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I feel that, actually, the technical majors have been dumbed down for some time as well. I know I’m going to come off as an old fogie, but I got a degree in Math in 1974, went to grad school, then got a job as a computer programmer. Back then, most of the programmers were math/physics/engineering majors who had learned and/or developed their logical thought processes in their majors, then went on to learn a language in which to implement them.

When I was hiring programmers a few years ago, I was hard pressed to find anyone who knew more than the computer language itself. There was a depth of education that is lacking now, IMHO.

I feel that, actually, the technical majors have been dumbed down for some time as well. I know I’m going to come off as an old fogie, but I got a degree in Math in 1974, went to grad school, then got a job as a computer programmer. Back then, most of the programmers were math/physics/engineering majors who had learned and/or developed their logical thought processes in their majors, then went on to learn a language in which to implement them.

You make perfect sense (nothing old fogie-ish!). You have to know what you are programming and what is needed before even implementing the coding part of the project.

When I was hiring programmers a few years ago, I was hard pressed to find anyone who knew more than the computer language itself. There was a depth of education that is lacking now, IMHO.

That explains why the naval base I worked on as a civilian overwhelmingly hired engineers for its avionics programming. I've heard a supervisor or two say it was easier to hire someone who knew the mechanics and teach them to program than to hire someone who can program and teach them the engineering. Of course, these days most engineers will graduate already knowing several programming languages. I graduated in '83 and we were doing some fortran programming in my senior classes (my freshman year was spent using punch cards on an IBM mainframe! Thing advanced pretty quickly in those 4 years). Anyway, I think I worked with one computer programmer in my 16 years there and probably hundreds of engineers and tens of mathematicians and physicists. One philosophy major turned programmer - interesting fella! He was the token liberal and we put him on the left side of the trailer....

Back then, most of the programmers were math/physics/engineering majors who had learned and/or developed their logical thought processes in their majors, then went on to learn a language in which to implement them.

My major was chemistry, and I ended up learning Fortran. Then I picked up Cobol and became a business programmer for 31 years before my retirement in 2005. Along the way I picked up a host of minor languages and dabbled in MS/Access before I packed it in.

My timing was right. There are twelve year olds out there that are better qualified in today's languages, such as Visual Basic or C Sharp. As they say in the Mafia, "The old must make way for the new."

When I was hiring programmers a few years ago, I was hard pressed to find anyone who knew more than the computer language itself. There was a depth of education that is lacking now, IMHO.

I had a similar experience with Mechanical Engineering and Drafting. Back in the day, we were required to be able to design a good drawing that would convey simply and unambiguously the part we had designed. Fast forward a couple decades to CAD applicants from supposedly prestigious (and ACTUALLY very expensive) CAD schools, and you find that they hadn't been taught drafting-using-CAD, but simply how to work the CAD program. They had no idea what made a drawing good, much less how to design a part, but they thought they were mechanical designers because they could work the CAD program. Doh!