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OP is ... This poll is closed. |
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| an autist |
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5 | 9.26% |
| a nerd |
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12 | 22.22% |
| both |
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37 | 68.52% |
| Total: | 54 votes | ||
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:In real life people generally want to get jobs so they bother to stick in some actual practical training in computer science towards being an actual programmer but at least conceptually that isn't what computer science is. It's a branch of mathematics. No, it is not. It's a field that started as an interdisciplinary collaboration between mathematicians, electrical and electronics engineers, and designers, before becoming a bit of a vaguely-described discipline that is still finding its way. That is why in many places CS started out as a subfield of EE before branching out, rather than from the Math department.
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Jan 16, 2017 20:42
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Absurd Alhazred posted:There's a reason the originators of Information Science like Shannon were working very closely with really existing hardware and circuits. The constraints you put on the theoretical models for computation are informed by real problems encountered in information processing in the real world of reality, any kind of "science of information" you're doing that is completely divorced from that belongs in a subspecialization of mathematics with an occasional LNM issue. Not to devalue that kind of research, but it's not what I would use to guide the curriculum of someone doing a Bachelor's in Computer Science. Not sure that anyone has suggested that. What we're saying is that there is a friction between the academic ideals of studying information for its own sake or the practical applications demanded by people who want jobs and need to realize economic advantages because they've mortgaged their future income to earn a degree. Calling any academic specialization "not worth taking" can only emerge from consideration of the degree as a path to a job, because if it was the advancement of information for its own sake then it is always worth doing. Training software engineers in UX is absolutely important! But how important is it to train an information scientist in UX? It's probably not. People view CIS degrees in both ways which means they reach different conclusions but are simultaneously correct in their own worldview.
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Jan 16, 2017 20:44
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Mr. Belding posted:Not sure that anyone has suggested that. What we're saying is that there is a friction between the academic ideals of studying information for its own sake or the practical applications demanded by people who want jobs and need to realize economic advantages because they've mortgaged their future income to earn a degree. I just don't think an undergraduate degree should be that specialized. I have had long discussions about this issues, with people responsible for curricula both in Israel, where undergrads are way more specialized, and the US, where there is a slowly eroding sense of a liberal arts education, major or no; the consensus is that over-specialization of the form that would have someone get a degree in CS in which they don't even program would be failing the students, even if they begrudge being forced to learn a bit wider. If someone goes through a computer science undergrad, then decides to specialize in an abstract version of information science in grad school, then no, it does not necessarily make sense to force them to go through UI training. That being said, a PhD is expected to have a little bit of broader understanding than their specialization, which is why there are more wide-ranging qualification/preliminary/comprehensive exams, explicitly requiring the person to have a wider understanding. I could see why someone studying Information Science in a Mathematics department would not have UI as their other subjects (maybe two out of Algebra, Topology, Analysis and Geometry would make more sense).
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Jan 16, 2017 20:50
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Absurd Alhazred posted:I just don't think an undergraduate degree should be that specialized. But adding in something specialized like UI design IS making the degree more specialized. It's going on an assumption that the person will be writing front ends of programs that even have front ends. (And no, being general doesn't just mean making someone take a bunch of 101 classes in every possible topic and having them take one semester of UI design and one semester of API design and one semester in hardware interface design to make sure they are equally equipped to have a poor basic understanding of all the different things their program could be expected to interface with.
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Jan 16, 2017 21:21
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:But adding in something specialized like UI design IS making the degree more specialized. It's going on an assumption that the person will be writing front ends of programs that even have front ends. (And no, being general doesn't just mean making someone take a bunch of 101 classes in every possible topic and having them take one semester of UI design and one semester of API design and one semester in hardware interface design to make sure they are equally equipped to have a poor basic understanding of all the different things their program could be expected to interface with. I'm sorry, but that is literally how a reasonable undergrad does look. You get a taste of many things, a class or two on hardware, several classes on aspects of software, theoretical and practical, then do a bit of specialization in your 3rd/4rth year, preferably around a final project, although with electives as well. If you then want to be a complexity theorist and never look at code again, great, but that's not what an undergrad is about, because you're too young and stupid to know what you want to do when you're 18 and getting into undergrad, and an undergraduate program's job is to protect you from over-specializing yourself. As for whether UI/UX should be a mandatory class or an elective, I am not sure. You have to make compromises when you create something that people need to finish within 3-4 years. But the situation when I was in undergrad is that our CS department had no such course, nor did any other department provide it as a potential elective, and it was definitely not recommended, and I think it would make for an absolutely reasonable change to put it in.
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Jan 16, 2017 21:27
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 I wouldn't put this many tabs in if I was making a parody of tabbed interfaces, but this was a real program a company made.
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Jan 16, 2017 22:08
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Curvature of Earth posted:
Yeah, it is obviously not as good as an iPhone, but on the other hand, the company who made it probably doesn't pay and can't afford to pay 10 people to obsess over how a button press feels. The company which made that interface would be incredibly stupid to put an Apple level of skrilla and effort into the UI, since the revenues of that company and that product are nowhere near that of Apple Inc. and the iPhone. The software is also not targeted towards normal consumers, but skilled operators of manufacturing equipment, who, sort of being power users of the software, are willing to live with and adapt to poor UI design. silence_kit fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Jan 16, 2017 |
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Jan 16, 2017 22:29
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:But adding in something specialized like UI design IS making the degree more specialized. It's going on an assumption that the person will be writing front ends of programs that even have front ends. (And no, being general doesn't just mean making someone take a bunch of 101 classes in every possible topic and having them take one semester of UI design and one semester of API design and one semester in hardware interface design to make sure they are equally equipped to have a poor basic understanding of all the different things their program could be expected to interface with. The idea isn't that they end up with a "poor understanding" of all the different aspects, the idea is that they have a basic understanding from which to start exploring further, asking experts the right questions, detecting bullshit and so on. You cannot predict the student will need in the near/medium/long terms so you give them the tools so that they can adapt as needed.
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Jan 16, 2017 22:43
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Solkanar512 posted:The idea isn't that they end up with a "poor understanding" of all the different aspects, the idea is that they have a basic understanding from which to start exploring further, asking experts the right questions, detecting bullshit and so on. You cannot predict the student will need in the near/medium/long terms so you give them the tools so that they can adapt as needed. But like, UI design is like a specialization of a specialization of a specialization. It's cool to know it, but why that specific thing? I think the human race will have a renaissance when people start spending decades in college and doing every single thing in a multidisciplinary way becomes the norm, but why jam this one thing in 4 years? A bunch of people won't even ever do frontend programming let alone being a UI designer. Why shove that one specific thing on people and not the 800 other things they could learn to do better?
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Jan 16, 2017 23:19
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:But like, UI design is like a specialization of a specialization of a specialization. It's cool to know it, but why that specific thing? If you reduce all degrees to the set of things that all people will end up doing, a CS degree will consist of a few courses in data structures and basic algorithms -- nothing too specialized, though, because not everyone will need to know about cryptography, or artificial intelligence, or computer graphics, or computer vision processing, or database optimization, etc. -- just the basics.
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Jan 17, 2017 00:14
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:But like, UI design is like a specialization of a specialization of a specialization. It's cool to know it, but why that specific thing? UX isn't just a front-end thing. It's something that's important for basically any program that is ever going to be used by a user, which is most programs. Specialized, advanced software doesn't skimp on UI because it's not important or because users doesn't want it, it skimps on UI because it's not in a very competitive space and users don't really have an alternative.
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Jan 17, 2017 00:54
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Main Paineframe posted:UX isn't just a front-end thing. It's something that's important for basically any program that is ever going to be used by a user, which is most programs. Specialized, advanced software doesn't skimp on UI because it's not important or because users doesn't want it, it skimps on UI because it's not in a very competitive space and users don't really have an alternative. Which is to say why spend effort on it because the user will have to deal with it and the market is too niche for a competitor to come in anyway.
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Jan 17, 2017 00:55
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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Main Paineframe posted:UX isn't just a front-end thing. It's something that's important for basically any program that is ever going to be used by a user, which is most programs. Specialized, advanced software doesn't skimp on UI because it's not important or because users doesn't want it, it skimps on UI because it's not in a very competitive space and users don't really have an alternative. And UX doesn't necessarily have to be intuitive as the end goal -- sometimes, it's worth it to create a piece of software that's difficult to learn, but extremely powerful and efficient once you get used to it, if you are catering to a small market of power users. Note this is different than being difficult to learn because it's poorly designed.
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Jan 17, 2017 01:36
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Main Paineframe posted:UX isn't just a front-end thing. It's something that's important for basically any program that is ever going to be used by a user, which is most programs That is actually not most programs. 99% of the programming that 99% of programmers do is just used is just passed to some other part of a program. If there is even a direct end user at all. Most programs aren't one man things, most of the stuff most people write is some single set of functions that passes to some other program that is passed to some other thing that communicates with the actual front end.
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Jan 17, 2017 03:57
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