Comment Re:CS is a research/academic discipline (Score 1) 641
Indeed.
I think the original article misspoke. The author should have referred to Software Engineering, not Computer Science, as being commoditized.
More and more software is being created by software, thus the masters are being replaced by their creations.
But within the next 10 years, there will be a resurgence in the field of Software Engineering as Quantum Computers advance. And as in the previous wave, the initial Quantum Software Engineering mavericks will be the Computer Scientists who created the space to begin with. Then, as the financial opportunities offered by the field proliferate, more and more people will take it up, until it, too, becomes a commodity.
By then, some other information or computing science breakthrough will emerge.
In the end, enrollments are down in the CS field because opportunities for individual and even institutional innovation have waned in the presence of The Giants (Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Apple, etc.) - if you want to do some REAL COOL work, you can't do it unilaterally by just getting a college degree. You have to rely on getting a job in a research facility at one of these companies. And thus opportunities for $$$ have waned.
Regardless of how egalitarian some academians feel their domain is, the fact is that most people go to college to maximize their earning potential. (Whether they actually accomplish that is a different story...)
When someone manages to productize a quantum computer, the New Gold Rush will be on, and QCS enrollments will boom...
I think the original article misspoke. The author should have referred to Software Engineering, not Computer Science, as being commoditized.
More and more software is being created by software, thus the masters are being replaced by their creations.
But within the next 10 years, there will be a resurgence in the field of Software Engineering as Quantum Computers advance. And as in the previous wave, the initial Quantum Software Engineering mavericks will be the Computer Scientists who created the space to begin with. Then, as the financial opportunities offered by the field proliferate, more and more people will take it up, until it, too, becomes a commodity.
By then, some other information or computing science breakthrough will emerge.
In the end, enrollments are down in the CS field because opportunities for individual and even institutional innovation have waned in the presence of The Giants (Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Motorola, Apple, etc.) - if you want to do some REAL COOL work, you can't do it unilaterally by just getting a college degree. You have to rely on getting a job in a research facility at one of these companies. And thus opportunities for $$$ have waned.
Regardless of how egalitarian some academians feel their domain is, the fact is that most people go to college to maximize their earning potential. (Whether they actually accomplish that is a different story...)
When someone manages to productize a quantum computer, the New Gold Rush will be on, and QCS enrollments will boom...
