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Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

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Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#131

Post by dbcurtis »

Do you know how to study?

No, I mean really? Was high school easy? CS won't be. Your math classes will force you to think in a new way, unless you had a very proof-oriented math education, which is exceedingly rare in the US.

A significant number of the smart kids that land in freshman engineering are smart enough that they never had to study in high school, and therefore never learned how to study hard things, on a deadline. A good number of those smart kids wash out, not because they aren't capable, but because they just don't have the study skills. Don't be that guy.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#132

Post by verdverm »

ta17711771 wrote: post #84
verdverm wrote: post #2

Learn your first (class's) language now, so when you are learning you can focus on concepts not syntax. Learn bash and master the terminal, bash programming guide, advanced bash PG, https://github.com/hofstadter-io/jumpfiles Consider Vim Be involved in the CS groups, this is where the smartest people are Talk to your faculty all the time Get into research Build things that aren't for class Hit me if you like, email i…

Underrated comment. Since everyone has the conceptual stuff down: Learn about Wireguard. Nobody seems to be teaching it yet, curriculum always 3-5 years behind, and it's worth adopting into ed much sooner than that.

Our department had an unofficial policy of not teaching the latest tech and telling students that was something they can do on their own time.

That being said, with wireguard being merged into the kernel and it's huge significance to networking, I expect that tech to make it into the curriculum in some forum.

Also, thank you for the vote of support!

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#133

Post by gitgud »

The best courses I took in Computer Science (3 years ago) were:

- Computer Systems: Building a computer system from scratch (virtually) logic gates to applications https://www.nand2tetris.org/book

- Computer Networks and Applications: An overview of network protocols and layers, basically how the internet works.

- Event-Driven Computing: How to make GUI's, state-machines, event-driven systems are used everywhere.

- Computer Graphics: Understanding how graphics pipelines and OpenGL shaders work. Building a game from scratch in C.

They might not be interesting to everyone, but I felt these were the most fun and practical in learning how computers work and how to build software.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#134

Post by bane »

Computer Science is about writing software in the way that Astronomy is about telescopes.

Another way to put it is that Computer Science is a Mathematics field that is about the study of computation. You can do significant amounts of computation without a computer, and you can study pretty much every topic about computation with nothing more than a pencil and paper.

Programming is simply a convenient way to use these great devices we have to assist us in better understanding computation, and a good CS program will go very deep in how modern computers work, what they can and cannot compute, and so on. You'll likely have changes to study computational complexity, queuing theory, grammars and regular languages, and so on.

For all this you need a really strong foundation in mathematics. For an undergrad, you should be able to handle just about anything in single and multi-variate Calculus, Linear Algebra, Discrete Mathematics, and be able to build proofs and if you really want to push as an undergrad more advanced classes. If you can't hang with this coursework, you can't do CS.

It's okay, you might be better suited to a Software Engineering degree or and Information Systems degree where programming and engineering practices are favored. To be honest, these degrees are far more practical for the regular old software developer than is CS. Most programming jobs aren't trying to invent an algorithm, or determine the runtime efficiency of some system.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#135

Post by fish45 »

gitgud wrote: post #133

The best courses I took in Computer Science (3 years ago) were: - Computer Systems : Building a computer system from scratch (virtually) logic gates to applications https://www.nand2tetris.org/book - Computer Networks and Applications : An overview of network protocols and layers, basically how the internet works. - Event-Driven Computing : How to make GUI's, state-machines, event-driven systems are used everywhere.…

Those are all classes I think I'd find very interesting. Recently I've tried to naively write my own game engine and OS and failed pretty miserably.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#137

Post by fish45 »

Jemaclus wrote: post #14

My advice might be controversial, but here are some thoughts I have... My big piece of advice: Major in something useful (CS, check!), minor in something fun. A lot of the computer science classes you take will be boring AF, or you'll start to bang your head against the desk wondering why you have to know how operating systems work when you just want to make iOS apps (or vice versa!). Some of the classes will be deep…

I've been thinking of minoring in physics or something, but maybe I'll try Art

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#138

Post by fish45 »

nlawalker wrote: post #15

Not to imply you're not ready, but in response to "I've been coding since I was young, so I'm not worried about struggling academically": "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." Depending on the nature of what your department offers, be prepared to learn about, spend time on and potentially struggle with concepts that have nothing to do with coding or software engineering as…

Yeah I can totally see where you're coming from. I go (went?) to a STEM high school and since I'd already been coding for a while at that point I basically had the same attitude and then AP Computer Science ended up being one of my harder classes.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#139

Post by sosodev »

MaxBarraclough wrote: post #127
sosodev wrote: post #114

HN is probably the worst group to ask for advice. Most people here take their careers way too seriously. You’ll notice that most people here are telling you to do some specific set of actions but few of them overlap significantly. That’s because there aren’t “right” things for you to do. They’re just pushing their biases on you. I’d argue that you just take it easy and do whatever makes you happy. You can definitely…

'Take it easy' seems like terrible advice. A computer science degree is the foundation of a tech career. The opportunity to build a solid foundation shouldn't be squandered, even if you aren't planning on being a workaholic careerist. A strong degree opens doors.

You’re totally entitled to feel that way but I personally think the social pressure to work yourself harder than necessary is just plain wrong. I know that’s not a popular opinion here and that was my point.

I met so many people while earning my degree that were stricken with anxiety about making the “wrong” choices. Often times these people ended up suffering by spreading themselves thin and ultimately accomplishing less than they would have otherwise.

Re: Ask HN: I'm an incoming freshman to college for a CS major, what should I know?

#140

Post by fish45 »

dbcurtis wrote: post #131

Do you know how to study? No, I mean really? Was high school easy? CS won't be. Your math classes will force you to think in a new way, unless you had a very proof-oriented math education, which is exceedingly rare in the US. A significant number of the smart kids that land in freshman engineering are smart enough that they never had to study in high school, and therefore never learned how to study hard things, on a…

Luckily I went to a really hard high school. I breezed through middle school and then completely flunked freshman year so I learned my lesson early.

I'm 100% sure that if I had not gone to such a hard high school I would've completely ignored your advice and failed at least a semester of college.

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