Why do so few people major in computer science? (2017)

I don't think CS is a high social status field at all. You're deluding yourselves. Outside of our peers also in the industry nobody cares that you're a staff engineer at Google. Absolutely nobody. They'll assume you're doing IT work like the characters in the IT Crowd if they even bother to think about it at all and haven't already walked away. Here's a concrete example to make it really obvious. How many computer scientists are there in the Lords…

People go into CS to get jobs in software engineering. This is misguided. CS is really a mathematics major, if you become a good engineer in the process of getting a CS degree it's purely accidental on the part of the CS department. It's like getting an astrophysics degree in hopes of getting a job in the telescope industry. Universities should really emphasize software engineering as a major rather than CS. CS is great, don't get me wrong, you'll come…

One possible theory that's not mentioned in the article is that CS has probably become less approachable for those who don't enter college already somewhat versed in at least the basics. Something that is pretty much not true at all for any other STEM major. I don't do a lot of programming myself, but I took an intro Algorithms in Python MOOC from a top school a while back. I think it's fair to say that, had I no appreciable…