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Gates Doesn't Get Why More Students Don't Dig Computer Science

Posted on: Tuesday, 19 July 2005, 18:00 CDT

REDMOND Speaking to hundreds of university professors, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said Monday that he's baffled more students don't go into computer science.

Gates said that even if young people don't know that salaries and job openings in computer science are on the rise, they're hooked on so much technology cell phones, digital music players, instant messaging, Internet browsing that it's puzzling why more don't want to grow up to be programmers.

"It's such a paradox," Gates said. "If you say to a kid, 'Yeah, what are the 10 coolest products you use that your parents are clueless about, that you're good at using,' I don't think they're going to say, 'Oh, you know, it's this new breakfast cereal. And I want to go work in agriculture and invent new cereals or something.' ... I think 10 out of 10 would be things that are software-driven."

Gates made his remarks on the first day of the annual Microsoft Research Faculty Summit, which drew nearly 400 computer science professors from 175 schools in 20 countries to the software maker's campus.

Sharing the stage with Gates, Maria Klawe, Princeton University's Dean of Engineering and Applied Science, said most students she talks to fear that computer science would doom them to isolating workdays fraught with boredom nothing but writing reams of code.

Gates said computer scientists need to do a better job of dispelling that myth and conveying that it's an exciting field.

"How many fields can you get right out of college and define substantial aspects of a product that's going to go out and over 100 million people are going to use it?" Gates said.

Source: Columbian

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