Blog

Computer Science is Hard. Fact or Myth?

Dave Jackson • Oct 05, 2018

If there is something the world needs more of, it’s computer scientists. It’s a broad term, as this could mean anyone from PHP programmers to computer technicians. In order to excel in the world of computers, people need to study computer science in general.

Students who study computer science learn to design, analyze and develop computer hardware and software. This leads to many breakthroughs that will be used to solve problems in a number of social, business, educational and scientific applications. However, many people think computer science and it’s related fields are complicated.

Teachers and students alike may view the subjects as hard to learn and teach, and that only the brave should attempt it. But is computer science really that hard? Let’s see if this is a fact or a myth worth dispelling.

Is Learning Computer Science Hard?

So is learning computer science hard ? Well the picture above is certainly what is seems like on the outside! Learning computer science is no harder than learning business or management. In fact, many undergraduate programs design their syllabus to accommodate students with no knowledge of computer science at all.

Although this does not make learning computer science a cakewalk, students should be able to excel at it as long as they are willing to put in the time and work.

One inescapable aspect of computer science that really gets people down is computer programming. A lot of people think it is hard and should best be left to people who are passionate about computers (nerds). But is programming hard to learn? Not if the basics of writing code are clearly understood.

Skills Needed For Programming & Beyond

Basically, writing code is like writing down steps that tell a computer how to perform a particular task. Like with anything worth doing, it requires reading and practice to get the basics right – not to mention some problem-solving skills as well.

On the plus side, programming is just one of the skills a computer scientists needs in their arsenal. It is perfectly okay to be a computer scientist without being a good programmer as there are many non-programming jobs in the IT industry.

analyzing digital marketing results in computer scienceThese jobs include the following:

  • Business Analyst
  • Database Administrator
  • Solution Developers
  • IT Auditor
  • System Support
  • Project Manager
  • Data Analyst
  • Software Testing
  • User Interface Designer
  • Online Marketing Writer
  • Teacher

Another part of learning computer science that needs to be addressed is that it involves math. However, the math taught is computer science-specific and serves a purpose.

For example, programmers need knowledge of standard arithmetic (addition, subtraction, division and multiplication) and algebra to write certain applications or solve a particular problem. Luckily, the math is taught from point zero and can be kind of fun seeing how it meshes well with computer science concepts.

Watching the calculations you write bring your idea to life is an experience that most computer science majors will say they enjoy.

Is Teaching Computer Science Hard?

So do you need to be an expert at computer science in order to teach it? Do you even have to have a STEM major ? Not at all!

It could feel like a maze looking at methods for learning and teaching computer science. Although it is true that an individual cannot teach a subject they are not fully comfortable with, it would be impractical to think they need to know everything about it in order to teach it effectively .

If this philosophy works well with other subjects, such as biology or business, there is no reason why it should not work with computer science as well. Here is a story we like sharing about how a teacher in Haven, KS found success with our online STEM courseware with no prior experience.

Learning With Your Students Is A No Brainer

Did you know that you can learn computer science as you teach it? It’s a well kept secret that is very important for providing students with the best computer science education possible. This applies to students of college, high school or middle school level.

So what is the secret to…well…the secret?

In our experience, teachers who were previously not comfortably teaching computer science and web technologies are find success with CTeLearning ‘s online courseware and curriculum .

Teachers have found that not only are their students learning skills in Web Design , Mobile App Design and Computer Animation , but with each passing year, the teachers themselves are learning the skills as well!

Computer Science is For Everyone

One stumbling block to the effective teaching of computer science that is worth mentioning is thinking that some students where born to be computer scientists while others were not . Be careful of going down this slippery slope.

This idea is usually an issue when teaching computer coding and programming, as teachers will notice that some students cannot seem to grasp concepts just as easily as their peers.

Rather than give into this notion, a notion with zero evidence, teachers can double down on their teaching strategies to overcome the learning difficulties that some of their students are facing. Not everyone learns the same way, some need hands-on while others can succeed with clearly articulated concepts.

Learning to teach in a way that inspires creativity is the key to unlimited knowledge.

computer science is not that hard to learnSo is it Myth or Fact?

So is computer science hard ? The short answer is: it can be. However, it is not as hard as people make it out to be. The fact that people make computer science seem so difficult is probably why many people shy away from learning and teaching it.

As mentioned earlier, the world needs computer scientists, programmers, IT specialists, and more. We would want nothing more than to empower you to give your students a head start with a great learning platform that’s as easy to learn as it is to teach .

We might be a bit biased, but the real myth worth dispelling here is that the answer to the question “Is computer science difficult?” is a resounding no.

What do you think? Contact us to share your opinion or learn more.

Get in touch with us today!


You can book a demo directly using Calendly, call us directly at 913-764-4272 or 877-828-1216, or submit the form below and we will reach out to you.


We look forward to helping you and your students.

students with STEM certifications

Most Recent Posts

Horticulture and Sustainable Landscape Design Course Updates for 2024-2025

By Steve Waddell • 07 Jun, 2024
Today we are taking a look at our Horticulture and Sustainable Landscape Design course, which we are updating for the 2024-2025 school year. Landscape design and horticulture is a big business and a great STEM career option for students. This industry has always been a place for those who love nature, design, and working outdoors. We are excited to offer students brand-new features that will introduce them to this exciting career pathway. Horticulture is the science and art of the development, sustainable production, marketing and use of high-value, intensively cultivated food and ornamental plants. According to the latest research, the horticulture market, valued at $31.5 billion in 2022, is expected to grow to reach $54.1 billion by 2030. The landscape design industry, which includes landscape maintenance, lawn care, pest management, irrigation and water management, arboreal services, hardscapes, and landscape design and construction for both residential and commercial properties, is currently valued at $153.5 billion and that number is only expected to grow. Sustainability isn’t just a buzzword but an important concept to help clients build outdoor spaces that are long-lasting, budget-friendly and require minimal maintenance. Industry best practices include smart plant choices that keep water usage, maintenance cost and chemical use to a minimum. Course Overview If you are looking for a STEM-rich curriculum for students who love nature, working with their hands, and want to make the world a more beautiful and healthier place, our Horticulture and Landscape Design course is for you. Horticulture and landscape design is a blend of science and art. Throughout the course, students create stunning and sustainable designs for clients. They learn how to make optimal plant choices, predict and model plant growth, and test the impact of year-round sun, shade, and water usage. Through interactive tutorials, they learn plant science and soil science that they can apply to the design decisions of the current project. Your students learn that design is not just about creating solutions but also about the ability to communicate and sell their ideas. Interactive tutorials teach them 2D/3D sketching and drafting skills as well as how to create plans tailored to their clients' needs. Optional tutorials can help you incorporate 3D CAD, although students can complete the course without diving into this section. They practice creating detailed documentation and plans to accurately communicate the implementation of their creative vision. In the real world designers always work within constraints, and your students learn how to source materials, analyze labor costs, and stay on budget. Throughout the course, they learn presentation skills and how to sell their ideas. Our course is delivered as a "Virtual Apprenticeship," a project-based learning experience that simulates a real workplace, complete with meetings, co-workers, a supervisor, and customers. Students gain industry insights and explore careers through interviews with industry experts. By the end of the course, students will have a career-ready portfolio of design projects and an understanding of how to succeed in a landscape design career. The course comes with several certificate opportunities for students. First, they will receive a course completion certificate, documenting achievement in this career-focused course. Additionally, they have the opportunity to earn two career preparation certificates: Ethics in the Workplace and Critical Thinking in the Workplace. Both of these certificates are valuable resume and portfolio builders, highlighting key characteristics that employers seek. The course allows students the freedom to work at their own pace, but they must complete the course projects and activities as assigned prior to getting authorized to sit for the final certificate exam. As with all of our courses, you, the educator, are in control. You can use the whole curriculum as the course, or you can curate what projects and tutorials to use and when to blend our content with your own activities. 2024-2025 Update Highlights Five unique projects that incorporate the Virtual Apprenticeship are included: Curb Appeal, Retirees, Hospital Courtyard, Urban Park, and the Challenge Project: Curb Appeal – Your students' first virtual apprenticeship project involves assisting a home builder in creating sustainable landscape designs that add curb appeal to his new homes. These must not only add value, but need to be seen by the potential homeowners as sustainable, low maintenance, attractive and with low water requirements. Retirees – Two recent retirees want to transform their backyard into an accessible outdoor living space for their family. The space must accommodate for a new medical diagnosis. Hospital Courtyard – A hospital needs help to design a family-friendly space for the hospital's new memory care unit, promoting family interaction and support for cognitively challenged patients. Urban Park – A non-profit needs help to design a new community space on a vacant urban lot, transforming blight into a park representing a vibrant community. Challenge Project – Your students find a live project on their own where they must enhance property value and curb appeal, using their design skills for families, churches, local businesses, or schools. New and updated interactive tutorials include: Integrated Pest Management Plant Science Soil Science Urban Agriculture Nursery and Greenhouse Practices Edible Landscapes and Foodscaping Medicinal Landscapes Design Concepts, Styles and Trends 2D Sketching and Drafting 3D CAD Tutorials (Optional) Trees and Arboriculture Sustainable Landscapes, Water Management and Xeriscaping Budgeting, Planning and Project Management Ethics in the Workplace Certificate Critical Thinking in the Workplace Certificate New Landscape Designer Mobile Web App Like all of our courses, this course is PC, Mac, and Chromebook ready. There is nothing your students will need to download. As our clients know, our legendary teacher support is at the core of what we do. When teachers have a question, they call members of our development team directly to receive guidance. Contact Us For a Free Demo Interested in learning more and seeing a free demonstration of the course or any of our other courses ? Contact us today by clicking here or calling us at 913-764-4272.

How CTeLearning is Helping to Run SkillsUSA State Web Design and Development Competitions

By Steve Waddell • 25 May, 2024
For the past few years, members of the CTeLearning team have been helping Web Professionals Global in running the national SkillsUSA competition in Atlanta, GA. Last year, we branched out into assisting with state competitions that prepare students for the national competition. Since we started working directly with states in 2022, we have seen the level of competition improve significantly at both the state level and national level. Students are better prepared than ever to hit the ground running on day one and contribute to team success. In the spring of 2024 we helped facilitate competitions in Washington, South Carolina, Arizona, Rhode Island, Vermont, Texas, Nevada, Florida, Kentucky, Kansas, Oregon, Oklahoma and Illinois. Web Professionals Global does all the heavy lifting and supplies the state SkillsUSA events with the following: Online web design exam similar to what the competitors might see at nationals Competition project with client assets and judging rubric Handouts for competitors with overview and links to resources Online development environment “IDE” for each competitive team Support for judges and competition chairs CTeLearning’s big contribution is loaning our CloudCodePro IDE (integrated development environment) so that each competitor has their own online coding environment that is connected to our TeacherView. This allows the judges to have live access, making it easier for them to judge each team’s work. We also loan Steve, and he ends up roping some of our other team members in to help as needed. We enjoy doing our part to help the State SkillsUSA programs. We are glad that we get to partner with Web Professionals Global and help them deliver a turnkey competition that not only makes running the state competitions easier (rather than have the burden of creating the competition from scratch), but also models the national event so the state teams get a feel for the rigor of the national competition, whether students are participating in-person or remotely. Using our CloudCodePro IDE with the TeacherView also helps encourage judge participation. This is often due to needing to travel across the state and be out of the office a day or two. Our model gives states the chance to have judges assess participants from anywhere in the state. Many states struggle with getting industry help, let alone people willing to commit to hanging around late to judge. We make it easy for judges to participate from anywhere. The Day of the Competition Let’s look at how the IL competition ran to see how our package makes life easier for the teams, volunteers and judges that make each state competition happen. The Illinois competition on April 25, 2024 is representative of what other state SkillsUSA programs experience when they work with CTeLearning and Web Professionals Global. First, the Illinois SkillsUSA team contacted us to schedule the state competition and receive the competition kit. In the following days, the Illinois SkillsUSA team met with our team to get trained on what to expect on the day of the competition and how to ensure it went smoothly. On the day of the competition, teams showed up to the venue and received handouts outlining how the competition would run. This included an introductory video outlining the online development environments (although most teams don’t need to review much as many are already with online coding environments *such as VSCode ). The team members also logged into their IDE to make sure they were ready to go when the competition began. The IDE also contained the client assets along with a readme file explaining what each team needs to focus on if they want to win the competition (for example, make certain to preview your work to verify images are linked properly). Students were then introduced to their client for the competition and began to analyze the client’s needs, target audience and images and logos they would be using. After this introduction, students began the competition in their teams and started building their websites. Teams are not allowed to use frameworks of any sort (or help from AI), and doing so results in disqualification. We want competitors to use their knowledge and skills to demonstrate their understanding of responsive design, web accessibility and much more. Relying on a framework can hamper this demonstration as frameworks can be relied upon as a crutch. Upon completion of the competition, the judges used the online judging system that we provided. This included a fair and easy-to-use rubric for judging the work of each team. Judges are able to review all teams' work from a single view and can examine the end result or the code directly in the browser. This system ensures a transparent judging process that is consistent with the process that winning teams experience at the national competition. The winners of the Illinois competition were then submitted to the national competition and invited to participate in June. Chat With Us We are proud to be a part of this growing network of state competitions. Feel free to get in touch with us by clicking here or calling us at 913-764-4272 to learn more and have your state take advantage of our solution next year.

Why More Schools are Embracing Career and Technical Education

By Steve Waddell • 25 Apr, 2024
As school choice gains traction across the United States, an increasing number of parents are exploring educational options that extend beyond the traditional public school system. In addition to public schools, private, parochial, charter and Christian schools are increasingly recognizing the shift in student interests away from four-year universities towards more career-oriented education pathways that mitigate the risk of debt. This trend is driving parents towards schools that offer robust career and technical education (CTE) programs alongside the traditional core curriculum and character education found in charter, private, religious, and schools supported through school voucher programs. Career and technical education, when done right, is highly multidisciplinary. Technical skills are merged with history, math, and science and wrapped with the soft skills to better prepare learners for a more complex job market and future. Every career requires technical skills to get hired, but soft skills is what keeps professionals employed and allows them to move up the career ladder. Studies show that a lack of hands-on career exploration in high school is a critical gap, leaving many students unsure about their future paths and more likely to require significant adjustments to their educational trajectories post high school. How We Help At CTeLearning, we specialize in offering a diverse array of CTE courses designed to address these challenges. Our courses are ideal for schools of choice who are looking for easy to facilitate curricula taught by their educators so they can maintain their educational standards. CTE differs from traditional education by focusing on practical, hands-on experiences tailored to specific career pathways. This approach helps bridge the gap between education and employment, equipping learners with the skills and insights needed to thrive in the workforce. Our courses enable schools—including private, parochial, charter and Christian institutions—to provide engaging CTE curricula that expose students to potential career pathways, starting as early as middle school. Our courses include the technical skills and soft skills that industry expects. Each of our curricula include two soft skills modules: Ethics in the Workplace and Critical Thinking in the Workplace. These two interactive modules help fill gaps that many students seem to have in core career skills. To help students get career and college ready, these modules enable your learners to earn industry micro-credentials they can add to their resumes or a college entrance application. Our experience working with students and teachers shows that the project-based learning (PBL) approach is important. The best way to amplify PBL is to emphasize experiential learning and hands-on practical engagement. We enhance PBL by weaving in industry professionals who introduce important concepts and give context to the work and experiences the curriculum offers. By offering students direct engagement with industry professionals and real workplace environments, CTE programs enhance learning retention and deepen students' understanding of how theoretical concepts apply in practical settings. Our curricula are designed to allow students to learn at their own pace while building real-world projects and gain firsthand experience. Students beginning to identify their interests and career goals early on is crucial for making informed decisions in their educational journeys. Families of students in CTE programs report high levels of satisfaction, noting the effective guidance in career readiness that CTE provides, in stark contrast to traditional education pathways. Furthermore, CTE programs contribute to higher graduation rates, with students more likely to graduate on time compared to their peers in traditional settings. These programs also close the skills gap in the U.S. economy by aligning curriculum with workforce needs, ensuring that graduates are prepared for high-demand occupations in fields like web design, game design, coding, sustainability, animation, marketing and robotics. Our approach allows educators to better prepare and future-proof their students. Industry studies tell us that soft skills, ethics, critical thinking, communication, teamwork, time management and personal leadership are what industry needs, yet these skills seem to be harder and harder to find in graduating students. Taking the time to develop critical thinking within a career context prepares students not just for specific jobs but any career pathway. The world as we know it has a high rate of change and seems to be accelerating. This makes it seemingly impossible for educators to keep up. The turbulence of change makes curricular choices for educators more and more stressful. Our teachers know they can trust us to make sure that they remain on the cutting edge of what industry is looking for, continually updating curricula to reflect the latest industry trends and practices. Teachers and parents around the country are looking for ways to stand out and show more options for learners who may have varied educational trajectories. Foundationally, all parents want their children to learn in an environment that builds their character, confidence, knowledge and readiness for their futures. They want their kids to be adaptable, resilient and independent. Overall, the continual growth of school choice is closely linked to the growing appreciation for CTE as a vital educational pathway. This approach not only meets the immediate training needs of students but also prepares them for long-term career success, making it an attractive option for parents and students alike who are seeking practical, debt-free education alternatives. It is tough being a parent these days. It is tough being an educator these days. Let us make things easier for your school, your teachers and in turn better for your students. Contact us today to find out how we can help by clicking here or calling us at 913-764-4272. Interested in learning more? Check out our recent blog post on the importance of career and technical education.
Share by: