Why are CS degrees so shit you need to put this here?
I also found this on /sci/
CS degree is useless alone, but it boosts your CV because of the diploma alone. You either get certificates, specialization, or a Master degree. Also there are shitty, shorter CS courses where you learn basic programming, logic and sometimes there are no math classes, so businesses want to make sure you're not a shitty professional
TL;DR
If you think you're getting anywhere with a CS degree alone, you're fucking stupid
>>53264698
Certs are useless
>>53264774
Their only use is getting you a job
This makes me worry.
Is a comp engineering degree still good?
My cousin went to a directional school for his CS degree. His senior year of college he asked me to explain what a data structure is to him.
This is why employers don't trust the CS degree without verifying they actually know anything anymore. It's hollow and doesn't differentiate someone's cognitive abilities beyond showing up.
>>53264841
Yes. Comp sci is full of idiots who just want a high paying job. It's unbelievable how much easier comp sci is in general than comp eng.
>>53264774
With work experience or demonstrated ability they are, otherwise they get you past HR screeners. Mind you certs don't guarantee someone has the actual skills they need for the job, just that they can memorize a book.
>>53264774
Depends, I've heard that certain IEEE certs and cisco certs are worthwhile, If you want to get into a very specialized job some certs are useful. A lot of the more basic certs are close to useless though.
I hate these threads. I rarely go on sci but every time I do I happen to see this thread.
People need to realize that this kind of anger only comes from self hate. He was the kind of person he was talking about. I have no feelings about it because I don't play video games and I didn't expect a college curriculum to teach me everything I need to know, because most of everything I learned in college was outside of schoolwork.
This person expected to sit back passively and be taught and he was disappointed with his peers and himself.
You can only teach so much shit. If you really want to know anything, you have to study on your own. But school does give you the groundwork to start.
I don't care if you're studying English. Are you only going to read the dozen or so books that are assigned to you each year and call yourself well read?
People are also so deluded about what the job market is. Again, it's their own insecurities. Once you get hired, you'll realize it's actually a bit of a joke. Jobs are not that big of a deal. Employers are just as stupid as most people and most of them have a pretty positive attitude about giving people opportunities.
They make the job market sound like some kind of ultimate trial or something you have to pass.
>>53265075
>You can only teach so much shit. If you really want to know anything, you have to study on your own. But school does give you the groundwork to start.
>tuition is several thousand dollars with the student going into debt 99% of the time
>"Universities are only for foundations!!!"
open your mind and realize the following assertion is actually incorrect.
>This person expected to sit back passively and be taught and he was disappointed with his peers and himself.
perhaps there are people out there who were let down by the educational system and who are rightly angry.
>>53264547
>Out of all degrees CS seems to attract the most anti-intellectual scum.
I agree CS isn't comparable to most science or any mathematics degree but he can't be serious. Many universities now shill literal mickey mouse degrees where you study celebrities, sports teams, or pop culture. Degrees that are tailored for people who have zero skill other than they scrapped through high school and like to party. Said people spend lots of cash for these degrees for the "college experience."
Lots of CS majors don't care about the field
But shame on unis for not failing people who struggle with basic algorithm analysis
I enjoy programming; have made some games, but they're not really my thing. I'm really not sure what I want to do. I enjoy math and I'm not bad at it. What should I study Applied math, Physics, CS?
Is computer science really that much of a meme?
I should be starting a masters in computer science this September, how fucked am I?
>>53267694
>taking advice from /g/
>>53266318
Look into engineering, real engineering. It requires great deal of intuition in the context of (applied physics). Try looking into mechanical stuff, see if you like mechanics. Or into EE... se if you like circuit theory, circuits in general. Those are the two large branches.
If you want something more theoretical, or something where you don't want to go from design to product aka you don't have to be that detailed in many regards look into physics. Often physics goes only into proof-of-concept or general detailing of the idea, so if solving a problem and being done with it is your thing then physics might worth a shot. Engineering if you want to build things/design things or you're interested in doing things from applied research to designing to building.
>>53264452
>>53264841
I'm doing CSE (Computer Science Engineering) in Europe. My experience is that CS is easier than CSE. So that's probably true for CE too if they teach proper engineering concepts there and eng. level math. CSE here can be used to go into EE at MSc level by completing some subjects you haven't done as a CSE student while doing your MSc. If the same is true there then probably they're doing ok.
CS here is only 6 semesters, CSE is 7 and they have a lighter course load. Also engineering math course is stricter than CS general calculus courses. In comparison with a traditional EE degree CS guys learn a lot less discreet math and computational stuff. Some EE degrees give an introduction though or you can take a course if you want to. I have seen a few curriculum in the usa too (required subjects to get a degree). It seems to be the same, usually almost no HW related classes.
>>53265270
The difference is that they attend the Liberal Arts college at the university, wheras the CS students mingle with the Engineering/Physics ones.
I'm sick of whiny Americans lamenting their atrocious education standards. CS degrees in Europe are highly sought and produce professionals with a deep understanding of their craft. Your meme colleges are tailored towards foreign expats and rich trust fund kids, go blame your local rabbi for that.
>>53268578
>produce professionals with a deep understanding of their craft
thanks anon, I needed a good laugh.
>>53264547
I could say most of that about my ECE program...
>>53268598
Actually they're. First semester is C so most of the pointers are hard faggots are banned quickly. Second year is assembly and Mathematical Logic. Then comes formal languages, complexity theory, algorithms. Plus Java, C++, Functional languages.
Apart from that statistics, calculus, discrete math I-III, plus the usual stuff is there. Numerical methods too, operations research. Operating systems, computer networks, application development, etc.
>>53264547
I love when a post is really good at describing my person
>>53268670
>First semester is C so most of the pointers are hard faggots are banned quickly
Maybe your teachers are just bad. C isn't particularly hard.
>>53268670
I know, I studied that.
I still think most graduates couldn't code their way out of fizzbuzz if their lives depended on it.
>>53264547
>average CS student fails math
The average CS student also fails programming 101. They get into it because they hear the money is good and/or they want to make video games. Half my CS class was gone by second year.
And I got a Bachelor of Computer Science, not a BSc in CS.
>>53268786
>half my class was gone by second year
that's completely normal in my experience
>>53268708
Nope, it's the fucking faggots as
>>53268715
said. Have you ever seen a CS freshman? You have no reason to do so actually, because he/se won't be there after a year or when they are they are still doing the first semester C course.
However I don't think the situation is as bad here. They could most probably code fizzbuzz. Although anything more serious like a bitmask (LMAO) is beyond them. I don't study "pure" CS though, so I'm with the engineering guys, so probably that helps the situation.
There are people who actually don't get one level of simple indirection, not 3.
Actually for example in my embedded systems basics course the task was to crack a simple ARM software written by the teacher by reversing it and make it output the text the teacher put there. (Swap a branching instruction, put some nops in). Out of about 20-25 people only 3 people did it, including me. So the knowledge is there, many people just don't learn it and they pass most of their courses at the third or second attempt. We also have a Software degree with Business mixed in. I ain't gonna call that CS, because it has little CS or engineering in it. Most plebs are doing that.
>>53268872
>Have you ever seen a CS freshman?
well, I had to spend 20 minutes explaining how char **argv worked to my 3rd year CS student friend...
>so I'm with the engineering guys
So you just memorize a bunch of garbage your professors feed you? that's most of my courses in my eng program.
>>53268937
>... I had to spend 20 minutes explaining...
Then you know.
>So you just memorize a bunch...
It depends, my degree is between CS and Engineering.
At a high level it can be easily memorizing stuff though. Understanding is usually required on an applied level, but I don't really memorize it, I try to understand why it works.
Some courses are like that though because you need to understand stuff to get why certain functions are used so you need to memorize a lot until then, but you can be intuitive about a lot of stuff if taught/learned properly.
We also learned more or less proper circuit theory, so when we need to know circuits it's easier to memorize it when you know what they're doing and why.
I don't study a lot of "these are the most common solutions for this problem" and memorize them all for the exam kinda stuff though. The full engineering guys do that a lot more and that's the worst.
Apart from that I spend time in my free time to learn about why shit works, what physical laws make stuff work, so maybe without doing that I would have a darker opinion.
>>53268937
I had to spend 1 hour explaining how to do a Taylor polynomial approximation to my engineering friend.
>>53269126
That happens as well, I know a guy in my class who actually asked something like "1/(10^3) equals 10^-3, right?". He needs to ask that.
>>53269126
I knew a guy once who asked if you could connect all the grounds together on a circuit.
>>53269154
1 divided by 10 xor 3 isn't equal to 10 xor -3. What an idiot.
>>53269154
In all fairness, it's not that big of a deal to forget some algebraic properties of a few functions even though it is a really simple one.
>>53269196
>1 divided by 10 xor 3 isn't equal to 10 xor -3. What an idiot.
lol
>>53269218
Yeah, but he was doing a math class and they always use that so they can derive or integrate it like (...)^-n form.
^ here means exponentiation.
>>53264452
The reason for that is most probably because a lot of colleges in murrica have gone and turned their CS programs into code monkey school, a.k.a Software Engineering, based on people complaining about not being able to cope with the math.
I wish I was joking, but I've actually seen people here on /g/ post their CS curriculums containing literally no math courses and being all programming and project courses.
>>53268855
Same thing happened at my Comp. Eng. class so it's not just CS that is affected by idiots thinking it's going to be easy. However the people who were failing generally also failed the maths classes as well and more often than not blamed the maths classes for dropping out more than the programming ones.
>>53269314
it's a shame too because it's not even like they teach good coding principles either. Just teach 'em Java and OOP and they're good to go!
>>53269247
On that subject, that notation where you note derivatives/integrals by doing what looks like an exponential but in parentheses makes me angry.
>>53269352
Why? Do you want a million primes?
>>53269352
Hehe. You got some PTSD from engineering?
>>53269350
My program never even taught me how to properly utilize OOP. It's not a very intuitive way of doing things, and just teaching them what all the words mean and how to implement them in Java is not particularly helpful.
>a cat is a subclass of mammal
but why the fuck would you ever code something like that?
>>53269374
Leibniz notation works alright. Someone's wrist probably got tired.
>>53269382
yeah pretty much.
>>53265215
>perhaps there are people out there who were let down by the educational system and who are rightly angry
I am one of those people. All of the fundamentals that I should have been taught in HS to prepare me for college were ripped out abruptly because "muh standardized tests". Everyone from my HS who made it into college and attempted a science major either dropped out, dropped to the BA equivalent, or went 5-6 years to finish their degree.
So yeah, I feel that I was let down by the system that was supposed to prepare me.
>>53269416
Leibniz is messy. It's good if you are solving ODES or PDES or something, but in general I do not what to write all that shit down.
>>53269396
That's for teaching really the basics of OOP and it's supposed to lead to some much more practical things. At my university those basic things lead to us having to create OOP based card games cards and decks as objects, generating cards objects for a deck, generating decks with cards in a linked list that we needed to be able to add to, remove from, traverse, shuffle, etc.
>>53269486
How did you use polymorphism for a card deck? It seems pretty forced in that situation.
>>53269416
>yeah pretty much.
Me too.
>>53269420
Yeah. This happens. I know people who come from those math is everywhere schools who easily go through their BSc. I also know people coming from an average HS... they indeed usually end up doing a 3.5 year degree for 5-6 years.
>>53269486
This. Programming I for us was Java and OOP. Application development and Systems Development made us use it.
>>53269528
Probably subclasses implementing the specific cards. Common functions are only written once. In a card game for example where cards can do stuff on a field it's not that forced. For example one specific card gives -20 to all enemy attacks when it's on the field.
>>53269486
None of that is using OOP, though, you're just filling in a predetermined object-oriented (in Simula style, like Java or C# or C++) specification.
It's code monkey training. You're not learning WHY you should use OOP over anything else and HOW to structure it effectively, you're just learning it so that you can understand instructions from someone with actual autonomy in a project team.
rate my degree, it is called "IT Security" (german here, next semester is the last for my bachelor degree), and I consider it not that "harmful" compared to CS. Also, it counts as an engineering degree, while applied informatics (pretty much the CS degree on my university) does not.
Also, im signed up for a bachelor in mathematics, so even if this is shit, I do something decent.
>>53269314
My university has three computer related majors: Computer Engineering, Computer Science, and Software Engineering.
Computer Engineering is basically electrical engineering with a focus on computer hardware, also talks about things like computer architecture and assembly programming.
Computer Science is all about programming and computational theory. There is a good mix of classes about programming like operating systems and programming languages along with more theoretical classes like algorithmic analysis, theory of computation, and all the math behind it.
Software Engineering is basically computer science without any theory and with more of a focus on how to manage a software team and please your clients and shit.
I honestly have no idea why people would pick Software Engineering, it's literally earning a degree in being a code monkey. You sort of learn how to program and you go super in depth about shit like agile development and that's about it.
>>53264452
>>53268017
Alright, now I'm confused
I'm doing "Informatics Engineering" (most direct translation), and kinda assumed that CS was suppossed to be that.
What the fuck is CS really suppossed to be? and CE, and CSE
>did a year of engineering
>switched into CS because I ended up loathing it, had to start again
>haven't learned a single thing except the formal definition of big-O and (2,4) trees because I've been programming on my own for years
>considering switching into maths because I don't want to be writing Java or even C++ for the rest of my life (I thought I could get into things like PL research and type theory from CS, but clearly I can't do it without a strong maths background)
>would have to essentially start again for a second time because all I have from CS so far is entry-level calculus and entry-level discrete maths
>already self-taught myself a good deal of abstract algebra from functional programming
>won't be doing anything new like topology or category theory until two years from now anyways
>have to fill up my schedule with prerequisites (that I either already know 80% of and could simply self-teach myself the rest) and random courses I have no interest in but will give me credit hours
>can't just elect not to get a degree and work for a couple years instead because I want to do graduate school
WAKE ME UP INSIDE
>>53270023
I did topology as a freshman CS major
>>53270086
CS is computer science = computer math + some programming
CE is computer engineering = It's related to EE. I think it's a lot of computer hardware and related designs.
CSE is what I study Computer Science in Engineering in Europe. It has EE + CS courses, but it's main focus is not really on designing computers, it's more about designing stuff which use computers and/or designing parts of stuff which use computers: programming microcontrollers, designing embedded systems.
>>53270125
Shit meant for
>>53270013
>>53270086
Oh, well
Guess I'm studying CS then
>>53269809
Bis auf Systemtheorie I, II und Elektrotechnik 1 fast identisch mit den meisten Informatik-Studiengängen. Die Sicherheitsthemen kann man in den Hochschulen üblicherweise häufig als Vertiefung nehmen.
>>53269594
>In a card game for example where cards can do stuff on a field
Oh that makes more sense. I thought you were just going to do poker or something. Polymorphism feels really forced in a lot of real world situations anyway. I think most programmers are taught to do every fucking little things with it, to protect them from themself.
>>53270125
CE is electrical engineering with some computer science. I'm a CE major.
>be me
>1st year in CS equivalent in Europe
>realize that I actually hate high level programming, apps, webdev and all that bullshit pleb tier garbage
>like kernels, embedded shit
>thinking going with CE
>last semester had 5 classes, one of them was a CE one but easier, failed it.
>realize I'm dumb as shit with electricity, it's all black magic to me, not even sure if I can properly mount a LED with Arduino
>see this thread
>mfw
Maybe say fuck this university shit and just go with tech support and remain a retard? I never studied in my school life and now I'm getting a bit fucked in uni
</blog>
>>53270177
Das habe ich in etwa so erwartet. Trotzdem rechne ich mir weitestgehend gute Jobchancen damit aus, da meine Uni recht führend im Bereich embedded security und Kryptanalyse ist. Die Sicherheitsthemen sind bei mir allerdings Pflicht, da sie das Kernstudium ausmachen. Die Schwerpunktlegung liegt eher im Bereich "Software v.s. Hardware v.s. Mathematik". Bisher lag mein Schwerpunkt immer in der Software, aber für mein Industriepraktikum werde ich etwas im Hardwarebereich machen, während ich im daran anschließenden Master noch im Bereich der Mathematik (Also vorallem Kryptanalyse, Quantenalgos und Gruppentheorie) reinschauen.
Denkst du, das ist soweit sinnvoll? Spaß macht mir eigentlich jeder der Bereiche, aber ich möchte vorallem wissen, in welchem ich mich auch lange wohlfühle, weil ich keinen Bock darauf habe, nur wegen des Geldes zu arbeiten.
>>53270369
You don't need electronics knowledge for kernels, or even embedded
>>53270394
But it helps (at least for embedded), and knowledge is always useful.
>>53269809
That seems really cool and interesting
>>53270414
>That seems really cool and interesting
Thanks. As i explained here >>53270390 i am planning to look a bit more into embedded security in my internship and bachelor thesis (already got my internship and topic, starting april), while intensifying the mathematical aspect in the master degree, that i'll do after it. This way, i can find out what specialisation is the one I feel best with, because I do not want to work only to earn money.
Also, as far as i know, my university is one of the leading ones in embedded security and cryptanalysis, so I might get a job easily, but who knows.
>>53268786
What is the difference of this nomenclature? My program is a bachelor of IT, not a BSc in IT. Regardless the degree is in the school of computing and engineering. Just curious of the implications
>>53269314
The "CS major" hasn't been CS since the 60's and even back then there were only a precious few good schools where it happened.
