Every computer science major should... double check they've entered all the correct input before pressing the submit button.
I like this title better than the actual one.
What every computer science major should know (2011)
11–20 of 101 posts
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#12Are you kidding me? People won't know all this stuff after 15 years in the field.
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#13Are you kidding me? People won't know all this stuff after 15 years in the field.
I would agree that four years is an optimistic timetable to learn everything here to the degree that you would want to.
I also disagree on the relative ranking and importance of the items, but I don't feel experienced enough to really argue with them on the basis of my knowing better. Maybe in a few years.
I think a few of the points could be expanded. For example 'Robotics' gives the wrong impression and I'd say that you can get a lot of conceptual bang for your buck just from understanding the operation of basic electronics components like capacitors. It's not necessarily 'computer science' in the strict definition but being able to get an idea of how electronics and hardware items work is frankly more powerful than some of the items on this list like being able to make pretty visualizations.
Moreover, in that long list of cool languages, not a single one was a scripting language like Ruby, Perl or Python. Having one of these in your toolkit is pretty much essential and it feels like a glaring omission.
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#14Prefacing this I am only 20 years old so I have some time to figure it all out but I feel like I am missing out a fair bit on not pursuing a degree in computer science. A lot of the content, especially the focus on algorithms, seems really interesting to me.
Straight out of high school I did not have the math grades for CS so I went to the American equivalent of community college and am on track to get a diploma from an IT related course thats basically going to amount to a web dev job in the future. If I decided to go that route for lets say 5 years to save some money would it be a hindrance career wise, because of a large time gap in the resume, to take the 4 years off to get a CS degree from a decent school, say Waterloo?
The biggest point of fear is that I would not be able to complete the degree and realizing it was to above my cognitive abilities.
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#15Are you kidding me? People won't know all this stuff after 15 years in the field.
I would agree that four years is an optimistic timetable to learn everything here to the degree that you would want to. I also disagree on the relative ranking and importance of the items, but I don't feel experienced enough to really argue with them on the basis of my knowing better. Maybe in a few years. I think a few of the points could be expanded. For example 'Robotics' gives the wrong impression and I'd say tha…
I dislike how these articles make it seem like you need to be a super-human coming out of college. You don't. As long as you are perceptive, intelligent and can learn on the fly you'll be fine going into most entry level jobs in the industry.
As far as the list itself, it is highly debatable. Depending on your job you won't ever need to know most of this.
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#16This was a lot more practical and hands on and engineering than most CS degrees, which are more about math. Sys admin is really IT, it isn't CS at all.
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#17Prefacing this I am only 20 years old so I have some time to figure it all out but I feel like I am missing out a fair bit on not pursuing a degree in computer science. A lot of the content, especially the focus on algorithms, seems really interesting to me. Straight out of high school I did not have the math grades for CS so I went to the American equivalent of community college and am on track to get a diploma from…
Time spent in university isn't usually seen as a gap. Most employers would admire that your chose to go back to school so you could really understand the fundamentals.
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#18I couldn't get past "Computer science is not quite engineering."
It's not
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#19Suggested revisions:
- More on databases (including non-relational). We all need to know a lot of this for day-to-day work yet it but it barely made the list.
- More on writing clean, readable code (this isn't on anyone's list, damn it!) How to name variables appropriately, how to comment, how to not write 150-character lines, etc. Fail them if they can't produce code that other students can quickly read.
- Corporate survival skills (read your email before sending, come to meetings prepared with what you need to say, don't criticize people directly especially in front of others, etc)
- More on concurrency
- No machine learning or robotics - these are specialties without much use for the rest of us (though they are fun)
- Reduce the number of useless but interesting languages
Re: What every computer science major should know (2011)
#20What is a good book for C++11 and beyond? I took a lot of C++ before '11 was implemented, but have been focused on other languages recently, so I feel like I'm a bit behind the modern development. The references he points to are all 10+ years old, so I strongly doubt I'll find any C++11/14 in them.