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Forums - General - Anybody done Computer Science? Help me

twesterm on 24 March 2011
zexen_lowe said:

If your goal is to be the next geohot or Zuckerberg, then yes, you'll fail, but so will 99.9999% of the human beings and even 99% of the computer science students, if your goal is to earn a pretty good payment doing something related to what you like to do (I mean, I think if you're heading for CS you must like computers, even if you don't have much idea of programming, you must like toying with your PC, learning how it works, not just "playing games") then you'll have success even if you don't know much beforehand, because they'll teach you everything you need to know.

As long as you like what you're studying, you'll do well in this career, it's not much about knowing beforehand and more about logical thinking, procedure following, a bit of memory...and some ability for maths at first. And since CS pretty much guarantees plenty of jobs available for you with a good pay, success in it willl carry to your work life....as long as you don't intend to make the new Facebook or hack every console known to man


This.

If every programmer was as good or as clever as the big names then they wouldn't be big names.  If you want to be the best in the business then you have your work cut out for you, if you simply want to be some sort of programmer, you still have your work cut out for you but at least it's possible.

Also, a word of advice-- I was pretty similar to you when I went to college.  Almost no programming experience, a lot of math, and I knew I like computers.  I went into computer science because it seemed like the right thing...and I hated it.  I loved programming, it's just not something I wanted to do for a living.  It took me until my junior year of college to figure this out and by that point there wasn't much I could do.  At that point I was pretty much stuck doing a degree faced with a life I didn't love and went with it.  I barely graduated and was left with no job prospects.  I loved programming, I just wasn't passionate about it as a career.

Things worked out in the end because of some fortunate events, but it was scary there for a while.  After graduating from Souther Methodist University with a degree in Computer Science I was stuch working at Best Buy Geek Squad.  I had no passion for the programming career and potential employers knew it.

So yeah, make sure you think long and hard that you want to be a programmer and make sure you have a backup plan.  I didn't and got lucky something found me but otherwise I would still be stuck at Best Buy Geek Squad.  Who knows, I could have probably been a manager by now...



 

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blue7x7 on 24 March 2011
zexen_lowe said:

I study Computer Science...and I have no idea what you meant in the OP...I didn't need anything, I just showed my high school diploma and boom, I was in uni, no qualifications needed at all....

 


Pretty much this every school is different so just check with the school you apply in they have different requirements like minimum GPA and classes. But mostly all you need is a high school diploma, and of course money to get in and that is all . I am currently studying to get my Bachelors on Computer Science as for job opportunities I wouldn't know haven't graduated yet. Just check with every school's website that you are applying for and their requirements.



vlad321 on 24 March 2011

Just some more advice about whether, and how much you will enjoy CS. I went in wanting to do game AI. After I learned whats what and how things stand I realized that is a pretty miserable and simple job years later now I'm researching machine learning. Nothing in CS appears to be what it is, liking games and tinkering with your PC is a farcry from what actual programming is. For example, animation sounded absolutely retarded to me, turns out it is almost exclusively differential equations, and that actually made me quite happy, but most people expected someting else and ended up dropping it. Another example is machine learning, I thought it would be mildly interesting with heavy coding, but it turned out to be extremely math heavy (all sorts of math from stats to linear algebr to discrete) and quite enjoyable. Of course, very few others enjoyed this surprise in the class and outright hate the fact there's so much high level math in it. I guess the moral is that what you think of a CS field is right now, without any research, is probably wrong.

Ultimately you need to realize that you have to be an extremely patient person to do CS. You can't argue with a computer, yell at it, hit it, coerce it, torture it, barter with it, or bribe it. When you write 1500 lines of code, and eventhough you unit tested every single function, and you still get an error, you best be able to handle that situation because many I know cannot and simply don't have the patience for it. You will also have to be very meticulous about strane examples. While in the real world you don't give a shit about something that happens once in a million, when a piece of code run 3 million times, 1 in a million is 1 per million too many problems for you to ignore.



Tag(thx fkusumot) - "Yet again I completely fail to see your point..."

HD vs Wii, PC vs HD: http://www.vgchartz.com/forum/thread.php?id=93374

Why Regenerating Health is a crap game mechanic: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3986420

gamrReview's broken review scores: http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4170835

 

zexen_lowe on 24 March 2011
blue7x7 said:


Pretty much this every school is different so just check with the school you apply in they have different requirements like minimum GPA and classes. But mostly all you need is a high school diploma, and of course money to get in and that is all . I am currently studying to get my Bachelors on Computer Science as for job opportunities I wouldn't know haven't graduated yet. Just check with every school's website that you are applying for and their requirements.

Nah, I didn't even need money to pay....in fact I never paid a single dime

vlad321 said:

 

Ultimately you need to realize that you have to be an extremely patient person to do CS. You can't argue with a computer, yell at it, hit it, coerce it, torture it, barter with it, or bribe it. When you write 1500 lines of code, and eventhough you unit tested every single function, and you still get an error, you best be able to handle that situation because many I know cannot and simply don't have the patience for it. You will also have to be very meticulous about strane examples. While in the real world you don't give a shit about something that happens once in a million, when a piece of code run 3 million times, 1 in a million is 1 per million too many problems for you to ignore.

Yeah, that much is true, you need a lot of perseverance and patience, I've been almost driven to tears several times because the code isn't working and you need to try and try and try to figure out what's wrong. And the problem is, when you get it to work you don't feel good, you feel like a retard because the problem that made you lose hours and hours was a missing parenthesis, or  a




snakenobi on 25 March 2011
vlad321 said:

Just some more advice about whether, and how much you will enjoy CS. I went in wanting to do game AI. After I learned whats what and how things stand I realized that is a pretty miserable and simple job years later now I'm researching machine learning. Nothing in CS appears to be what it is, liking games and tinkering with your PC is a farcry from what actual programming is. For example, animation sounded absolutely retarded to me, turns out it is almost exclusively differential equations, and that actually made me quite happy, but most people expected someting else and ended up dropping it. Another example is machine learning, I thought it would be mildly interesting with heavy coding, but it turned out to be extremely math heavy (all sorts of math from stats to linear algebr to discrete) and quite enjoyable. Of course, very few others enjoyed this surprise in the class and outright hate the fact there's so much high level math in it. I guess the moral is that what you think of a CS field is right now, without any research, is probably wrong.

Ultimately you need to realize that you have to be an extremely patient person to do CS. You can't argue with a computer, yell at it, hit it, coerce it, torture it, barter with it, or bribe it. When you write 1500 lines of code, and eventhough you unit tested every single function, and you still get an error, you best be able to handle that situation because many I know cannot and simply don't have the patience for it. You will also have to be very meticulous about strane examples. While in the real world you don't give a shit about something that happens once in a million, when a piece of code run 3 million times, 1 in a million is 1 per million too many problems for you to ignore.

i have patience with whatever i like

 

i did a bachelors degree in commerce and economics and hate it to death as people in this field just run behind money and have no other aim.

I am not like them and i wanna do something i am interested in

 

I am very passionate kind of guy and go bonkers behind the things i like and will do alot of shit for it

i have always been behind computers so i wanna go for it



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snakenobi on 25 March 2011
zexen_lowe said:

If your goal is to be the next geohot or Zuckerberg, then yes, you'll fail, but so will 99.9999% of the human beings and even 99% of the computer science students, if your goal is to earn a pretty good payment doing something related to what you like to do (I mean, I think if you're heading for CS you must like computers, even if you don't have much idea of programming, you must like toying with your PC, learning how it works, not just "playing games") then you'll have success even if you don't know much beforehand, because they'll teach you everything you need to know.

As long as you like what you're studying, you'll do well in this career, it's not much about knowing beforehand and more about logical thinking, procedure following, a bit of memory...and some ability for maths at first. And since CS pretty much guarantees plenty of jobs available for you with a good pay, success in it willl carry to your work life....as long as you don't intend to make the new Facebook or hack every console known to man

exactly

my aim isn't to be zukerberg or to hack consoles(atleast not atm...........hehe)

i was just researching for all the requirments and all these guys from computer science that made it big had alot of beforehand knowledge,thats why i was enquiring