Harvard's CompSci Intro Course Boasts Record-Breaking Enrollment 144
alphadogg writes: Harvard College's CS50, the school's Introduction to Computer Science course for undergrads, has attracted about 1 in 8 students this fall — a new record for the school and yet another sign of just how hot this field is becoming for the job-hungry. Overall, 818 undergrads (or 12% of the student body) signed up for the challenging course this semester (PDF), and nearly 900 students are registered when factoring in graduate and cross-registered students. Topics on the syllabus include Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. David Malan, a Harvard CompSci grad, teaches the course.
They will all get an A (Score:2)
I seem to recall that's havard's policy, more or less.
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Also true in actual careers like nursing fwiw. There's a nursing shortage (at least in the U.S.), and men are very underrepresented in the field, so nursing schools have been going out of their way to recruit men.
Women in CS (Score:2)
I (a man) would be welcome with open arms to a crocheting class. Women are not treated as equals in a CS course. Source: I taught CS classes.
They are in many CS classes. My undergrad found significantly more retention of women in CS when women were also teaching the class.
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I need a job, I program.
Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. (Score:5, Insightful)
>Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript.
That's computer science?
What about algorithm complexity analysis, type theory, normal forms and well, computer science.
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What about teaching "Data Structures and Algorithm Design", C/Pascal/Assembly Language ?
Linux != Comp Sci ...
This is why we have a generation of "programmers" who's solution to a problem is "throw more RAM into the system" instead of fixing their crappy code.
Re:Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. (Score:4, Insightful)
Because it's 101 and not 201?
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Eh...it's actually CS50, not even 101.
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If you don't understand how pointers and return values in C works, it's not because of a limitation in C.
Hhm... to ad hominem or not to ad hominem that is the question that preoccupies us. Whether it is nobler, in the mind, to suffer the slings of mud of outrageous statements or to take aim and by opposing them thus end them.
The full amount of what you don't know and the years of experience that you lack to make the judgement that you made would take a volume of a flame war to fight out.
C and C++ are about as relevant today as assembly. If you don't understand that C++ template mechanism and C pre-process
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You'll excuse us if some of us
I guess I won't.
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it's not because of a limitation in C.
C most definitely has the limitation which C++ tried to address and failed. Return should have been a pointer to the address where the returned value ends up being copied when it's popped off the stack. Instead it's just a syntactic premature end of a function. Had it been a simple pointer to the place where the function's return value ends up being copied, C++ would not have been invented because it would have been unnecessary. I am talking about the semantic that is present in Matlab functions (where y
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You obviously didn't learn enough to realize that C and C++ are completely different languages and should be approached as such.
You obviously don't recognize a shorthand expression for C AND C++. Different languages, sure. Separate languages, not entirely. Doesn't matter since I'm not a programmer by trade. I took programming to understand how software works on the hardware.
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If you are not a programmer you have no business commenting and you obviously fail to understand how software and hardware interact.
I guess an associate degree in computer programming, six years as a software tester and ten years as an IT technician doesn't count for anything.
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An AA in "programming" does not make you a programmer. That is a small step above reading a programming for dummies book. A very small step.
Good thing Uncle Sam paid for my AS (associate of science) degree with a $3,000 USD tax credit. I would never paid $3,000 for Dummies books. Oh, BTW, this is my second associate degree. I got my first associate degee in General Education after I graduated from the eighth grade and skipped high school.
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That was about half my cost of a single semester in grad school. Not that I had to pay it, since I taught undergrad classes for a 100% tuition waiver + a $1400 a month stipend.
I see what your problem is now. You went to grad school, graduated with a very small dick, and must beat up on someone else to compensate for your lack of rigor.
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You showed that you have no clue about programming, computer and network security or how computers actually work and you rip on someone else that is more intelligent and educated than you?
When I worked at Google in 2008, I had to demonstrate to a software engineer how to turn on his computer because his intelligence and education never prepared him for the real world. Most software engineers are really clueless when it comes to working with hardware.
You should go get another AA to boost your cred.
I'm working on the CompTIA Security+ [comptia.org] certification for my government job as a security support specialist. After that I'll get my ITIL Foundation [itil-officialsite.com] certification since I'm working for an ITIL organization. The next step after that is the Cisco Cert [cisco.com]
Re:Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. (Score:5, Informative)
It seems to be structured as kind of an intro to programming, which is one way CS101 classes (in Harvard terminology, CS50) are structured. Not really an intro to CS the discipline, but a broad intro to computers/programming in general for people who may or may not go into CS. Traditionally MIT took the opposite approach, but many schools took this approach.
Fwiw, you can find the 2013 version of the curriculum here [cs50.tv] (it seems to have been also co-offered as a MOOC). It does seem a bit like a grab-bag of "random stuff in computers".
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It's an introductory course. They'll get to the real stuff later on. Contrary to popular belief among theoretical computer scientists, almost no compsci students without hands on experience are any good. Like a blind man painting, you know.
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If I were a freshman and unsure if I should go into CS or CIT, I would want to take an introductory course for each and have them be sufficiently different for me to make an ed
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(FIRST Rant: Since I wasn't asked for the damn CAPTCHA getting the message that I didn't confirm I was a human and throwing away my whole freaking novel of a post makes me think that the /. devs *really need to take this intro course again... grr...)
Honestly some of that list fits in an intro course but with clarification.. I certainly hope that's not an exhaustive list tho! Everything on that list should be "as well as" not core topics.
Linux: These kids, even these days, have a high probability of never ha
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Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript.
That's computer science?
Cryptography is. The rest isn't.
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If you don't think Javascript is computer science, you either don't know Javascript or don't know computer science.
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Re:Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. (Score:5, Informative)
The title should be: 1 in 8 Harvard students hopelessly undecided about Computer Science.
Re:Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. (Score:5, Informative)
It's CS50. It's not even a 100-level classes. This is their way of saying, pay us $X for 3 course credits and see if you would even like to continue down this path.
You obviously haven't bothered to look into Harvard's course numbering system (or credit system). Like just about everything else at Harvard -- from their wacko GPA system that had 15 points (instead of the usual 4.0) until recent years to the fact that they have a "concentration" instead of a "major" -- their course numbers aren't like elsewhere.
If you want to see their CS offerings, look here [harvard.edu].
Basically, in Harvard's numbering system (which varies a bit by department), 0-99 are often undergraduate offerings, 100-199 are courses that could be taken by both undergraduates and grads, and 200+ are graduate-only classes. (Some departments with a lot of courses change the numbering so that the undergrad/grad courses start at 1000 instead of 100, and graduate courses start at 2000.)
In many departments it's uncommon to take anything numbered 100 or above until your junior year (maybe earlier in CS, looking at their course offerings). So, saying this course is numbered 50 isn't saying much. In most departments, the generic courses for non-majors are often in the 1-10 or 1-20 range.
And as for credits -- notice the catalog lists this as a "half course," from the old system where most Harvard students would enroll in courses that would last a full year (two semesters = "full course"). Harvard doesn't charge by the credit hour like a community college or state university might. They basically have a set tuition rate per semester and you're expected to take "four half courses" per term, five if you're ambitious. (You can take more -- generally for the same tuition -- but I believe it requires special overrides.)
The title should be: 1 in 8 Harvard students hopelessly undecided about Computer Science.
I have no doubt that some students are in fact taking this class to "try out" computer stuff, but it's hard to tell what those stats mean. Also, Harvard has a "gen ed" distribution requirement, and CS50 satisfies one of those distribution requirements. So, I'd imagine the bigger draw is "learn something in computers" AND "satisfy some stupid requirement," rather than "hmm... maybe I'll try computer science..."
Anyhow, I know you (and most people here) didn't need to know that much about Harvard's wacko systems... but this post shouldn't be "+5 Informative" when it's based on wrong information.
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Also, by the way, I don't think we should derive any conclusions about "hot fields" from Harvard's enrollment numbers.
Until the past couple years, one of the top two biggest courses at Harvard was "Justice," with enrollments upwards of 800 students. I don't think that was a signal that hoards of Harvard students were going to become political philosophers -- it just had a reputation for a good lecturer and satisfied the right distribution requirement.
Similarly, a few years back another course with 800+
Re:Linux, cryptography, HTML and JavaScript. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you teach kids theory, people object that they're not being taught 'practical things'. If you teach them how to use popular software (like JavaScript), people object that they're not being taught enough theory.
You can't win.
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So call it a 'programming' course. Computer science marginally overlaps with programming, but a programming course is not computer science.
While we're at it, we could stop calling Computer Science a science and admit it's applied mathematics with silicon thrown in.
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And like the old Nature vs Nurture argument, the answer is ... a bit of both.
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You can't win.
Students would be crazy to enter the CS field. You have employers demanding vast experience for "entry level" positions, and then that experience has to contain a long checklist of languages and methodologies. Then they face an employer who will always be looking for a way to find a cheaper H1B replacement for their American employee (regardless if they have less experience and knowledge). After that, a dozen years later their skills are "out of date" and job hunting becomes difficult - after their employer
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I can shed some light on this.
This course is an introductory course for non-majors. That's why it's not like "Intro to Computer Science."
The big deal with Harvard's CS50 course isn't that everyone wants to enroll in computer science, but that it is being taught in a very unorthodox way. Students have the option of attending lectures or watching video lectures online. There is a great deal of supplementary online material. They have all night coding sessions with food and games which are sponsored by bus
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Yes, types are only a theory, and an unproven one. That's why I skip types.
I don't like your type.
more a reflection of what Harvard decides (Score:5, Insightful)
Harvard gets far, far more applicants in every area than they can possibly accept to their relatively small student body. So shifts among disciplines and interests almost entirely reflect decisions on the part of Harvard admissions policies. They don't necessarily reflect shifts in either broader society or even the subset of society that applies to Harvard. It's possible they do, but it's also possible Harvard explicitly decided to accept more CS applicants for various reasons.
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Imagine you are in a dark room and have a bag filled with cubes, spheres and pyramids. You're instructed to pick ten cubes out of the bag, which you then do. Then the lights come on, and it turns out you've picked one red cube, one green one, and eight blue ones.
Of course, it's entirely possible the lights at the admissions office were on all along, but it isn't necessarily the case that it was.
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Isn't it pretty explicit that the lights are on? Review of applications isn't some kind of blind-review process.
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In the sense that they had access to all relevant information, yes, the lights were on. In the sense that that information influenced their decision, the lights could have been off. The facts that predict future enrollment in intro to computer science are not necessarily the facts that weighed in the decision concerning admittance. Some of those facts probably were considered, others probably weren't.
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I am willing to bet that the average analytical skill and critical thinking ability of a Harvard freshman would far exceed that of most Slashdotters.
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Well, being from Harvard also, I disagree.
Computers and Computer Science (Score:1)
What was that my Comp Sci friend was quoting, something about Computer Science is as much about computers as Astronomy is about telescopes?
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About Time The Market Got Hot (Score:2)
When I went back to community collge to get an associate degree in computer programming after the dot com bust, everyone told me I was crazy as healthcare was the money major. I went to school for five years on a part-time basis from 2002 to 2007 while working full-time. I couldn't get classes at the beginning because they were full, and couldn't get classes towards the end because they weren't enough students. I became a help desk technician shortly thereafter.
The long term trends back then was that the ba
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CS is for programming. Not IT and definitely not helpdesk. And not vaguely defined "security" jobs. If you want to program, there's a negative unemployment rate in some parts of the country right now and has been for a few years- there's more jobs than people if you have some skill. If you don't want to program or get a phd and do research, its a useless degree. Formerly IT included a lot more programming as systems were highly customized and home built. Now IT is cheap and getting cheaper, because a
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You're overlooking one small detail: I never claimed that I was programmer. Having a background in computer programming allows me to better solve problems as a help desk technician, a desktop support technican, and now a security support specialist. Not only do I know how to put hardware together, I know how to put software together. A skill that is sorely lacking in most Fortune 500 IT departments.
Who do you think will write the scripts? Not some CS graduate with a stick up his ass.
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So you don't want to join the highly lucrative job that requires your degree, but you want to join a job where the demand is decreasing and can be more easily outsourced. Not to mention- wtf does a "security support specialist" do? I have 15 fucking years in this field and I could only make a vague guess. A websearch for "define security support specialist" basically had 2 solid definition- one is a guy the sherriff's office was looking to hire that ran the fingerprinting software for booking, the other
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The only person complaining about my associate degree is YOU. I'm quite satisified with my second associate degree, which Uncle Sam paid for with a $3,000 tax credit, and making the college president's list for maintaining a 4.0 GPA in my major. (I earned my first associate degree in general education after graduating from the eight grade and skipping high school.) Perhaps you're trying to compensate for something, say, a lack of rigor?
Not to mention- wtf does a "security support specialist" do?
I work on a team of 20 security specialists responsible for 80,000 Windo
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So you're a sys admin who specializes in reghosting machines when the auto-updater fails? (Because actually spending the time to fix each machine would be a huge waste of resources over just ghosting a fresh image or rolling to a backup and reinstalling)? Someone needs to do it but I wouldn't give it a fancy title. Much less one with security in it- nothing in there has anything to do with security, its general administration stuff.
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Fixing each system is a lot faster than re-imaging each system. That would be a huge waste of resources. Everything is done remotely in the background without inconveniencing the user. A typical fix takes 15 to 30 minutes. My team fixes 1,000 systems per week.
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Ghosting takes minutes. Even doing analysis to figure out what's wrong would take far more than the entire process. And if you really have everything automated to the point it can be done in 15-30 minutes, then there's no human input at all- your job is a script that can run nightly on each machine, with 1 guy to update the files the script pulls.
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Re-imaging a system takes a minimum of four hours. You have to track down the location of the system. You have to browbeat the user into surrendering the system for most of the day. You may have to backup multiple user profiles (some systems have 200+ users and 50GB+ of data). The re-imaging process takes ten minutes. And then you have transfer the user profiles back, return the system to the user, and field phone calls for a month as the user(s) nitpick over the system as they believe you broke something.
M
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When I was a grad student, part of my job was running the security lab. I could reimage the entire lab(about 75 machines) in less than 15 minutes.
Lab computers with NO USER DATA can be reimaged in 15 minutes. I have imaged 3,000+ brand new computers for various PC refresh projects, but transferring gigabytes of USER DATA between computers still take time. Users tend to get upset if their data goes missing.
You are incompetent and inept, which is what people with multiple AA degrees are.
So says the Anonymous Coward with lab experience and no real world experience.
At least get an AS degree if you are going to stay in the kiddie pool.
I have an A.A. degree in General Education (1994) and a A.S. in Computer Programming (2007). You can only have one A.A. degree but multiple A.S. degrees from the community
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Well, we just learned you don't know what a systems programmer is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S... [wikipedia.org]. Pretty much the opposite of devops, which in and of itself is usually just an attempt by management to make devs work overtime in support roles instead of hiring more IT people (and usually a bad idea, but that's a side rant).
This is supposed to impress someone? The more employees you have, the more deadweight you have, and the higher the probability that an individual work
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Sys admin? I'm a programmer. Don't have the temperment to be a sysadmin, I'd be miserable at it. I know exactly what dev ops is, I was in the room when a former boss said they were firing the sys admins and we were all now dev ops. It was a miserable experience all around. And that's exactly what devops is 90% of the time- its taking programmers and sticking them with the support job too. Maybe at some place once it worked differently and they really hired for a specific hybrid role- but don't kid
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Here's the top hits in order for me:
Sherrif's office- http://www.teamdane.com/Securi... [teamdane.com]
Simply hired- clicking through shows that nothing on the first page of results actually calls the job that- the first results are signal support systems specialist, Sr client support specialist, field technician support specialist, Mac Support Specialist, and a SOX compliance officer.
Another link to Dane County
Another job site, a similar mix of results none of which actually use that title, although these tend to matc
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Hey look- the exact same links I said in my above post, in a slightly different order. Likely because I hit a different google server today. Wow you are an utter idiot aren't you.
CS50 is available online (Score:3, Informative)
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So .. in other words its a gut that you can sleep through because its all online anyways.
I am shocked! (Score:2)
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Not sure why that should be an apparent problem or concern. I fly frequently - yet I couldn't build or pilot a plane. I routinely benefit from medical care - yet I couldn't perform heart surgery. I drive a car nearly every day - yet I couldn't build or repair one myself.
Contrary to popular Slashdot-aspie opinion, understanding the deep internals of computers is not a requirement for daily life. A small degree of computer literacy is useful in most professional fields, but it is by no means a universal requirement or even universally worthwhile as a pursuit.
I don't need to know how to design a processor to browse the web, type a research paper, or play Angry Birds.
The parent doesn't claim everyone should know how to repair, design, or build their computing device, merely have a general grasp of how it's doing what it's doing. You do not own a plane. You probably don't need to worry about that. If you own a car, then yes, You really ought to know enough about how it works to perform routine maintenance (oil changes, etc). And if you don't have a general understanding of how your body works, there's probably a reason you have to go benefit from medical care so routinel
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There are plenty of people in the world who will maintain your vehicle for a reasonable price. Same with your computers.
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There are plenty of people in the world who will maintain your vehicle for a reasonable price. Same with your computers.
Yes, and so long as you either 1) don't rely on your vehicle or 2) always schedule your vehicle's problems for times and locations where such a person is available, then relying on them is great. However, if you are driving on a freeway and have your car overheat in an area where there is no cellular coverage (I know there are a lot of urban dwellers here who will never visit a place without cell coverage, but I live in a more rural area where it's spotty at best), and you can't even locate the radiator cap
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Quotas (Score:2)
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Not in the .pdf. I am curious as well though.
[John]
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A liberal education includes computing (Score:3)
P.S. Computing is NOT one of the six MIT S&E requirements yet. But it comes up everytime the requirments are reviewed.
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Question is - will they keep going? (Score:2)
I'm assuming they're talking about the physical on-campus version of CS50 right?
I'm very slowly working through the online version of the course (2 little kids who don't sleep + nothing but crap on TV = bite sized chunks of academic goodness) and it's a really good intro. I guess my question is this - how many people are going into this thinking they're going to be the next iPhone app billionaire? How many people actually want to learn the fundamentals and build a solid knowledge base that will help them ge
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I saw this same jump in enrollment in CS towards the end of the dotcom boom, and that was even before everyone was carrying around computers in their pockets.
I went back to school beween 2002 and 2007 on a part-time basis while working full-time to learn computer programming. The market for IT classes was still hot and most classes had waiting lists in 2002. Healthcare became the new money major that everyone chased after. When I graduated five years later, all my required courses for graduation were cancelled as they weren't enough students and took them as independent study classes. Back then everyone had laptops in their backpacks.
Its not registering but passing that matters (Score:2)
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Eastern time zone, Doctor Who.
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Did anyone look at the PDF's properties?
$ pdfinfo course_enrollment_statistics_icg.pdf
Title: C:\db_scripts\admin\dat\course_enrollment_statistics_icg.pdf
Licensee used to create PDF
Creator: SQRP/6.2/PC/Windows NT 4.0/Oct 29 2001
Software used to create PDF
Producer: PDFlib 3.03 (Win32)
CreationDate: Fri Sep 12 16:34:00 2014
aaaaa... what? O_O
Full course available online (Score:5, Informative)
Folks,
My son took the course last year as a senior in high school via iTunesU.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/co... [apple.com]
It's also available on EdX.
https://www.edx.org/course/har... [edx.org]
Heck, I took it way back thirty-odd years ago. :-)
Also, here's a link to the original article in the Harvard Crimson:
http://www.thecrimson.com/arti... [thecrimson.com]
--Paul
Bubbles 101 (Score:2)
They should take Economic Bubbles 101. In the past whenever there was a spike in CS enrollment, a bubble burst. We had the vid game bubble in the early 80's leading to the "ET cartridge landfill", the AI bubble that popped at the start of the general '91 recession (unemployed Lisp programmers are a scary lot), and then the Dot Com bubble.