A Slashdot thread this week points out an interesting article by Warren Harrison. Harrison discusses the problem of misrepresentation of software developers, especially in movies, and whether it has anything to do with how many students choose to major in computer science without having any idea of what it is programmers actually do. (There’s also the other side of the issue, whereby people who might be better suited to software development don’t study computer science because they don’t have any idea of what it is programmers actually do.)

I think his argument is certainly a valid one. I’m not a computer science major myself - perhaps because I do have an understanding of the industry, having worked from the design end of things during my time away from school. I’ve been taking some programming classes as electives, out of intellectual curiosity more than anything else; while I don’t think my philosophy major is really going to serve me well in any practical, career-oriented sense, I know that I’m better suited to philosophy than I am to programming professionally (although perhaps I’m better suited to design than either one of these, but that’s another issue altogether). My point, though, is that even in my brief time immersed in the academia of computer science, I’ve encountered a really surprising number of prospective cs majors who lack any concept of what it is they’re signing up to spend the next few years doing. These are people who, because they saw Hackers in high school or taught themselves HTML or are better at finding printer drivers than their little brothers, have deemed themselves Computer People and accordingly dive headfirst into the major when they get to college. I’m sure after the first couple of classes a certain percentage figure out exactly what it is they’re getting into (and get out of it as fast as they can), but it’s both frustrating and amusing to watch them struggle through something they don’t really enjoy at all when they’d be much happier majoring in almost anything else.

Not to say that Hackers isn’t truly the pinnacle of cinematic expression, but I’m not sure I can sit through another class with cs majors who can’t seem to grasp the concept of a memory address.