Any other CS students?

@Avairian don’t distress! haha If there’s anything you could take away from this it’s that… You can start programming at any age. That and don’t let the advanced Tech’s who’ve been writing code before they could spell get you down!
As @sdee said (in multiple threads i believe as well)…

@HamoPeche that’s insane! That’s crazy that someone wouldn’t be able to do that little coding bit… as well as not knowing recursive? Funny article.

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Well I’ll still distress for awhile. I’m 21 and I just started my first C++ class. That and the fact that I am horrible with math is not setting me up very well. :frowning:

I love solving problems though. That’s what first got me into spending a semester in high-school learning SQL and sparked my interest in programming.

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welcome aboard @HamoPeche! :smile: glad to have another elder statesman around…

then you will find programming immensely satisfying…

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Agreed, do not panic! :wink: If you can do iado, you can do this. :slight_smile: :slight_smile: :slight_smile:

@not_owen_wilson and I were just talking about this at lunch. All you really need to be able to do is count from 0 to 1 to n, and watch out for fenceposts. XD

That’s not saying it won’t be hard, because statistically, it’s likely to be. :slight_smile: But so is saving the world and everything else worth doing. In this case, maybe some of the difficulty is even even front loaded.

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Very true. However I’ll need to get a little more fancy in order to get that math minor my college requires for a BS in Computer Science. o.O

I’d prefer not to post the number of attempts I’ve made to pass College Algebra. Hahaha (In my defence I didn’t study nearly as much as I should have [if that’s considered a defence bahaha])

A very good point. With enough effort it should be possible.

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Programming is difficult, stressful and you will most likely want to kill yourself after a short while.

…by drowning in your pool next to your BMW and 3 floor house.

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I moved 13 posts to a new topic: Why programmers are awesomer than you

I moved a post to an existing topic: Why programmers are awesomer than you

Underailing ahoy! To start with I’ve got no idea how your weird american uni/college system works with things like college and uni being different sometimes just being the start of the weirdness to me. I am doing a bachelor of IT though here in australia, I get the choice out of something like a dozen majors and chose Games Design and Development. However due to the sad state of standardization there I’m planning on doing a double major but you’ve thrown me off here, I was planning on doing the second as Software Development but now I’m looking at CS again (it was my second choice). It’s all interesting stuff, I’m better with maths than programming but I am quite talented at maths.

It’s all interesting stuff, I’m kinda lucky for the choice in that most of the subjects that are required for either software development or computer science I’m taking as electives because they’re the most interesting options. What would all your thoughts be on Software Development vs Computer Science? For reference the games development one I’m doing as well is more physics and games focused, the general software course has more general things like algorithm design, oop, and web dev courses but based off first year which I’ve done is slower than the games one. First year was easy enough in that my elective choices meant that I did all required subjects for all three.

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is there a particular focus for either of these tracks? and these would represent your final year(s) at uni?

In the U.S. “College” and “University” are pretty synonyms. However we tend to use the term college for smaller colleges 2 year degrees while we use University to describe larger colleges 4+ year degrees. It’s a common practice for students to go to a small community college for their basic courses and then transfer to a larger university to save some money.

Not sure if that really helps. lol

How it works for the uni I got to at least is that there is 8 core units that all IT degrees do across the 3 year degree. On top of that there is 8 core units for your major and 8 elective units spread across the 3 years. The numbers vary slightly but that’s pretty much how they work. The problem for me is that even though there is a lot of overlap initially they diverge a bit in second and a lot more in third year. CS has things like distributed systems and os concepts while software dev has things like algorithm design and web dev. I’m one elective slot short of being able to do both I think, the way they’re arranged by the uni confuses things a little bit as they have a weird degree/major separation at times. I’ll try and give any other info if you want it, I could also try finding the actual course info pages but it’s a bit of a maze at times.

A bit, although the fact that here we only have the one and it’s mainly 3 year degrees doesn’t help any.

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Here university is a college where you can complete 3+2+2+2 and so on depending on the level of education you’re going for.
College is 3+2 where you become a “specialized” expert at something which is basically masters degree but shows that you’re more oriented towards actual work, not theory like in university. If you want to go for doctorate and other stuff you would need to do another extra semester BEFORE doing the extra 2 years for master’s degree and then do everything else at the university.

So basically
University - you can become a nuclear scientist with 4 PhD’s directly
College - 3+2, specialized expert/master’s degree and you’re done(can’t go further unless you start over at the university) OR 3 and then switch to university with an extra semester and get masters, doctorate and others

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sad day… How do I appeal a posts move? I thought the program rambling was entirely relevant to my College venting @SteveAdamo! haha

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Well well well, what do we have here… A freethinker? Somebody opposing glorious leader @SteveAdamo? Somebody who thinks best leader’s decisions are not the best?

a black van appears

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I am past student…WAY past. I just have an associate degree but I completed it in 98 so that was, gulp, 16 years ago. I drifted into different work, but every once in a while I pick up a project. Last one was a robo rally clone using C# on the xbox 360 for Dreambuildplay…i might work on some stonehearth modding.

That’s a hard choice. It sounds to me from this that perhaps your CS degree is more like the traditional CS degree that’s been offered for a while (the one that traditionally descends from math) and the Software Dev degree is maybe something more recent, that was added to inject a greater measure of practical application into the program?

Solely from a hiring manager POV (and any other hiring managers here should weigh in) I can tell you that a CS degree tends to garner immediate respect when going through a heap of resumes (because it’s been around longer, and many universities have similar curriculums) but a Software Dev degree is more practically desirable, because there’s a LOT about writing software in a long-term setting that is not covered by traditional, theoretical CS. Unfortunately, since the software dev degree is fairly new and called lots of different things in different places, people need to be reassured of your program’s rigor and usefulness. In the end, you should take whichever suits you best (and not for a hiring manager) but since it sounds like you’ll be taking lots of classes that cross the disciplines, whichever degree you decide on, be sure to tailor your resume to highlight all the skills you gained that are not necessarily in the major you picked. Or see if you can major in one and minor/specialize/focus (whatever option your university has) in the other.

Another useful thing is to ping alumni in both fields, if you know any, and see what reputation the two majors have with companies that tend to hire from your school.

Good luck!

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this really is a hugely beneficial thing (networking)… i always refer to my own degree as the means of opening doors… and that the contacts and relationships i establish (in the circles i’m interested in) provide the paths to said doors…

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I had a professor (taught software development) who’s first words on the first day were simply "Why are you here?"
A lot of people jumped on it and the most generic being, “for a piece of paper,” and, “to learn computer science.” At which point he said that’s wrong. He talked about business in the past where he had hired guys straight out of high school because they knew their stuff. He went on to say that Online tutorials/documentation is extremely thorough, most of college is learning on your own anyways, and there’s many different ways to prove your knowledge in CS other than a piece of paper. So then he asked again, “Why are you here?”

No one came up with anything after that… At which point he said, “You’re here because every person in this room is striving for the same thing. You’ll be taking classes with each other and after you graduate you’ll all generically be in the same field. That is a massive advantage and why you’re here.”

Was a cool thought… hadn’t thought about “networking” that way before then.

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[quote=“Minion, post:65, topic:5031, full:true”]
At which point he said, “You’re here because every person in this room is striving for the same thing. You’ll be taking classes with each other and after you graduate you’ll all generically be in the same field. That is a massive advantage and why you’re here.”[/quote]

Being the CIO of my company and the guy who hires every Software Engineer and one of those who essentially went from High School to Software Engineer (14 years in the army and some college in between) I ask myself, “Why would you pay thousands of dollars for that ‘advantage’”? I’m not sure its worth it. I didn’t take that route, yes I did take one C++ class in college (after Army) but my two High School classes were enough to teach me how to be a Software Engineer (the college course was a nice refresher prior to me dropping out of the genetics engineering major I was in). In this age of the internet networking is too easy, the cost and time of college put you years behind your competition. I just can’t see the value in it, I believe what the professor says is true, college is unnecessary to become a Software Engineer. I can’t believe the social advantage is enough to replace four years work experience you’d have if you didn’t go the college route.