What is studying Computer Science in College like?

[manasrathore43]

21 year old female here. Just wondering if anyone can tell me their experiences please and hopefully provide some tips. I'm currently in cc right now and never heard of this major until now. I heard it is challenging, but I'm up for it! Coding definitely sounds interesting (and it also looks cool) Of course, I do know that's only a part of CS. Hopefully I will create some fun/helpful/intriguing apps once I begin to the hang of it! :D Thank you!

[rproffitt]

My bet is Dani will show up soon. Till then, welcome and read https://www.daniweb.com/welcome/about

I can't relate to today's CompSci College as I took classes in the 70's where you had Fortran, Cobol and for me mixed it up with electronics which was too early for the small microprocessors I later designed with.

But the basics I learned then meant I could keep up with the changes in technology.

[Reverend Jim]

Ditto for me, another dinosaur. Let me just add an analogy. Learning to play the piano well isn't just a matter of remembering which keys to press, and when. It's also learning a lot of technique and theory, and of course, practise, practise, practise.

A gentle reminder - when you start to learn, don't make the mistake I see all too many people making here on Daniweb. Don't post your homework hoping someone will do it for you. That will benefit you as much as paying someone to go to the gym for you.

One more little bit of advice - learn to communicate clearly and concisely. Whenever I am asked "what language should I learn first?", my answer is always "English".

[Dani]

I've definitely written about this before on DaniWeb ... I'll have to see if I can pull it up. But, to answer your question, it really depends on what your long term goals are.

Coding has been really glamorized in the last handful of years, and so you have everyone and their mother now thinking they want a computer science degree. Let me burst your bubble: very little of computer science has to do with learning to code.

When I went to school in the early 2000s, there were two courses focused on learning to code in C++. Beyond that, code was used as a learning aid in many ways, but the classes themselves focused on calculus, discrete mathematics, more discrete mathematics, probability and statistics, and more calculus. There was also a tiny amount of digital circuitry added in for good measure.

If you think coding is fun and want to do it on the side, there are coding bootcamps that teach you how to do some very basic coding using today's popular languages, but it's more of just memorizing some code syntax, and not why anything you're doing actually works. It's also not really conducive to taking any skills and applying them to anything outside of what's done in the bootcamp.

If you want to make a career out of doing small coding projects (e.g. creating simple websites for small businesses) or want to supplement your career with some coding knowledge, perhaps pursue a technical school that focuses in applied coding. You'll gain some stronger coding skills than you would in those bootcamps, but you still won't have a full grasp of code optimization and more sophisticated techniques. However, if you're interested in pursuing a career in tech where programming knowledge is a huge help but not required (e.g. digital marketing, etc.) then you'll be a few giant steps ahead.

If you pursue a computer science degree, you'll end up leaving having in depth knowledge of how memory and processor utilization works, and your brain conditioned to focus on optimizing your code for big data, database design, etc. These skills can then be applied to any programming language you use now or in the future. You'll even have the skills to invent your own language, or innovate any software in any way you'd like. The best way to innovate is to fully grasp under the hood of what is currently being done and therefore understanding what its limitations are.