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I did an undergrad in CS (Columbia) - in retrospect I should only have minored in CS. I'm not sure it's worth the workload! You will have _no_ free time and get reamed in GPA Very math-heavy and the project based classes were brutal.
Fundamentally,computer science = data structures + algorithms. in a data structure class,you learn the basic structures like PODs,structs,vectors and linked lists. in algorithm class,you learn various basic sorting algorithms plus the big O notation and thats pretty much it. Then you will take a few physics classes,then chemistry classes,then maybe calculus one and two,then probably discrete mathematics class,one or…
It wasn't until getting into the "real world" that I realized the full value of my data structure courses. Those were the ones I kept returning to when trying to learn and understand new skills on the job. (Sadly, my 2-year degree didn't cover any algorithm learning.)
So, now I have the advantage of a few years of "real world" experience to try and plot a course for how to get formal education on the remaining pieces that seem to actually have direct correlation to a career in computer programming.
Not sure if it's a blessing or a curse for me, but I just have to keep moving forward.
I did an undergrad in CS (Columbia) - in retrospect I should only have minored in CS. I'm not sure it's worth the workload! You will have _no_ free time and get reamed in GPA Very math-heavy and the project based classes were brutal.
Also personally I felt like this is an exceptionally competitive major (as are sciences in general) but I'm sure that's true for other schools as well. It's okay to get a B -- you're being compared against other brilliant people and plenty of people would be lucky to hire you. This is probably the one piece of knowledge I would have told myself 3 years ago when I started it.
> Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson declares “A computer science degree is a rip off…I know because I have one.” Perhaps his CS degree was from a college which didn’t have a very good program or maybe his focus has been web development where you rarely need computer science. According to wikipedia: > In 2000, he graduated from Colorado State University with a Computer Science degree I suspect, like with most fields, that the…
In fact, I see this title as the wrong way round, it should be: computer science is not coding. Too many people think codes know all about computers. In my experience, they dont. They have a limited skill set. Just like support staff who usually cant really code.
Having a CS degree myself, I have always felt at an advantage over people who, for example, only program but know knaff all about hardware, OS's, servers, etc, and support people who only have things like MCSEs, and don't know the low level fundamentals.
For me, having a CS degree makes me a jack of all trades, all be it, master of none.
I look at this from the other side as well. I've worked with brilliant people with ivy league CS degrees who wrote much messier and less maintainable code than me, an autodidact designer/js dev with 1.5 years of experience. Maybe I'm wrong, and there was something in their code that I wasn't seeing, but I don't think so. There can also be a bit of an attitude, like the person is thinking "of course this is good, I we…
> Treehouse CEO Ryan Carson declares “A computer science degree is a rip off…I know because I have one.” Perhaps his CS degree was from a college which didn’t have a very good program or maybe his focus has been web development where you rarely need computer science. According to wikipedia: > In 2000, he graduated from Colorado State University with a Computer Science degree I suspect, like with most fields, that the…
I did an undergrad in CS (Columbia) - in retrospect I should only have minored in CS. I'm not sure it's worth the workload! You will have _no_ free time and get reamed in GPA Very math-heavy and the project based classes were brutal.
I did undergrad CS @ Columbia as well. Of course you're not going to skate by as you would in insert-non-offensive-easy-major-name-here , but you learn a hell of a lot more. It's my personal belief that (especially in technical fields) you can't learn without putting a lot of hard work into something. But in doing so, you'll also keep yourself a step ahead of the curve in the job market. As per the article, plenty of…
I did an undergrad in CS (Columbia) - in retrospect I should only have minored in CS. I'm not sure it's worth the workload! You will have _no_ free time and get reamed in GPA Very math-heavy and the project based classes were brutal.
I'm sure this depends a lot on what your preferences are. I just finished my undergrad in computer engineering at Columbia. I thought the project-based classes (and the vast amounts of work they entailed) were the most valuable parts of the program. Sure, you'd probably get higher grades if you just minored, but when it comes to hiring for software engineering jobs, companies tend to care more about what you know and…