What if...

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Professionals who don't think through the requirement of having students do an essay having any actual and recent course work in writing one.

But we know that they did think it through, because it was intended that they should have a tutorial in doing it. The fact that the tutorial didn't happen seems to have been a simple administrative error. And given the enormous difficulties the university, like any other, will have had had to overcome during the pandemic, adapting to new and unfamiliar ways of teaching and putting all the staff under considerably more pressure and stress than usual, it seems viciously unkind to insult them so much over it.

I don't understand why you're doing that, when most of them will have just had the most difficult and demanding year of their entire lives.

I think I touched a nerve, Mikey, you might want to seek some medical help.

No nerves touched, thanks. Your concern is appreciated, although your diagnostic skills seem a little... rusty. Perhaps there's a class in that area that you somehow missed, too?
Most engineering and science students will at some stage have to write an extensive project report / dissertation. I'm not sure why computer science students should be any different.
Well, my question would be, what's the nature of the documents those other students write? Are they written for their own sake? I.e. Are they only necessary because someone required that the project include a report or even, as in this case, because someone arbitrarily thought up a subject for an essay? Or would the project lose substantial meaning without having said report?
If it's the former case, arguably all those other students are being made to write pointless documents that serve no purpose. Citing that as the reason why CS students should also write them is like breaking three of your limbs then purposefully breaking the fourth one for consistency.
If It's the latter, then why are CS students being made to write pointless essays that amount to speculative fiction? Why aren't they given projects where reports would make sense?
I don't think students who manage to get accepted for University should need instruction in how to write an "essay".


When I first went to University, the only 'essay's I had written were for my History O' level (before GCSE's). For my A' level STEM subjects you just didn't write essays. At university we had to write our 3rd year project dissertation for which written guidance was given. All the other exam questions were of the factual kind - eg. With reference to functions, describe what is meant by call by value and call by reference. When would these be appropriate and provide examples. etc

PS. The dept is now going to provide an on-line tutorial this week. The requirement date has been put back a week.

She's now feeling much more positive about this re the second question and is actually looking forward to the research to find out about the early history of programming languages.
helios wrote:
what's the nature of the documents those other students write?

They are a written explanation of the student's own investigative project work. In Engineering it would usually be experimental work, computational simulation or (occasionally) a literature review.


helios wrote:
Are they written for their own sake?

(In the UK) they are a mandatory requirement of the Engineering Council for an accredited degree (the academic route to Chartered Engineering status).


helios wrote:
would the project lose substantial meaning without having said report?
Yes. Your work would be lost for the future.


helios wrote:
why are CS students being made to write pointless essays that amount to speculative fiction?
I wasn't aware that the history of programming development is speculative fiction. Actually, not having been there in the beginning, I find it fascinating.


seeplus wrote:
When I first went to University, the only 'essay's I had written were for my History O' level (before GCSE's).
(In the UK) English is a mandatory part of the national curriculum up to age 16. Even if you did only science A-levels after you will invariably have to write up some of your work. I had to write up my labs for both Physics and Chemistry. According to my children that hasn't changed.


seeplus wrote:
For my A' level STEM subjects you just didn't write essays.
A-levels in the UK are now (optionally) supplemented by an "Extended Essay" - it is highly recommended for applying to the more competitive universities.


seeplus wrote:
The requirement date has been put back a week.
Aww. Bang goes somebody's summer.
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I don't know how you can get through college without writing essays, I've been writing several essays a semester. None of which have been because of my CS classes, but there are the general education classes.

Honestly, it wouldn't be hard at all for someone who can't write a basic essay to enroll in college. In fact, in high school, I didn't even know that SAT and ACT scores were important... literally because all the teachers and staff said not to worry about them because they wouldn't affect our grades.

Imagine my surprise when I find out universities looked at them! We didn't even take those tests in senior year!

But really, for the math portion, that was easily made up by taking a placement exam that the university offered. Had math slowed me down, I'd be several semesters behind, since a lot of CS classes require to have taken math classes which I'd of been behind on.

I could have done the same for English, but since I was going into CS, it wasn't important like math was. Getting a trash score on the English portion only meant I needed to take 1 extra English class. Easy GPA booster. And my college didn't require an essay to enroll.


So you can ENTER college without being able to do more than write emails.


As for when you're in college, I've had random professors that had nothing to do with English be bigger sticklers on proper English usage than all the English teachers I had there.

Also, the university provides help for essays and free tutoring.


Honestly, these resources are there because they probably thought it was cheaper to enroll students who suck and try to waddle them through 4+ years than to just reject them.


And really, I never felt like I benefited from writing an essay, even when I was proud of the essay, it didn't feel like I gained anything by writing the essay as opposed to having just done the research and gained the knowledge without writing the essay.

Every professor also wants an essay done "their way", which not only makes essays annoying but makes it a way to suck their ***dle. I've written some trash essays that I wrote just because I knew the professor would approve.
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I wasn't aware that the history of programming development is speculative fiction.
No, history itself isn't. Pondering what might have happened had history been different (and in this case, quite different) is.

You didn't really answer my question. Why should CS students be made to write essays or reports just because students of other disciplines do so, if it's not possible to design projects that call for them? I assume it's not possible because otherwise I find it pretty incredible that someone came up with that absurd topic rather than thinking of a project. Either it's not possible or someone started waving a gun around at the office until someone came up with an assignment.

In fact, why is it even important to be able to write an essay? I do not think science students here do it. I certainly have never done it.
Why should CS students be made to write essays or reports just because students of other disciplines do so
Turing and von Neumann take note! They, and all the others, got it wrong by researching, discussing and reasoning then wasting theirs and our time writing down their findings.
Why indeed Carol.
The original question is a good one and at the very least would get students to widen their views and find out about the development of languages and the various types. This is all, more or less, in the introduction to many CS101 textbooks as a starting point to doing some simple research in forming, shock horror, a reasoned opinion. They might even find out that there is more than one language and why.
They might even learn about counterfactuals.
god(s) help us if C++ coders with no depth call their narrow view Professional Engineering, Chartered or not. All those sorts do is devalue and pollute the noble institutions of real (computer) engineering.
Besides, the nature of historical endeavor is such that history is often, almost always some would say, speculative fiction until research and evidence establish it as 'real' history. History is not just a collection of dates.
The granddaughter of a friend is studying CS at University.
Why didn't the granddaughter post the question?
find out that there is more than one language and why


At uni, for computer languages we studied:
- z80/6502 assembler
- PDP11 assembler
- Pascal
- Algol 68
- Fortran 77
- Cobol
- Snobol
- Lisp

I'd already learnt HP TSB (Time Shared Basic), Fortran IV and Algol 60 at school.
In fact, why is it even important to be able to write an essay? I do not think science students here do it. I certainly have never done it.


my first job, our work was funded by writing proposals to win contracts. I wrote a dozen or so of them; my manager (who was also a coder, more like a senior dev than management) probably wrote well over 100 over his career. You needed to be able to write coherently what you were going to do, what it would cost, how long it would take, and why it would work to solve the problem at hand (these contracts were for new, cutting edge work, taking on real problems that had yet to be solved sufficiently). You needed to cite papers/experts in the area, current R&D on the issue, and to prove you know enough about it to do something. Being basically free money, it was stiff competition and we won more than our fair share of the grants.

That said, we probably would have done even better with a few more technical writers instead of making the engineers and programmers do it.
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jonnin: Sounds like most of the effort had to do with being knowledgeable about the topic in question than with the writing itself. Do you think whatever training you received in school helped you substantially in this role? More than reading previous output from your coworkers and from receiving feedback from your supervisors (which I imagine acted as ad hoc editors)?
I do believe my college courses in writing/english helped, yes. I had a course in technical writing along the way, but all of it helped, how to do citations properly, the classic argument format (make a case, defend it with examples/citations, conclude), grammar and sentence variation / readability, and more all meshed together.
These things came in batches, and everyone in the place was working on several at once. There was no time for feedback, you did your best. I had examples, of course, and we kept a "fill in the blank" document for the current format of the submissions. My manager was only likely to read it if I won and we had to DO the work. They looked at the first couple I did, but just a sanity check really.

As for knowing the subject, no, not really. I wrote several on things I knew nothing about. Its was a BS game, in many ways.

One example, the military decided to use xml then decided that was too bloated and was funding R&D to compress it (you had to beat bzip or bzip2, which does really well on xml).
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Fair enough. I still don't believe is an especially productive way to spend the student's time, on average.
And I agree with that. The *reason* you have to take a round of english/writing type classes is to get these skills. They do not need to pollute math and science with essays; the student's are already taking classes that teach those things. Offer a tech writing class, sure. And my job was unusual: how many coders need to write something more complicated than a user-guide which is 95% pictures?
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Update. Now she's got into it, she's really enjoying it. She's doing the language early development essay. She couldn't believe what a Fortran II program looked like! She managed to read some Algol 60 and Cobol programs - but Fortran II left here mystified. As she researched into it, she came across things like punched cards, paper tape etc etc. She's incredulous over how massive these early computers were, how limited they were and how they were used. She says she's going to research these early computers as she's found their history/development from then to what we have now fascinating.
Wow, an essay topic that sparks enthusiasm. :)

I'm glad to hear (read) she's enjoying the research, and will probably end up writing one damned fine essay paper as a result.

This topic should have been available without a student revolt.
The 'revolt' was really because it was 'sprung' upon them at the last minute. If the admin et al hadn't 'messed up' (insert own words here) then it would probably been just one of those things that had to be done.

From next year, there's going to be a series of extra lectures (currently planned as 2 per term) about the history of 'early' computers.
That seems like rather a lot for a subject that's largely irrelevant.
For a course, or courses, on strictly programming learning the history of computers could be for the most part irrelevant.

For Computer Science I'd say less so since CS AFAIK is a field that is about more than programming.
zapshe wrote:
I've written some trash essays that I wrote just because I knew the professor would approve.

I did that all the time when I was in college. I knew they sucked, and everyone else who read them thought they sucked (mainly my brother), but the professor loved them.

jonnin wrote:
how many coders need to write something more complicated than a user-guide which is 95% pictures?

Um...maybe code? Although IMO code is a lot less complicated than essays...
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