It was similar for me (no physics but 2/3 of the courses were math) about 20 years ago. I suspect they do it because way more people sign up to study CS than the university can afford to have graduating every year, so they need a way to "filter out" a lot of students.
They already filter out a lot in terms of admissions (you need quite good grades in high school to be able to attend the first year) so I'd wager if the purpose was to train as many people that are capable of being trained in programming we'd see a lot more students graduating every year.
It's a fair point that CS is not the same as "programming vocational school" but seeing what companies use as criteria for hiring junior programmers you can't really blame the students.
> It's a fair point that CS is not the same as "programming vocational school" but seeing what companies use as criteria for hiring junior programmers you can't really blame the students.
True. I don't regret attending (and passing!) all those math+physics lectures to be honest. All the stuff I missed in uni regarding software engineering and programming I learnt them quite fast and easy in my own time (e.g., at least for me after passing an exam full of Cauchy-Riemann Equations and friends, it was quite easy for me to learn Java or to go through books like TCP/IP Illustrated or The Art of Unix Programming in my own time).
I managed too, but the problem is a lot of people who didn't could have been great developers. Your ability/tolerance to math/physics isn't proportional to your ability to become a good programmer (not any more than any other mentally taxing activity at least).
They already filter out a lot in terms of admissions (you need quite good grades in high school to be able to attend the first year) so I'd wager if the purpose was to train as many people that are capable of being trained in programming we'd see a lot more students graduating every year.
It's a fair point that CS is not the same as "programming vocational school" but seeing what companies use as criteria for hiring junior programmers you can't really blame the students.