Different High School Computer Science Strands

A recent talk by Bjarne Stroustrup at Stanford has sparked some conversation in the Computer Science Educators Facebook group. The talk itself doesn’t seem to be available but it was reported online at The Stanford Daily - C++ creator Bjarne Stroustrup reimagines how coding is taught

There is a lot there and I agree with some things in the article and disagree with others. I have less enthusiasm for C++ as a teaching language, especially in early courses,  for example. I’s like to share some thoughts on the idea of different strands and early courses for different audiences. These are initial thoughts intended to start discussion. I am open to the ideas of others.

First off, I understand that the idea of different first CS courses is difficult at the high school level. Stroustrup seems to be focused, as it seems most university CS faculty are, on the university level. Offering different courses is easier there as the size of both faculty and students tends to be larger. I do think that, where possible, high schools should give the idea some thought.

Stroustrup suggests three strands:

One would serve nonprofessionals, or those who only want basic tools. The second caters to scientists who want to focus on application-based programming instead of theory. The third emphasizes engineers or specialists who want to dive deeper into the complexities of software engineering.

I think universities need a strand for scientists who want to delve into theory. Regardless, I think high schools should consider a different set of strands.

One strand would be less theory and more applications based. Probably using Python or R with a focus on libraries more than theory. Statistics could be included as that would be particularly useful for students in the liberal arts. Skip the data structures that computer scientists love so much. Not everyone needs to spend a lot of time on those. Know what they are and where they fit in but not deeply how they are implemented. It’s more important to understand concepts like normalizing data and how to use libraries.

The second strand would be more theoretical for those students who want to be computer scientists and/or software developers. My time in industry taught me that theory is a lot more important than many self taught developers want to admit. There may be a place for C++ here though I would prefer that early in the strand start with C# (or Java if you must). This is where one would get into data structure implementation, Big O and optimization, and theory of computation.

I do think that in high school either strand should start with something like APCS Principles. It is a good base to start with. True multiple strands are very difficult in most high schools of course. If I had to pick one strand it would be the first one. Why? Because that would serve the most students well. Keep the AP CS A course for the serious CS geeks (my people) and make sure that teachers allow those students to go beyond the basics in the other courses where possible.

We need more students with computing skills and knowledge than we need high schools to turn out computer scientists.