College Courses

[RichardCypher101]

Hello all, just wanted to throw something up. Im going to college soon :P And I have a few questions in mind. Im currently striving towards Computer Engineering and possible Computer Science, but the field I am aiming for is generally programming. I have a passion for the industry regardless of the salaries, im all for it. I have good resource material with my brother being a big head at the Bank of Wachovia (Basically the best programmer ive ever met), along with his library of books (I have books upon books of the newly written Microsoft .NET books, along with the slightly older Wrox books, along with Visual Studio and my own MSDN library). So I pretty much have the basics. As for the language ive been working on (Well its been awhile, ive been too busy with other things atm), its been Visual C#.NET. However im thinking about switching to VB.NET shortly to better understand the languages and atleast get the syntax down.

Basically im still a beginner but passionate about the field. Im asking for a little more insight on college courses and majors. Any help would be appriciated.

-Rich (This is in the Technology forum since it purtains to technology :P )

[cpiasminc]

Well, Computer Engineering is going to lead you more in the direction of hardware and a fair bit of fun in quantum mechanics should you ever look into specializing in fab tech. Computer Science is at best, purported to be about programming, but it's really more about the theoretical aspects of computing and computation in general. Yes, you'll run across courses (particularly in the first year or so) that will be more programming in nature, but they really won't dominate what you do throughout your time in school. You'll probably be able to get a chance to take an elective in database stuff or network programming or something similar. But don't kid yourself into thinking that universities will ever teach you a thing about programming. More often than not, you'll be given an assignment and simply be expected to complete it regardless of what it is or in what language it is to be implemented.

Don't get me wrong. Having a theoretical background is a very useful thing, but school will never differentiate between the practical and the impractical. This is something you'll have to figure out for yourself. In addition, where you will really have the most to gain insofar as learning is to simply be around people who know the material outside of class. Work on your own things aside from everything else. Most employers are interested in seeing that you could do all that and still manage to get through school. All that I know about graphics and numerical analysis and signal processing -- about maybe 5% came from class. Everything else was just my own doing, my own research, and getting involved in special interest groups... SIGGRAPH, SIGMUSIC, ACM, IEEE, etc.

All that really counts for something on your resume, but it's about the only way you can go to school and learn something.

Also, if you're getting into Computer Science in the US, a word of warning -- be prepared for some really horrible professors. Profs who can't teach, those who don't want to teach, those who simply don't give a damn, and those who are flat out incompetent. They'll be mixed in with some good ones, all right, but that's the general nature of it. CE is usually a little better because it's more of a hard science than CS which is a lot more abstract in nature. You don't really get hard facts and numbers, rather you get descriptions and overall gists of things and it's up to you to put the pieces together and construct all the details. Unfortunately, no one can teach you to do that.

Of course, I don't fault what you *could* learn in school if you took the time and effort. I mean, I went ahead and took courses that most people really don't because they were useful and interesting topics to me. It did cripple me in that I ended up never taking any route to generalize and learn anything about say, databases or software engineering. In another light, though, it has made me more adept at what I do and I would have probably been too bored in school otherwise. I also felt that what I didn't learn was too common not to have a wealth of information available to me online should I be forced to learn it to make a buck. It really depends on how you want to follow up after school is done with, though.

The opposite extreme is the trade schools, though. In my experience of having to interview a few people who went to Fullsail -- they have far too much practical teaching at the expense of theory. They understand much of the how, but basically none of the why. I asked one guy how to determine the intersection between a ray and a plane. He was able to answer correctly, all right. Then I asked him to explain the logic behind the solution. All he could say was "I just knew the answer. That's really all we're taught."

[Danji]

The opposite extreme is the trade schools, though. In my experience of having to interview a few people who went to Fullsail -- they have far too much practical teaching at the expense of theory. They understand much of the how, but basically none of the why. I asked one guy how to determine the intersection between a ray and a plane. He was able to answer correctly, all right. Then I asked him to explain the logic behind the solution. All he could say was "I just knew the answer. That's really all we're taught."
Wow, I'm much more interested in the Why of how something works than the answer. So you do interviews with people do you now Cpiasminc? Have people ever tried to call you mr. (cpiasminc's last name) and screw up and if so did you fault them or laugh it off? I'm just curious, as your last name isn't that common.

[RichardCypher101]

Cpia I cant thank you enough for posting in here. You were one of the sole individuals who I was crossing fingers for. Anyways, is there any recommendations you may lend? Yes im looking into getting into the programming side of things. Ive always heard that the only real difference between say Computer Engineering and Software Engineering was basically the title and the salary, that there may be small differences but none too complicated that you couldnt learn otherwise. So yea, anymore recommendations would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks.

-Rich

[cpiasminc]

So you do interviews with people do you now Cpiasminc? Have people ever tried to call you mr. (cpiasminc's last name) and screw up and if so did you fault them or laugh it off? I'm just curious, as your last name isn't that common.
Hehe... at my last company, I somehow got drafted into that management position, which is really not something I wanted to do. Dealing with people and managing them is not something I'm good at, nor do I particularly enjoy it. As far as the interviews, nobody really called me by name, but by initials. Even now at my current company -- my name is too long to fit on the nameplate at my office, so it just has my initials. Fortunately, I don't have to deal with interviewing people now as I'm effectively in a Mr. Fix-it type of position right now.

Cpia I cant thank you enough for posting in here. You were one of the sole individuals who I was crossing fingers for. Anyways, is there any recommendations you may lend? Yes im looking into getting into the programming side of things. Ive always heard that the only real difference between say Computer Engineering and Software Engineering was basically the title and the salary, that there may be small differences but none too complicated that you couldnt learn otherwise. So yea, anymore recommendations would be greatly appriciated.
In the academic world, CE and SWE are very different, though. CE refers more to the hardware design/layout. I guess you could consider it to be the "digital" side of Electrical Engineering, although CE contains quite a bit of analog circuitry as well (much of it to keep the digital part in functioning order). I'm not entirely sure why, but typically, people hiring programmers will look either for a CE or CS (or sometimes Math/Physics if the tasks are more mathematically-oriented) degree. Typically, a lot of the well-known private schools are not worth it at all if you're only going for undergrad. Those types of schools are typically structured in such a way that their undergrad programs are weak and twice as expensive so that they can fund their otherwise excellent graduate programs. State schools are typically just fine, but they do tend to specialize -- you'd really have to look for one that specializes in the arenas you're looking for and that may not always exist local to you.

As for pay... well, if a place like Wachovia will pay well for software engineers, then that's fine. But given the glut of people trying to do just that, it's not something to count on 4-5 years from now. A lot of people go into CS thinking that working as a programmer will yield easy money, and they just jump right in without a clue and then hear words like "Turing Machine" and go insane. I was always kind of in awe at how many people at my own alma mater would go into CS, find it too weird, and switch over to a philosphy major.

After some number of years of hardcore specialization, spending half my life on research, publications, sketches & apps, and only being at my second job since college, after the first one effectively proved to be job at a mob arm in the gaming industry (slight exaggeration), you'll have to forgive me if I sound a little jaded, but you basically have to prepare for the potential outcome that your 4 years will be completely wasted. We're in an era now where people tend not just to change jobs a few times before they turn 30, they actually change *careers.*

[Dralor]

Hey I'm going to go into CS in college too. :D

I already took one programming course at Wright State. Thank you PSEO.
It was intro to Java. I only missed half a point in the whole class thanks to me doing extra work forcing you to give me the input I wanted. I was doing imbeded loops and had the same loop in three differnt braches just changing the variable. When I did this I forgot to chgange one variable so if you did that specific brach the output was wrong. Teach me to do more work than was required. :lol: