Is computer science dead?
March 16th 2007 00:45
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From the Sydney Morning Herald.
IT professionals are too good at their jobs and now no one needs them. Lia Timson looks at the future of CSci.
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CHATHRA WICKRAMASINGHE has just completed a four-year honours degree in computer science. You would think her family would be proud. But they didn't want her to do it.
"My family and friends were saying, 'You will not get a job.' They said if I got one I was going to be a programmer's secretary, not a programmer," she says. "But I stuck with it. I wanted to prove to myself that I could really do it.
"And I did it," she says excitedly on her first paid lunchbreak. She struck an IT graduate position in software programming at Centrelink in Canberra.
But such stories may become rare because some say computer science as a vocation is dying. In a recent article on the British Computer Society's website, computer science lecturer Neil McBride from De Montfort University in Leicester says there's a crisis in university computer science departments (see related story).
Dr McBride says the arrival of high-level tools means vastly complex applications for business, science and leisure can be created without the coding, logic or discrete mathematics skills taught at universities.
Of course, the lack of IT students may be a hangover from the tech wreck.
MashUp Blog: Computer sciences RIP? Have your say.
Ms Wickramasinghe's course mate at Victoria's La Trobe University, Binh Nguyen, accepted a PhD offer to research artificial intelligence in gaming. He transferred from a commerce and science degree at Monash University to follow a path focused on IT.
"Before we finished our degree, we heard many people talking about how few opportunities there were and how hard (the job market) was," Mr Nguyen says.
"Then, when we graduated, people were talking about how there were job offers. A large number of my friends have all been offered really good jobs in the industry."
He chose computer science because it allows him "to take my thoughts and create something that works".
While Ms Wickramasinghe, Mr Nguyen and their classmates have benefited from their persistence, hundreds of undergraduates are ignoring computing as a career, despite Australia's increasing dependence on technology, a national IT staff shortage and society's infatuation with gadgets.
The broad trend is drifting down. Tertiary enrolments are at a seven-year low at NSW universities - with a similar downturn recorded in Victoria and Queensland - regardless of institutions' efforts to attract students and some isolated increases in this year's intake
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Comment by AnthonyB
Who's going to create the games I play ? Who's going to manufacture elite hardware for my computer and the software to go with it... I need computer science !!
I NEED IT SO BAD !!! PLEASE !! PLEASE CPU SCIENCE !!! DON'T LEAVE ME !!
Thanks for the heads up Katyzzz. It's a tragedy that this facet of IT is facing extinction. But I have faith that it will come back. With technology moving at the rate it is, it's only time before RMIT adopt some serious, intensive training.
- Anthony
Comment by katyzzz
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Don't worry the computers are now of such sophistication that they'll do their own creations, our games are not at risk.
Just keep frenetically searching.
katyzzz
Comment by Ahmed
Video Gamer Kids
Little Green Foosballs
PolyKicks
However I don't think it's dead, now they speak of 'tools' that makes programmers redundant where they were needed, the irony is these tools are made by the same programmers. Hence if anything software is just being made more convenient for average folk and programmers alike.
Computer science is always going through major transitions with new software or hardware innovations, heck, right now it's moving from third generation programming languages to fourth generation, it makes life easier for average programmers but it still takes the same folks who first picked up their commodores during the 1980's to create these languages and maintain them.
Not to brag or anything but I'm getting a degree, maybe the IT diploma's are dying out by people like me who are automating what once required technicians.
So, to conclude, Lia Timson has no idea what she's talking about.
Katyzzz, I found this post quite humorous:
You are implying computers are self conscious by that and are implying essentially our time is limited before a race of machines takes over. Computers are cold hearted bastards, if they ever become self conscious they'll be sure to wipe out humanity.
Comment by katyzzz
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Let's wait and see, shall we?
katyzzz