How is the Computer Science major?

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1337h4x0r

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I'm still in college but its time for me to make a choice on my major. I really do like computers and I'm in the Cisco networking program right now, but its just not for me. Personally I just like to work with computers mainly hardware. I took a beginners Comp Sci C++ class a year ago and found it to be some fun but had to drop due to other needed classes. I was aiming for Computer Engineering since a few have been telling me thats where the hardware parts are dealt with, but after looking at the requirements.. it's just WAY too much for me (IMO at least). The classes are twice the size of the comp sci major. Plus I was looking into some kind of test engineering job like Software TE and after doing some research, it says all you needed was a comp sci degree.

Any inputs from current or finished comp sci majors?
 
Why was the Cisco networking program "just not for you"?
 
And what about the computer engineering degree was way too much for you?
 
CompSci is very heavy in the theoretical, mathematical and software side of the computer world. If you just want to be a hardware knuckle buster, look into an IT degree, they're usually Associate level degrees only but hardware stuff usually requires more certs
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
Computer science has little to do with computers, let alone any kind of hands-on work with hardware. Hell, I know PhDs who couldn't install a hard drive.
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Computer science is almost entirely about computers; but you're right installing hard drives isn't part of the curriculum. If your interests are in IT work then CS or CE may not be a good option.
 
There's a distinct difference that not everyone realizes (Although I hope most people on this forum do)... IT and CS are completely different. I started getting into IT before I quickly realized that I didn't want to do that for a career and moved to CS. For me IT was just boring, you weren't the engineer that designed the hardware nor the developer who wrote the software. You were just a guy who used stuff they made to perform somewhat boring tasks, there was never a real challenge to any of it. It was that creation that was way more interesting for me... writing software or working with hardware is much cooler than fixing computers/networks.
 
Blazestorm said:
There's a distinct difference that not everyone realizes (Although I hope most people on this forum do)... IT and CS are completely different. I started getting into IT before I quickly realized that I didn't want to do that for a career and moved to CS. For me IT was just boring, you weren't the engineer that designed the hardware nor the developer who wrote the software. You were just a guy who used stuff they made to perform somewhat boring tasks, there was never a real challenge to any of it. It was that creation that was way more interesting for me... writing software or working with hardware is much cooler than fixing computers/networks.
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Blazestorm said:
There's a distinct difference that not everyone realizes (Although I hope most people on this forum do)... IT and CS are completely different. I started getting into IT before I quickly realized that I didn't want to do that for a career and moved to CS. For me IT was just boring, you weren't the engineer that designed the hardware nor the developer who wrote the software. You were just a guy who used stuff they made to perform somewhat boring tasks, there was never a real challenge to any of it. It was that creation that was way more interesting for me... writing software or working with hardware is much cooler than fixing computers/networks.
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this is somewhat demeaning yet somewhat true at the same time. hope that wasn't your intention lol.
 
Haha, I don't mean to put down anyone in IT... I spent a year or two with it before deciding it just wasn't for me. I still enjoy building and working on computers, I just wouldn't want to do it for a living.

I respect IT and the crap they have to put up with, and it's especially bad at my school only because they lack funds. The network at my school is terrible and IT can't do anything about it, yet they're the ones that get blamed all day. They've been using the same networking equipment for the past 8 years with no funding going to IT. Although I'm not a fan of the head of IT, who decided to cap our bandwidth to 1mbps 24/7 even when there are 5 people at campus using the network it's still slowed down to a crawl. They claimed it was because everyone was watching YouTube videos and using up all the bandwidth, but it doesn't make sense to limit all traffic at all times of day.

Perfect example from Facebook today, we start class tomorrow... I know they're joking but IT (which is run mostly by students/college kids our age) are getting annoyed because there's nothing they can do to improve the situation.

C B - Last day of summer. You ready for us school?
P C - IT doesn't seem to be :p
J M - When is IT ever ready for anything though? :p
 
I'm a ComSci graduate and i don't think i ever remember picking up a screwdriver. The closest i got was sticking things to breadboards so we can learn how the program flows through the hardware. Everything i've learned about tinkering with computers, is from me tinkering with computers.

What comsci does is give you a different mindset to understand things from a computers perspective. They don't actually teach you the details of a programming language either (You take vocational courses for that), but the deep understanding of logic means you can apply it anywhere. How you gather data, how to sort through it, how to turn an action into a flowchart, how to convert a guy writing something on his notebook into OOP.

The most significant subject i've had was System Analysis and Design. It's where you turn a physical set of actions (i.e. running a restaurant), break it down to it's logical components, and quantify every aspect of it into hard numbers. And then reorganizing those processes to be more efficient and/or improve productivity. Programming language isn't even critical. If a piece of software will help improve their inventory or point of sale, then do it. Even then there's no restriction on what language to use either.

In the end, it's a long boring course, that doesn't actually even teach you how to use a specific programming language. But what it does is teach you the fundamentals (We used VC, but it's mostly to illustrate OOP, not teach VC). When a new tech pops up, nothing changes, everything in ComSci still applies. When a ComSci graduate looks at a crowd of people, he sees numbers. We don't actually do the matrix thing, but we've accepted that everything is quantifiable.
 
Sly said:
The most significant subject i've had was System Analysis and Design.
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Man, that subject was a waste of time at my uni... When a core CS unit is dumbed down to the point where they're offering it as a commerce elective with no prerequisites, you know something's seriously wrong...
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
Man, that subject was a waste of time at my uni... When a core CS unit is dumbed down to the point where they're offering it as a commerce elective with no prerequisites, you know something's seriously wrong...
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That's a real world application of ComSci, using everything you've been taught for the last two years, you have to physically be at the job site directly in contact with the people working, encounter problems that you wouldn't find in a textbook, design your system from inception, maintenance, all the way to the time it gets phased out, and at the end, you present it to a panel made up of three senior professors (Typically, atleast 1 would be an a-hole, if you get 2 a-holes, you are screwed), any one of which can fail you. My schoolmates feared it because practically everyone fails the first time, and some even come out of it crying because three months of work got hammered in every direction (Not anything against gays, but they beat female professors hands down when it comes to criticizing peoples work, even if you have a solid argument, they'll punch a hole big enough for a truck to drive through). How the heck do they dumb that down???
 
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LuminaryJanitor said:
As someone once said, computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes.
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Lot's of people say lots of things; some true some not. Ignoring that you've misattributed the quote to Dijkstra, which is amusingly pointed out in the link you provided (and the actual quote's meaning clarified as just trying to get children excited about CS), the fact remains CS is about computers.
 
jadams said:
this is somewhat demeaning yet somewhat true at the same time. hope that wasn't your intention lol.
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It's entirely true. IT graduates will deploy the networking hardware that CS majors design. It's the difference between being a mechanic and being someone who designs engines.
jimmyb said:
the fact remains CS is about computers.
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LOL, no. Systems Engineering and sometimes Electrical Engineering are about computers. Computer Science is about the interaction between software and the hardware.
 
Just stumbled on this thread, never got my college degree. Self taught and been working in the computer field for the last 15 years.....I have a few certifications, but those were mostly to pad my resume and make my employers feel nice and fuzzy. I always thought that getting a CompSci. degree would help me. Now after reading this thread, i'm of the opinion that its a complete waste of time.

Not trying to dissuade the original poster from doing it mind you, but it just doesnt seem applicable in a real job environment at all. Especially when you learn how to quantify things already from programming and other various computer centric areas. Am i wrong in my assumption? I'm sure i must be, but this is the feeling i got reading the above posts.
 
You need to know your stuff. If you learn your stuff from experience, self teaching, or a computer science degree, it doesn't matter. You just need to know your stuff. I meet people who have degrees who don't know their stuff as well as people who are self-taught. I meet people who are self-taught who don't know their stuff as well as those with degrees.
 
mikeblas said:
You need to know your stuff. If you learn your stuff from experience, self teaching, or a computer science degree, it doesn't matter. You just need to know your stuff. I meet people who have degrees who don't know their stuff as well as people who are self-taught. I meet people who are self-taught who don't know their stuff as well as those with degrees.
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Well said, this is what the job world demands. Results. I do tend to think that doors open easier with more degrees backing you up.
 
Doors open easier with more results backing you up.
 
mikeblas said:
ILOL, no. Systems Engineering and sometimes Electrical Engineering are about computers. Computer Science is about the interaction between software and the hardware.
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lol yes it is?

Saying "CS is about computers" is in specific terms pretty undefined, so I think very difficult to definitively disagree with like you've done. Note that I didn't say it is the study of computers.

Anyway, even if I were to accept that computer science is exclusively about "the interaction between software and the hardware" (which I certainly don't), nothing about this assertion means CS isn't about computers; software and hardware are an integral (and necessary) component of modern computers and therefore a field about their interaction would also be "about computers".
 
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There you go 1337h4x0r, CS is exactly like this thread. Full of folks who are positive what it's about and willing to argue endlessly about it while ignoring your post. That is the same behavior you can expect in your CS classes.

Perhaps you would be more interested in being a technician of some sort rather than programming or engineering. I don't mean to be rude but, starting college before you know what you want to do is putting the cart before the horse.
 
Sly said:
That's a real world application of ComSci, using everything you've been taught for the last two years
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I think mine might have been a little different to yours. The name "Systems Analysis and Design" was a little misleading. They should have called it "UML for Dummies"...

jimmyb said:
Lot's of people say lots of things; some true some not. Ignoring that you've misattributed the quote to Dijkstra, which is amusingly pointed out in the link you provided...
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I never mentioned Dijkstra, and I gave a source which attributed it correctly. Where's the confusion?

jimmyb said:
(and the actual quote's meaning clarified as just trying to get children excited about CS)
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The actual quote's meaning is exactly what it appears to be, when taken out of context - that the idea that CS is about computers is a myth.

jimmyb said:
...the fact remains CS is about computers.
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You could be the world's most brilliant computer scientist and do all your work with a pencil and paper. Computers are a useful tool, and a source of interesting problems and constraints, but their role in computer science is incidental at best.
 
dj LiTh said:
Just stumbled on this thread, never got my college degree. Self taught and been working in the computer field for the last 15 years.....I have a few certifications, but those were mostly to pad my resume and make my employers feel nice and fuzzy. I always thought that getting a CompSci. degree would help me. Now after reading this thread, i'm of the opinion that its a complete waste of time.

Not trying to dissuade the original poster from doing it mind you, but it just doesnt seem applicable in a real job environment at all. Especially when you learn how to quantify things already from programming and other various computer centric areas. Am i wrong in my assumption? I'm sure i must be, but this is the feeling i got reading the above posts.
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Of course, nothing's stopping you from taking a vocational course if you want to learn everything about a specific language. It's faster and more cost effective to be honest if you want to earn a living straight out of college. You don't need to know the underlying fundamentals or the big picture to be a good programmer.

The difference between a vocational programmer and a comsci is in their perspective.
 
LuminaryJanitor said:
You could be the world's most brilliant computer scientist and do all your work with a pencil and paper. Computers are a useful tool, and a source of interesting problems and constraints, but their role in computer science is incidental at best.
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Ha my CompSci professor made us code entire programs using a pencil and paper, and HE would use an IDE to build it and run it, while we couldnt
 
86 5.0L said:
Ha my CompSci professor made us code entire programs using a pencil and paper, and HE would use an IDE to build it and run it, while we couldnt
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I still have those 11" graphing notebooks in storage and i've been carrying around a mechanical pencil ever since :p
 
jimmyb said:
Anyway, even if I were to accept that computer science is exclusively about "the interaction between software and the hardware" (which I certainly don't), nothing about this assertion means CS isn't about computers; software and hardware are an integral (and necessary) component of modern computers and therefore a field about their interaction would also be "about computers".
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Some computing machines don't use software.
 
Blazestorm said:
There's a distinct difference that not everyone realizes (Although I hope most people on this forum do)... IT and CS are completely different. I started getting into IT before I quickly realized that I didn't want to do that for a career and moved to CS. For me IT was just boring, you weren't the engineer that designed the hardware nor the developer who wrote the software. You were just a guy who used stuff they made to perform somewhat boring tasks, there was never a real challenge to any of it. It was that creation that was way more interesting for me... writing software or working with hardware is much cooler than fixing computers/networks.
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the word IT is very vague and can mean different things to different people. To some IT means anything tech related... from the $12/hour tech support guy to the PhD researcher at Google.
 
and back to the orignial question can you clarify what you are trying to do? First you say hardware then you say software tester... which one is it?
 
Computer Science is basically math expressed in code. If you don't care for higher level math then a computer science degree is not for you.
 
I disagree. Math was one of my favorite subjects in school but I quickly lost interest after completing Calculus and absolutely hated all of the discrete math stuff. Yet I still enjoyed programming and was able to get through despite not enjoying many of the math classes and honestly forgetting much about it afterward.
Most students Ive seen got into CS because they wanted to make software, not because they liked math or wanted to be a "Computer Scientist", and they did just fine doing that.
 
eon said:
Yet I still enjoyed programming and was able to get through despite not enjoying many of the math classes and honestly forgetting much about it afterward.
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It's ok to not enjoy it, but one still has to be able to actually do it.
Calculus I is famous at pretty much any university to separate science from liberal arts majors.
 
eon said:
I disagree. Math was one of my favorite subjects in school but I quickly lost interest after completing Calculus and absolutely hated all of the discrete math stuff. Yet I still enjoyed programming and was able to get through despite not enjoying many of the math classes and honestly forgetting much about it afterward.
Most students Ive seen got into CS because they wanted to make software, not because they liked math or wanted to be a "Computer Scientist", and they did just fine doing that.
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Mathematics isn't just about 1+1. It also covers algorithms and equations. Which we do a lot. I don't have my multiplication table memorized, but hey, i've got an $800 calculator in front of me. Programming also involves you looking at a physical action, and then expressing it as an equation.
 
not an action, but rather a logic or a reasoning expressed in an intermediate language which is then translated into machine language
 
eon said:
I disagree. Math was one of my favorite subjects in school but I quickly lost interest after completing Calculus and absolutely hated all of the discrete math stuff. Yet I still enjoyed programming and was able to get through despite not enjoying many of the math classes and honestly forgetting much about it afterward.
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Most high school maths is not really maths. And most programming is not really computer science.

Besides, not all maths is the same. Just because you hate some of it doesn't mean you hate all of it (and it certainly doesn't mean that anything you don't hate is not mathematics). I spent quite a few years at uni, covering physics, chemistry, maths, chemical engineering and computer science. And out of all that, one of my most hated subjects was statistics, and one of my most loved was abstract algebra.
 
eon said:
the word IT is very vague and can mean different things to different people. To some IT means anything tech related... from the $12/hour tech support guy to the PhD researcher at Google.
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QFT.
 
LstOfTheBrunnenG said:
QFT.
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I don't disagree that some people can associate IT with anything tech related. And maybe more formal definitions might lump CE and CS in as IT.

But I think for most people in the industry there are really 3 separate fields. IT, CS, and CE.

IT guys put what the CS and CE guys build and use them in the real world. They manage, maintain, install, and use the hardware and software that the CS and CE guys design/build.

Although that's just like... my opinion man...
 
This forum thread is the exact reason why there is a disconnect between college degrees and the "real world."
 
Huh? How did this forum thread drive a wedge between all college degree curricula and applie practice? Wasn't there a disconnect between the two before this thread even began?
 
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