and one more question to go along with this: Does one degree or the other really matter when you have development experience? Will a big company like Google or Amazon care once you have a legit portfolio? Some people laugh at applied degrees, but 5 years into a professional career I can't imagine it being as big of a deal. So wouldn't an easier degree to get your feet into the door be ideal?

>>53889155

Honest answer as someone in their thirties and working?

Do the Computer Application Development degree.

Computer science is not software development, and if that's what you want to get into, you should tailor your degree accordingly.

Those types of degrees (Computer Application Development, Computing and Information Systems, even SE degrees) came about because of the absolute shortage of qualified applicants for dev positions coming out of Comp Sci programs across the country.

Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematics degree at its core, not a dev oriented degree. The 'recent grad can't do fizz buzz, yadda yadda' that every blog, white paper, and magazine article has mentioned for the last decade is a reflection of this.

The 'applied' degrees will prove much more useful to you in your working career (unless you envision yourself in a heavily theory oriented job; of which there aren't many) and all things considered equal, the candidates for promotion that have some background in things like project management, software lifestyle planning, etc tend to have an advantage over their less business qualified, not theory qualified counter parts.

An awful lot of good CS 'types' end up bottlenecked career wise, which is why they end up with title bumps and become the 'Senior Technical Lead, Senior Integration Engineer ' lifers. They can never go management track, they just have to keep getting 'promoted' within their own institutional sandbox kingdom.

Exceptions to all rules of course, but that's my experience.

The well rounded candidate who does the mundane, non ground breaking day to day work equally well as the less well rounded theory expert will have the career advantage.

>>53889850

Phone post mixed it up, pardon me

Should be:

>.... over their less business qualified, more theory qualified counter parts.

>>53889850
that was my thinking as well. I just thought that maybe some big Google, Amazing, or even big Gaming companies would ignore an applied degree, and are looking for "engineers", which CSCI seemingly is more qualified to call it's graduates "engineers".

My advisor said that the applied degree isn't even really a degree, and that they're just simple coders, whereas the CSCI person is someone who "thinks outside the box", something about what she said kinda rubbed me the wrong way, and i wasn't quite sure what that was.
Her talking down of an applied degree made me post here. Is that typical College Adviser talk coming from her or what?

>>53890398
Amazon* not "Amazing", lol

>>53890398


Re: Google, Amazon, et al:

Big companies have big payrolls, and lots of people get hired there, regardless of their degrees - you can be assured that Google, Amazon, Oracle, Big Blue, etc all hire CS grads, CIS grads, you name it; because they can't get enough man power.

However, also realize that the big shows are designed to eat you up as a young grad and recycle you out when you've had enough of their shit - consult any programming forum out there or something like /r/programming and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about. They do offer the advantage of higher starting salaries if, and it's an if, because they're highly competitive among young guys that don't know any better, you can get your foot in the door and stomach the interview process.

Consider that working for one of the big guys may not be all it's cracked up to be.

Re: Advisor:

People who lean heavily on their credentials (and employed at an institution issuing credentials, no less) tend to be very defensive of them.

Get used to that, because you encounter your fair share of it in the working world as well, as well as in your peer group as you get older. You're definitely going to have friends that will learn heavily on the MBA / Masters / other graduate work they decided to do because the job market wasn't so hot after graduation.

It's a defensive response to protect their credentialism, because that's all they have going for them. See also: Anyone who has ever put their GPA on a resume or CV for anything other than a Coop or internship program that specifically requires it....

In general, as long as you have your degree, you've got a degree. Your github will be judged and evaluated more than your degree choice ever will be. That also applies to schools as well: If you went to MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, or Cal Tech you have people's attention; other than that you're just another goomba applicant and nobody gives a shit.

>>53890398
>>53890600

All in all, my biggest advice would be not too stress too much about it: Short of switching your major in fourth year to Arts with a focus on Interpretive Dance, you'll do fine.

Once you have your first degree, it's really easy to tack on a second if you want to (and you probably should, in something - project management, college degree in hardware / embedded systems, or something like Finance if you think you might like to do dev work in that sector).

With what you're doing, it's literally pretty hard to fuck it up unless you really put your mind to it.

>>53889155
become the greatest computer scientist the world has ever seen

>>53890398

Also, one more thing: Neither program graduates "engineers".

In everywhere else in the developed world, an "Engineer" is a protected professional designation subject to licensing, examinations, etc.

Only in the US is it the wild west where Microsoft has $12 an hour phone support 'engineers' and every web developer who has spent a week in Node.js goes around calling themselves engineers.

If you do end up at a big company with staff from overseas, you'll definitely get to see some people fussy over credentialism (and they're not entirely wrong, it's like calling yourself a doctor when you're not everywhere else) when they actually have legit engineering decrees and are licensed engineers - and yet the company calls every guy in the building above the janitor who cashes a check every other Friday an engineer .

It furrows brows.

>>53890600
Yeah, i've heard some pretty shitty things about those large companies, but getting something that the programming job market would push aside like an applied degree got me worried.
Also, that's my exact thinking on how the degree doesn't fully matter as long as you have one, and that the portfolio is what is more important.
As for the adviser that does make sense.

Overall the applied degree seemed better because it'll honestly be simpler due to it not being a Math degree as you say, but also it'll help my resume with applicable skills.

Another thing my adviser said was that the applied degree wouldn't really allow entry for a masters in csci, and to that i'm not sure that I really care to get a masters.

But a question on that is, wouldn't a 5-10 year career as a developer give you some credentials to be accepted into a masters program even with just an applied degree?

>>53891019

You're exactly right: You should be eligible for Masters program with your degree, and even if hypothetically you weren't, you can take whatever course or two they required and then apply. It's unlikely to require any career experience.

Only tangentially related because it's not a CS masters, but might help put you further at ease: My related degree is a BSc CIS, and I was still accepted into a MEng Computing without issue.

In any case, you should be able to consult the admission requirements for graduate programs at the schools of your choice online

>>53889155
smoke meth.

>>53891222
alright thanks, I really appreciate all the input. Clearly these types of situations in life will weigh heavily on anyone's mind, always nice to have someone with experience give advice. Something I never really had

>>53891358

Yep no worries.

Like I said, don't stress too much, you're going in the right direction, and it's hard to mess it up.

Best of luck!

>>53889850
>Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematics degree at its core

I know you're making a different point, but does this mean a math degree can get you the kind of jobs a CS degree does? I've been trying to decide between the two and /sci/ just calls me stupid.

>>53892303

It can.

The head of R&D where I work has a math degree, and he just focused on programming.

Mind you, in this day and age, if you want dev jobs, take a dev oriented program.

Taking a math degree when you want to do software development is a little bit like doing a chemistry degree because you want to be a welder.

>>53889850
>Computer Science is fundamentally a mathematics degree

well i guess it differs per country

>>53892303
Maybe consider having a minor in whatever one you don't do? One of the CSCI professors at my school was a Math major who learned CSCI shit on his own, and they allow him to teach in the department.
While that's different than what you're saying my point is the two complement eachother. But as >>53892764
said if you want a development job i don't think a math degree by itself is what you want.

>>53893421
a lot of theory in CSCI, here in the United States at least. Discrete Mathematics, and all sorts of algorithm complexity type shit for a quick example off the top of my head, I'm sure there's even more than what I'm remembering.

I'm answering for them though, so wait and see what they say

>>53893454
ive taken at least 7 math subjects but they didnt treat it like it's actually important. im starting to think my country needs to rethink their idea of CS

>>53889850
Computer scientist here. This seems to be quite accurate. A development-focussed program will indeed probably make it much easier to get far career-wise, for all the reasons described.

Whether that is something you care about a great deal is another matter. If like me you want to be the very best [like no one ever was] in solving the hard problems, and you like your institutional sandbox just fine where it is and don't even want to get to the managementy mess, then the more theoretical computer science program will best suit you. But I realize that this is not a common mindset by any means.

In regards to being able to do a good job studying the actual computer science: if you were not intimidated by the discrete math or algorithms courses, then you will probably be perfectly able to deal with the upper-level courses as well. Of course there will be the occasional challenge along the way [see: computer architecture], but on the whole, I would not expect any real difficulties here.

>So TL;DR- is the CSCI B.S. the harder but more worth it degree than the applied one?
If you want to focus on the technology first and foremost and career optimization only as a side effect, then yes. If you are primarily working on the piece of paper that will grant you all the moneys, it's not so clear.

>side note: I'm not 100% sure what I want to be as a developer specifically, I'd like to work in tech and not working for a business developing their in house business apps. (or i'd love a gig in gaming if an opportunity ever reveals itself).
A computer science degree will provide a flexible background that will let you handle whatever comes your way, especially when leaving the beaten track, much moreso than the lighter dev program probably will. But see above regarding priorities.

>>53893668
so you're saying CSCI for a tech job and the applied degree for a business application typical programmer job? Are the two interchangeable at any point?
Like lets say that I do the applied degree, work some normal development gig for awhile, build up a resume, and then decide i want to work for some cool tech company (or startup even if i'm feeling it), would I be able to? Or will they want the theoretical schooling to be there?

Also, what's the hardest CSCI class? The Computer Architecture was tough, but I'm sure my second run at this state college will be fine. I hear Operating Systems is really gay, is that true?

>>53893668
i'll even link the curriculum for the CSCI degree here at this school

http://www.metrostate.edu/applications/drep/files/CAS-Booklet-ComputerScience.pdf