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As the parent of a sophomore history major, this is something that I think about a lot. However, my son has a deep, deep passion for history. Advising him to ge

by codva 13y ago

As the parent of a sophomore history major, this is something that I think about a lot. However, my son has a deep, deep passion for history. Advising him to get a CS degree just for job purposes seemed stupid, and considering how much help he needed from his high school sister to get through his Python class last year.... Although I am happy that his liberal arts college requires everybody to take 2 CS classes, I am also mystified why non-CS majors take one python and one C++ class. Wouldn't continuing with Python make more sense? However, if you are going to major in history, or English, or something like that you really do need to have a plan from freshman year about how you are going to turn it into a job when you graduate.

JonnieCache 13y ago
Maybe watch this with him, it's George Dyson (Freeman's son) recounting the story of the development of the computer at the IAS. It links CS to that fulcrum of the 20th century, the invention of the nuclear bomb. It's also highly entertaining, a very story told through coffee and ink stained punch cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s Thinking about it perhaps your son is more into knights, emperors and prophecies than cold war paranoia. It's a great video anyway.
- codva 13y ago
  Actually, he is a pretty big fan of cold war paranoia :) Military history is his passion. He is hoping to turn into a job as a historian with the National Park Service or something like that. I'm definitely going to watch that video though.
acdha 13y ago
I would advise your son to look into some of the digital humanities programs – people are doing very interesting things using CS techniques (e.g. text or image processing, large-scale data mining, visualization, etc.). It doesn't pay as well as working at Facebook but it would probably be far more interesting for someone like your son. One of my favorite examples was someone I ran into at the NIPS conference years back who was using machine learning to classify the handwriting for manuscripts in the Oxford library collections in an attempt to identify the copyist when that information had been lost over the centuries. Someone phrased it beautifully that they preferred having CS being their superpower in a different field. I think that's a great plan.

by codva 13y ago

JonnieCache 13y ago

Maybe watch this with him, it's George Dyson (Freeman's son) recounting the story of the development of the computer at the IAS. It links CS to that fulcrum of the 20th century, the invention of the nuclear bomb. It's also highly entertaining, a very story told through coffee and ink stained punch cards. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tg5gJxXBh8s Thinking about it perhaps your son is more into knights, emperors and prophecies than cold war paranoia. It's a great video anyway.

codva 13y ago
Actually, he is a pretty big fan of cold war paranoia :) Military history is his passion. He is hoping to turn into a job as a historian with the National Park Service or something like that. I'm definitely going to watch that video though.

acdha 13y ago

I would advise your son to look into some of the digital humanities programs – people are doing very interesting things using CS techniques (e.g. text or image processing, large-scale data mining, visualization, etc.). It doesn't pay as well as working at Facebook but it would probably be far more interesting for someone like your son. One of my favorite examples was someone I ran into at the NIPS conference years back who was using machine learning to classify the handwriting for manuscripts in the Oxford library collections in an attempt to identify the copyist when that information had been lost over the centuries. Someone phrased it beautifully that they preferred having CS being their superpower in a different field. I think that's a great plan.