on the waxes and wanes of the CS graduation numbers...

[acroyear]

See Jane Compute : Is computer science a science? (part 1):

I actually heard a story---wish I could remember the source!---that back in the halcyon days of CS (1980's) when the gender ratios were much better, there was a somewhat concerted effort to change the way that CS was taught, to actively *discourage* too many people from studying the subject. And of course this had a much bigger impact on the number of women who chose to study CS. (Has anyone else heard this story? What's the origin?)

Actually, I don't see the teaching methods having an impact on how many people study having seen the 1980s boom, the early 1990s wane, and then the late 1990s second boom.

In all cases, I can name a sociological factor completely outside the educational community and certainly outside of their control: the popularity of the PC(s) and the idea that one could actually get a job with them.

In the 60s and 70s, most students fresh outta high school had no idea what a computer was until they actually got there.

In the '80s, the boom of the wide variety of PCs, all with their own little BASICs, meant anybody could be a programmer (in the Ratatouille "Anyone Can Cook" sense). Most of us went into CS because we were already half-way decent programmers before we even got there. The old 6502 boxen (Atari, Apple ][, Commodore 64, TRS-80) made it easy.

Now, around 1989, the 6502 revolution was over, a victim of Moore's Law. IBM had "won" and the PC became the exclusive domain of the business world. PCs didn't have programming languages for "anybody to use", and even the basic BASIC it might have on it nobody bothered with 'cause the applications didn't leave as much room for itch-scratching (that urge that generates the best of the Hacker community). Nobody came in looking for CS degrees because the computing world had quite literally become boring (Apple's 1984 parody commercial come true).

Come 1995 and Netscape, with its images and tables for layouts and javascript and easy access to free web servers and Linux means anybody can run Unix with all of its non-PC features and WOW there's MONEY to be made in programming (a MAJOR factor) and WHAM, a brand new boom.

Come 2001 and the dot-com boom has busted and Microsoft has one the browser wars and enough itches have been scratched and you start to find a wane in the numbers again - computing has either turned into a business (as it always was, boring), or merely a social construct (the web as the great virtual world). Once again, there are enough applications of reasonable quality that the urge to right your own has waned again.

JMU had CS graduating classes in the 100-200 range in the mid 80s.

I graduated from JMU in 1993, one of only 24.

In 1998, they graduated 150 and have never been smaller since.

What changed? The public perception that there could be a job in CS, AND that the work could actually be interesting.

Why did it change? The ability to program from home. The ability to create the "Hacker" mindset before even leaving high school and looking for a direction.

No professor at JMU changed how they taught what they taught between 1984 and 1998 (and today). The numbers of CS students had nothing to do with anything they did. Everything about the booms and busts has been because of the entry of the computer into the home and what the children could do with it and did with it before they left high school.

Comments

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I'd probably add the emergence of Java as well, since that gave the general public a programming language that could actually do something, and you didn't have to pay for it.

But, I don't think there will be quite anything like the 80s again as far as so much being in the user's hands. I remember cutting my teeth on typing in those games from Compute! magazine, then making my own modifications to them. I doubt you will ever find such a monster ever again.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

I miss the days when only geeks got into computers. Check with your computer oriented co-workers. How many of them are even aware that D&D is currently on version 3.5, much less aware thet version 4.0 is coming up soon? Computer programmers these days all look like frat boys, not the geek cliches we used to have.