Computer science

[browning_man9]

Hi there. I am a high school student look at either a major in computer engineering or computer science. I was leaning toward computer science, until I read this article: http://www.studentsreview.com/docs/major_computer_science.shtml I do realize that this article was very poorly put together, but it seems to be an impartial perspective. The comment that this is a "5 year career" is the one that really bothers me. It does seem feasible in a sense that numerous programming languages, etc do only last some time, making it hard to hold a job. I was just looking for someonelses input on the situation. Thank you for your time.

[zadojla]

I am not a computer scientist. I have worked in mainframe operations and support for 30 years.

The article writer is correct in a sense with the 5-year career, but he is assuming that you will never learn anything new after school. That is not the case, but you do have to be careful to stay current and involved in the latest technology available at your job. If the environment stagnates (due, for example, to corporate unprofiability), you have to move on quickly, or you will end up unmarketable.

[Buffy]

I am a computer scientist. Like any technical career, you do need to continually learn in order to avoid becoming useless. So what? When I started, Berkeley was one of the only schools *not* teaching people how to write Cobol, which was then used for most business coding. Even with that, we learned pre-object oriented C for dumb terminals. Now I do coding with GUIs/Web Browsers, three-tier code, fully object oriented, relational or XML-object data, etc. etc. etc.

 

CS people are actually the least nerdy people I know. They are a lot more normal that the Chemistry, Math or Physics majors! <ducks/>. They tend to spend their spare units in liberal arts classes rather than other sciences. And as I like to show by example, there are cute girls there too!

 

Methinks someone is trying to keep down the competition by steering people away from it.

 

Bottom line: do what you 1) like and 2) are good at, and if other people complain, tell them where they can go put their heads...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[zadojla]

And as I like to show by example, there are cute girls there too!

Sadly, not in my end of the field. Thirty-three people in my department, and only one woman. But in Messaging, they are mostly young women.

[TeleMad]

linked to page: "A final misconception I can think of is the "job lifetime". Many people thing that computer science majors are worth a lot and always employable. This is not the case. More so than other majors, the computer science major is trained on the "latest" technology and programming languages, and when those change -- as they commonly do every 5 years, the computer science major's specific programming knowledge is outmoded, and he/she is generally fired for the new hot-shot college CS grad who knows the new languages and technology well, and does *not* know how much he/she is worth. i.e. They can be paid less for more. CS is a really dangerous major to take out large loans on. You can almost guarantee a few years employment though -- maybe not job security, but a good few years in general.

 

I agree with this for the most part.

 

I have been a programmer/database manager for the past 8 years. What I dislike about the career is how quickly what I spent a so much time and effort to learn becomes useless. I spent a great deal of time learning to be a DOS guru. DOS? What's that? I spent several quarters learning RPG (report program generator, for mainframes). Completely useless now. I spent years learning structured programming, only to have it basically overthrown with object-oriented programming. Then I spent several quarters learning a particular OOP model, only for it to become outdated and unused a few years later (for example, the moves from DAO, to RDO, to ADO, to ADO.NET).

 

The CIS world has both evolution (which isn't too much of a problem) and revolution (the real part the urks me). Many things change slowly: this evolution requires you to keep up but doesn't require you to toss out what you've already worked at learning. But then there are revolutions, where effectively everything you know about something becomes useless and you have to learn something completely new. Consider college texts or books you buy at a bookstore on computers. Most that are 5 years old are worthless: outdated and useless in today's computer world.

 

Science does not experience such frequent and complete upheavels as the computer world does: science mostly expands. In general, most of what you learn about biology, chemistry, or physics today is going to still be valid and accepted 20 years from now, and college texts on these scientific topics from 20 years ago are still filled with mostly accepted facts. Science makes you expand your knowledge and keep up with new findings, but it doesn't require completely discarding what you worked so hard to learn (only a few exceptions, but mostly old: relativity and quantum mechanics, plate tectonics, and so on). So I am currently working towards a BS in biology, with the idea of possibly exiting the CIS field.

[alexander]

well, not much i can add to that, except for maybe another student perspective :)

 

Both, computer engineering and computer science are excellent fields of study to pursue, there is an advantage to computer science though, but before all that, I'd like to say that I dont want to influence you, the decision is yours to make, just adding wood to fire, so to say. Anyways, i was saying, ok, coputer science is a large field to study, you do everything from graphics to hardcore coding. the beuty is that if you dont like comuter science, you have experienced enough to say, well, i dont want to be a computer scientist, but i really liked being a designer or coder or anything else, and then you have already had all that extra experience in the field to help you with whatever it is you want to do in the future, plus the computer experience also allows you to get a job outside the field, companies would much rather take a person who is excellent with computers then people that only know how to use a text edditor (well, maybe with the only exception of emacs) because you can adapt to different software way faster and better than the others will, and you will solve your computer problems, rather then giving help desk the trouble, or harassing local IT people, like they have nothing better to do ...

"User > I cant find the print button in the edit menu anymore

IT > have you tried looking under the "File" menu?

User > Ohh, there it is..."

or

"User > My keyboard doesnt work anymore

... 20 minutes later ...

IT > is your computer on maam?

User > how do you check that?

IT > is the light somewhere around the power button on?

User > no..."

That was just to make your day a bit more fun :circle:

Anyways, I think that SC is an awesome field to be in, yes, you have to constantly study, constantly learn new things, be that programming languages, operating systems, protocols, or security issues. But as long as you are interested in learning, IT is just the place for you :circle:

[browning_man9]

Thank you all for your responses. You have been a great help to me.

[alexander]

P.S. those incidents really happened

first one happened to me personally when i used to do Independant study in CS at my High School, actually over a year and a half ago, when we upgraded all our systems at high school to XP Pro with Office 2003 (I know, but I've only been a Linux user for about a year, so...)

the second one was published a few years ago on some site i cant remember as one of the top 50 funniest IT help desk problems of the year... I remember there was one where a guy had a hard time using a mouse, in about a half an hour the IT realized the the guy didnt unpack the mouse from the box and was trying to use it while the mouse was still inside :)

[TeleMad]

I feel I should add one thing to my statements.

 

CIS has been good to me. It has allowed me to pay off my student loans, buy a house, a new car, and support myself and my ex and the two kids, and even to let me go back to college for a second degree. It's just that I feel I am getting old (43 now) and am getting tired of relearning all kinds of things every so often. For somone young, it's a good field to get into.