Is Computer Science dead? My initial thought was no. However, while reading through all of the posts on this topic, I began to think that maybe it is dead, or least dying when viewed in the traditional sense. In other words, it’s changing, or going through a phase shift, similar to the way that much of the manufacturing in the U.S. has gone over seas in recent years. I can’t help but wonder if this may be the reason that there are fewer people entering Computer Science in college. I know that I wouldn’t want to invest my time and money studying a declining trade where many of my future opportunities may be far away from home.

Does one need a Computer Science degree in order to program, design or administer systems? Of course not, but it’s certainly beneficial, in my opinion. I’ve got over 20 years of industry experience and hold degrees in Business Administration and Computer Science, and most of the degreed developers that I’ve worked with over the years have outperformed their non-degreed peers. However, I must say that (2) of the better developers that I’ve ever worked with were non-degreed and self-taught, but did have some unrelated college experience. On the other hand, I’ve also worked with a couple of developers with graduate degrees that weren’t in the same league as most of their non-degreed peers. Although, I don’t have any hard numbers, I would be willing to bet my paycheck that the development teams that are responsible for developing the majority of the multi-million dollar systems that are on the market these days are degreed professionals that formally learned the fundamentals of their trades at an institution of higher learning.

Computer Science is not dead, it is just changing.

Long live Computer Science!!!