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Web2.0 and Computer Science: The Rise of Higher Level Languages
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Why doesn’t this surge of Web 2.0 foster more interest for Computer Science? …. Algorithms, data structures, and so on, must be in the picture, but they are a very minor component of the work. Learning the programming skills is overall not difficult. Designing something beautiful is the whole trick. Also, you have to leverage the social network.
I think Web2.0 does foster growth of CS on at least 3 fronts:
Scale. Web2.0 involves lots of users with lots of interactions. We’re seeing applications push to scale horizontally in quite interesting ways. I think this is moving parallel computation in pragmatic, valuable directions that past academic exercises haven’t done.
Data. The sheer amount of data generated, stored, and analyzed by these apps is tremendous. It’s also tied directly to the profitability of the companies. The real applied science going on is very exciting. One can argue the same is true of Web1.0, but Web2.0 is more interactive and more data intensive.
Programming Languages. The past few years have seen the rise of higher level languages. There’s more awareness and usage of previously niche languages than ever before. Javascript, Ruby, Groovy, Smalltalk, Erlang, Scala, the list goes on. This is actually tremendously important – the concepts embedded in and exposed by these languages are getting permeated into programmers’ everyday lives, bringing more variety and getting us close to the science. How many people know functional programming or closures 3 years ago versus today?
My sense is that Web2.0 is contributing to the growth of computer science in very practical ways. In any case, it’s possible to have much more interesting conversations with the average programmer than it was 3 years ago.
You are right, but here is what I meant… As far as I know, the number of college students majoring in CS is still going down. And professors hardly took notice of Web 2.0: not that they should, mind you.
Web 1.0 directly lead to companies hiring more CS graduates. It directly lead schools to expand their CS departments.
Now, CS departments are shrinking or closing, and Web 2.0 is not helping, one bit. More importantly, companies are not hiring more than they did. At best, they are keeping their talent set the same.
Ok, maybe things are booming in India. I do not know. But I live in North America, and in North America, Web 2.0 is moving students into CS departments.
Also, I’d say there is a fundamental difference in the skills required for Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. The sort of talent you need to design a database schema and design business processes (Web 1.0) is very different from the skills you need to grow a social network and design an elegant social Web app (Web 2.0).
Things like “forever in beta” is contrary to many things being taught in CS departments. Social networks? That’s probably never covered. Elegant Web solutions? Things like REST are never alluded to. High level languages? Most CS departments are Java shops these days.
(Not that you can’t do Web 2.0 with Java, but you see my point.)