THE BORE

General => The Superdeep Borehole => Topic started by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:43:56 PM

Title: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:43:56 PM: And yea, I'm bitching. And no, I'm not switching schools.

There's a serious lack of CS professors at the school (only one real CS professor, the other few are people from the IT department who fill in). Because of this, they don't really ever offer many CS classes. Case in point, next semester:
They're offering 3 'classes'.
CS 126 - Computer Design And Architecture
CS 364 - Operating Systems
CD 499 - Internship

Now I'm going to tear these 3 offered classes apart at several levels.
The King's College catalog describes CS 126 as follows:
Number systems, boolean algebra, logic circuits, arithmetic operations, input-output devices, computer organization and control

The year before I took this class, that's actually the kind of stuff that went on in this class. There were multiple professors employed in the CS department at that time, and people who knew what they were doing taught courses. They've since completely changed the class around. Now instead of learning much of anything, they put you through 2 week rotations across the various areas of the IT department on campus. This ranges from places like help desk and networking to places like media services (where you plug in DVD players and turn on mics) and instructional technologies (where you do nothing of any real relevance at all). They've done the class like this twice now, and no one I know from either time the class was offered felt like they learned anything. How can you? You're basically sent to peer over someone's shoulder who isn't any kind of qualified teacher and is busy doing their own work. Shit class.

With that out of the way, there's another problem.
Both CS 126 and CS 365 were offered this semester. There's no reason at all to offer those classes again in the fall when there's only like 6 students at each year level going for a CS major. I know that damn near everyone who is a sophomore or junior has already taken or is currently taking CS 364 this semester. That leaves the new freshmen as the only students left to take that course. I doubt highly that will happen. They'd have been much better off offering those courses in the spring next year so any stragglers could take them, and if they did this, they may have been able to actually teach different CS classes this coming fall.

Fucking fuck fuck. fuck.

I've got 2 semesters left at the college, and I've got 3 CS courses left to take. I'd be nice if these fuckers would offer ANY of the motherfucking classes I need.

Here's what I need:
CS 305 - Systems Programming
CS 328- Theory of Algorithms
CS 423 - Programming Languages

That means that my last semester I'm supposed to expect some miracle where they offer all 3 of those classes. That's not going to happen.

Thank fucking god for my math major. I'd be twiddling my thumbs next year otherwise.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Vizzys on March 09, 2007, 06:46:56 PM: *opens Photoshop CS

what was this thread about again
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:47:19 PM: poopsex or somethin
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Vizzys on March 09, 2007, 06:47:58 PM: gross, glad I didnt read it.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: demi on March 09, 2007, 06:49:43 PM: School sucks. I'm going to be a vagabond and just fight crime.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Madrun Badrun on March 09, 2007, 06:49:48 PM: ouch at the 126 description.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Vizzys on March 09, 2007, 06:51:52 PM: spoiler (click to show/hide)
(http://xs313.xs.to/xs313/07106/lolz.png)
[close]
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:53:31 PM: Quote from: Father_Mike on March 09, 2007, 06:49:48 PM
ouch at the 126 description.

The handbook description or what actually goes on?

When the class actually contained the stuff mentioned in the course catalog, it was apparently a really good class. Some of the guys I've talked to have said they learned a lot in in and everything.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:54:03 PM: Viz, I don't get the PS references.
?
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Vizzys on March 09, 2007, 06:55:27 PM: its not a joke so no reference applies.

I didnt read your post (i skim) and CS reminded me to do some photoshop work
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Madrun Badrun on March 09, 2007, 06:55:32 PM: Quote from: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:53:31 PM
Quote from: Father_Mike on March 09, 2007, 06:49:48 PM
ouch at the 126 description.

The handbook description or what actually goes on?

When the class actually contained the stuff mentioned in the course catalog, it was apparently a really good class. Some of the guys I've talked to have said they learned a lot in in and everything.

what actually goes on.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 07:07:01 PM: Quote from: Father_Mike on March 09, 2007, 06:55:32 PM
Quote from: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 06:53:31 PM
Quote from: Father_Mike on March 09, 2007, 06:49:48 PM
ouch at the 126 description.

The handbook description or what actually goes on?

When the class actually contained the stuff mentioned in the course catalog, it was apparently a really good class. Some of the guys I've talked to have said they learned a lot in in and everything.

what actually goes on.

Yea, it's pretty terrible. I may have made a post about it at GAF at one point, but let me describe what I did during the semester I took the class:

My first rotation was to the help desk people. They're very nice ladies (I'm employed by the college now and basically do help desk), but they didn't really have anything they could teach. I wasn't employed at the time, so they didn't have me actually taking PCs apart or anything. I recall going out on a few help desk calls, and the biggest thing I had to do was plug in a monitor. They also gave us a very general overview of how we use Ghost on campus to image the machines, and I scanned a guy's PC for spyware. Oh joy!

My next rotation was to the networking guys. I actually got a tiny bit of an education here. They showed us some of the various places of interest on campus that had to do with the network, and they tried teaching us some stuff. They felt bad because of how bad the class was fucked up, so they were taking time out of their actual work day (remember, these guys are just regular staff and not professors) to teach us a little bit about packets and some very basic IP and subnetting stuff.

After that, I was supposed to go to the media services guy, but he blew us off. Tried getting in contact with him for a week before he finally told us he had nothing for us to do and to go leech off of someone else. So I went to the guy teaching the class, and he put me on a project he had students doing. Basically we had to get PHP, MySQL, and some web calendar software installed on an IIS server. Easier said than done when there's 6 people working 1 hour shifts various times throughout the week and I was one of 2 people who really had a clue what was going on. Damn near every time I'd make headway into getting PHP working someone would come along and fuck it up, and I'd be back to square one.

All in all, I took away nearly nothing from that class. Oh, and I got a B in it because the douchebag guy teaching the class didn't like my papers that said I didn't learn anything.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Madrun Badrun on March 09, 2007, 07:16:01 PM: So this is just for your masters right? How ere your BS classes?
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 08:51:37 PM: Quote from: Father_Mike on March 09, 2007, 07:16:01 PM
So this is just for your masters right? How ere your BS classes?

Masters?

No. I'm double majoring for a BA in Math and BS in Computer Science.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: bluemax on March 09, 2007, 09:18:17 PM: CS 126 sounds a lot like EE101 here with a little bit of EE357 mixed in. Is that the only hardware course you take? We take 4 semesters of Electrical Engineering.

EE101 Boolean Algebra, K-Maps, simple hardware like counters, registers etc
EE201 The lab course continuation of EE101. More emphasis on design and implementation of simple systems.
EE357 Introduction to CPUs or something like that. Learn a little about processor design, assembler, floating point arithmetic etc.
EE457 Processor design. More assembly, single cycle, multicycle and pipelined cpu design.

Personally I hated every EE class I had to take. Interesting material, but not my forte in terms of work.

I have never had problems getting a CS course in a given semester, in fact I'm sure they offer every required course every semester and most of the tech electives every semester as well. The only classes I've wanted to take that weren't offered in a particular semester were the ITP game programming electives. Portable game programming is only in the spring :(

Good luck getting your classes in man.
Title: Re: The CS program at my school sucks.
Post by: Ecrofirt on March 09, 2007, 10:38:57 PM: Quote from: bluemax on March 09, 2007, 09:18:17 PM
CS 126 sounds a lot like EE101 here with a little bit of EE357 mixed in. Is that the only hardware course you take? We take 4 semesters of Electrical Engineering.

EE101 Boolean Algebra, K-Maps, simple hardware like counters, registers etc
EE201 The lab course continuation of EE101. More emphasis on design and implementation of simple systems.
EE357 Introduction to CPUs or something like that. Learn a little about processor design, assembler, floating point arithmetic etc.
EE457 Processor design. More assembly, single cycle, multicycle and pipelined cpu design.

Personally I hated every EE class I had to take. Interesting material, but not my forte in terms of work.

I have never had problems getting a CS course in a given semester, in fact I'm sure they offer every required course every semester and most of the tech electives every semester as well. The only classes I've wanted to take that weren't offered in a particular semester were the ITP game programming electives. Portable game programming is only in the spring :(

Good luck getting your classes in man.

The CS program at my college is a joke. It looked good when I was applying, but they really pulled the wool over my eyes.

The main reasons I'm staying are the math degree I'll be getting (I love the math program. It's small, but the teachers are very sharp and it's easy to get 1-on-1 with them), and the great job I have in the IT department.

My job rocks. Like I said, I'm basically help desk. I'm getting a ton of experience troubleshooting various PC problems and shit, and I do a bunch of hardware changes and stuff. I'm hoping a full-time position opens up at the college sometime before I leave, because I'd love to continue working therein the future. Great, great working atmosphere.