Skip to content

Comment on The Apprentice Programmer (2013)

Comments

Programming was usually taught in trade schools in the USA during 1960s and 1970s. That aspect slowed down some schools like MIT declaring computer science as a full-fledged major until 1980.

Nope, at least not in MIT's case, which would hardly be paying attention to trade schools while they were inventing a very large fraction of the field! I can find out more precisely when the 6-3 major was created if you wish, but I'm almost certain it was before 1980 (at the very least I think I would have remembered it was brand new when I declared 6-3 at the end of the 79-80 academic year).

Any delay happened because CS departments, at least in those days, came from either Math or EE departments, the latter in MIT's case. So people initially just got majors in the original field before a separate degree was broken out.

And in the case of MIT and perhaps other departments starting from EE (I get this impression about UCB going only by required undergraduate courses), there is no "pure" CS degree, since the department believes you can't entirely separate it from EE, and vice versa. So students have to do core courses in both (or now 2 ones that combine both), and the degrees are in both, with an emphasis in one or the other or neither. As of later, the latter course was preferred by most majors.

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.