Thread: College

I have been looking at various programs at some local colleges.

My problem is I dont know what im looking for. I know I want to go into the computer/programming field, but I dont know what the graduate programs would be called.

What I mean is, for example. Computer Science.. what all does this entail?

Its really hard to find stuff in my area, the only college I can find that has "Programming" teaches COBOL and its embedded into a buisness course (buisness management, accounting).

If this makes no since, its ok, im just confused about all this.

Well Computer Science is usally just a broad term. You'll notice many colleges have Comp Sci - Programming, Comp Sci - Applications, etc

The best thing to do is make an appointment with one of the school's counselers and explain to them what you want to do and they'll be able to tell you what program at their school coveres that field. Try to do this with as many schools as possible. If you can't visit one try to find an email address for the counseling department and send them an email.

I agree with Thantos. Many colleges will have a course labled Comp Sci, but they use an old language that isn't widely used anymore, or they just put that fancy name on a "learn how to type" class.

A true Comp Sci class, in my opinion, would include learning all of the ins and outs of a language (maybe 2), learning how memory and instructions are handled by the system, software design and management, and how to analyze your algorithms and determine their efficiency (O notation and such).

Originally Posted by skorman00

A true Comp Sci class, in my opinion, would include learning all of the ins and outs of a language (maybe 2), [...]

this is usually the end result of a comp sci class but hopefully its not the intention. A true comp. sci. class should teach you usable high level programming and design concepts that can be applied to any language you decide to learn. One language is usually used for the course so a student will become familiar with it, however, what they learn in the course shouldn't be specific to one language.
I started programming in Java, but i didnt just learn Java, i learned fundimental programming concepts which were easily extended to C++, then to C.

right you are, that's what the last 4 points I made were aiming at. However, you can't rely on that, simply because you might become one of those "can write it out on paper in pseudo code, but can't write the code to do it for the life of me" kinda guys...know what I mean?

>> you shouldn't see much actual Java code in class.

indeed you wont. i heard that waterloo changed their entire first year to C#/.NET in order to get a huge research grant from MS... but thats a whole other thread

Originally Posted by XSquared

Perspective: Actually, that's the software engineering class. The CS class does Java. That quote was from a conversation with the prof yesterday.

*whew*, lucky for you sad to the engineers though....

Originally Posted by XSquared

Yeah, I'm happy I get to use Java instead of C#. One of the CS classes actually uses Scheme, which is (AFAIK) a Mac-only language. *shudders*

not at all. Scheme is a particular dialect of LISP which is a very cool non-proceedural programming language. Any platform that has an interpreter will be able to run the scripts. I just started learning LISP yesterday its very cool to work with.

There was a thread about scheme a while back..
http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=51219


edit: btw Vicious, sorry for hijacking your thread