The University of Washington's Computer Science School is already well known. Having a strong partnership with Microsoft (thanks to Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft) has been a tremendous boost to this institution's recognition as a prestige and innovative. Once again, this incredible school blazes a new trail by promoting internally a new director: Dr. Magdalena Balazinska
Just in case you are like me and still wondering how long public schools (or any school in some states) will take to catch up with restructuring their schooling system to the workforce demand, here's a resourceful website by Google on Education.
Google isn't the only one, however. Microsoft has their own resourceful website focused on One Hour of Code. Apple has Everyone can Code. For young students specifically, Apple also has an education site called Teaching Code. Even Amazon is aware of the educational crises and creating their own online schooling resource: AmazonInspire. Of course, the other tech giant Facebook has their own with Facebook Education.
Rather than wait for our government or public sector to provide the skills and education that our world demands, I think I'll take the initiative with using resources from such leading companies and encourage my family, friends, and neighbors to learn ahead. After all, home schooling is on the rise and many families are supplementing their social education via faith institutions, sport clubs, city clubs, etc.
In Addition
From this GitHub post, I can even see how hackathons boost the learning levels of students better than coursework in computer science. If students begin to take on this project-based assignment (i.e. learning skills through projects rather than test-based assignments), then students will end up not only learning more but also remembering more. This could spark a new kind of homeschooling or custom learning path. Why not just learn on your own at your own pace and then pass a universal, online high school exam for a degree? Wouldn't that be nice?!
Today I answered the question from Enki on NaN (i.e. not a number). I failed (along with 40% of other developers).
My failure could be due to my lack of experience using NaN. Nonetheless, here's the explanation by Enki.
Wow, I never knew that there was an IEEE 754 standard corresponding to the NaN value. So naturally, I had to learn more because the simple explanation from w3schools was insufficient and I never ran into a case where I had to examine NaN === NaN or even NaN == NaN. Since I already knew what the comparison operator (equal type, equal value), I thought it could apply the same understanding as with the null object and undefined constant (see JavaScript data types).
But, I didn't see any quick examples from w3schools (my main online reference for quick understandings on standard web languages). Before I start digging, I refreshed my understanding from the quick lesson JavaScript's Numbers and now notice this new reference to the IEEE 754 standard. I definitely don't remember seeing that there, but could just be me.
Integers have an accuracy up to 15 digits - got it. Now, JS Numbers are always 64-bit double data types - got it. Reading further on this page, definitely don't remember an "Infinity" and I rarely remember the HexDecimal. Needless to say, refreshed my understanding of NaN.
Finally, refreshed my understanding with using the equality operator on objects. Unless comparing standard JavaScript data types (implicitly via var declaration), the object type doesn't matter because whenever two defined objects are compared the result is always false.
Mozilla provides further explanation with comparing NaN and its usage.
After watching/listening to Bill Gates answer questions from MIT Technology Review, I had to look up the world's top universities in Computer Science. After all, our world today is more globally integrated than ever. I believe it's no longer smart to only know about the top schools in one's country. If you're going to make sure that you and your family are positioned well for life, then you need to know how your career passion stacks up in the world (and not just in your own country).
As a big advocate for quality education and quality access to all, it's important to also know which countries take their public education more serious than others and to know who's implementing similar ideal policies in hope of not only providing the best educational opportunities, but also the best economic opportunities.
Without further rambling, here's the list I'm reading.
Most top universities are in the United States of America (USA). However, this year's top five universities only has two in the USA. Two are in the United Kingdom (UK) and one in Switzerland.
Other top universities outside of the USA include Singapore, Canada (Toronto), and China. The biggest surprise to me on this list is Tsinghua University (China). There's a lot to say about the increasing economy and, now, education quality that China is producing in becoming a world leader on the same level of the USA and UK.
Another surprise to me is NOT seeing a university out of Japan listed in the top 20. Germany has one university listed at rank 26 (Technical University of Munich), a Hong Kong university at rank 27, and another Singapore university 29. France has one at rank 38 (Paris Sciences et Lettres - PSL) and Japan has one at rank 40.
Years ago when I was in undergraduate school (1999), almost all of the top universities for computer science were in the USA. This is not the case anymore today.
Let's take a look at another media company ranking the world's top universities in computer science.
This is a strong difference in rankings for the top universities in the world in computer science. From US News, only two universities are in the USA and one is in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia? I'm skeptical about these results (powered by Clarivate Analytics InCites) especially since Stanford is not listed among the top ten rankings here.
Taking another review from Business Insider, the top ten rankings are more aligned with World University Rankings with having most top universities in computer science located in the USA and UK. Within its top ten, listed is one university from Switzerland and one from Singapore.
In conclusion, my initial thoughts still stand. Most top universities for computer science are still located in the USA, followed by the UK and Canada. However, many other countries are rising and the competition is ever growing among countries fighting for economic leadership. Overall, the biggest surprises are the speed of China's growing education system (along with its economy) and the lack or absence of India in the rankings among the best (considering how many Indians are competing in the USA job market for software positions). If I could rewind my age and choose my compsci program, then I would go to one of Switzerland's (like ETH Zurich) because of the additional cultural cross-over learnings and its ease of travel access.
This is why computer science is invaluable and revolutionizing all industries. Coding is the new fundamental (which requires reading, math, science and art).
"Both Woods and Doty were theoretical computer scientists when beginning this research, so they had to learn a new set of 'wet lab' skills that are typically more in the wheelhouse of bioengineers and biophysicists. 'When engineering requires crossing disciplines, there is a significant barrier to entry,' says Winfree. 'Computer engineering overcame this barrier by designing machines that are reprogrammable at a high level—so today's programmers don't need to know transistor physics. Our goal in this work was to show that molecular systems similarly can be programmed at a high level, so that in the future, tomorrow's molecular programmers can unleash their creativity without having to master multiple disciplines.'"
