On Computer Labs

Computer science is a fairly new major for most universities. Most started CS programs sometime in the 1980s, even if departments may have existed ten or more years prior to that.

Computer science is weird because its existence is partly based on a technical device, the computer. Some would tell you that computer science's roots are in math, and they'd be right. When Turing came up with his machine, it was more of an abstract machine. It had a tape to write on, and a set of rules to run. I'm sure, initially, he didn't think of real computers, until they were invented shortly thereafter.

But when it came time to teach it, many universities sought a model for computer science courses. Given the word "science", some adopted the idea of a computer lab, much like chemistry majors have chemistry labs and biology majors have biology labs. But if you're going to code, you need time, and these labs have rather limited hours. A significant project can take 10-20 hours, far longer than a typical lab.

It may have made sense to have labs when computers were expensive, but these days, even art majors have computers. A traditional lab like chemistry and biology still requires special materials like frogs or chemicals.

Jaime tells me that he still runs computer labs, and I have to imagine it's because the computer science department has gotten stale. You can have "labs", but it should run maybe 90 minutes, not a few hours, and have most of the work done out-of-class.