms. It is an axiom that CS is special.

who makes more money? CS or EE?

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