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0 pointsnxc189y ago0 comments

What was your program? I suspect there is considerable variation. My program only required students to take the intro courses for all those topics, but students were expected to pick one or more areas of concentration.

I wrote an operating system and a simulated CPU implementing (a subset of) a real-world ISA in my last semester - both comparatively in-depth things. Of course I did have to choose that, and in so doing, I chose a semester of hell.

Similarly, doing an intro-level survey of all of those topics won't leave you with much; there is a concept of depth-over-breadth that I think is lost in programs' attempts to sound rigorous by bundling in everything under the sun. However, none of those things you listed are 'small' topics and could very well be majors on their own.

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kutkloon79y ago· 5 in thread

Just a vanilla computer science program. I combined it with a math major. I think the program at my uni was especially soft; there were no math courses at all. I suspect it's a bit better at a 'technical university' (I do my masters at one). I think the electrical engineers at my new uni are on par with the computer scientists at programming (which is basically the one and only skill you learn in my CS program), or even better.

wolco9y ago

That is the difference between a bs vs ba. Different schools offer the computer science programs as either one or the other in my country and the courses in both programs can be very different.

matwood9y ago

No math is crazy. Mine required multiple semesters of discret, probability/stats, and up to calculus.

My school was a liberal arts college, and still required a decent amount of math for the undergrad CS degree.

bane9y ago

I have to echo this. Computer Science is essentially a Mathematics field, not having extensive math in the major doesn't really make any sense. In fact, very little of the major after the Freshman of Sophomore year should even be about learning to program. It's like having a B.A. of Computer Science, or a B.S. in Literature, it doesn't really make any sense and should probably best be called some other kind of major.

I've known a few folks who had these kinds of degrees and I'm not sure their schools did them a service graduating them without a proper curriculum. At most schools with C.S. majors, they have alternative majors for people who don't want to do the intensive Maths and Sciences and they're usually called something like "Information Systems" or "Computers for Business" or similar.

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kutkloon79y ago

It is crazy. To be fair, there was some math buried in the courses (like modular arithmetic in the cryptography class, and some discrete math in the concurrency class), but it felt rather awkward and not relevant to the classes.

sgift9y ago

I'm not sure if no math should be a source of envy or pity for me (probably neither) - in my computer science program each semester included at least one math course. No exceptions.

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