<p>I'm having a hard time deciding whether to pursue computer science or mech/elec engineering in college.</p>
<p>I'm really good with computers and programming, but I have a perception (correct me please) that most jobs in the cs field require the guy to sit in a cubicle behind a computer all day. I like to do some design/hands on work.</p>
<p>One of my dream jobs is to build/design/test robots, or weaponry, or automobiles. Would I be able to do these things with a degree in CS? I realize most of this stuff is like, mech/elec, but don't they need people to program these things? haha. Are there sub-specialties that I should be interested in, like AI?</p>
<p>I guess I don't have a clear idea of what people in each major do.
Thanks guys.</p>
<p>Im going to Stanford next year (yes I do have a while to decide my major lol!) and I don’t think they have computer engineering. Any more ideas?</p>
<p>You might look at a few defense companies for jobs in these areas and examine their requirements along with job descriptions. iRobot is looking for a bunch of software engineers right now (they’re in MA) to work on various projects.</p>
<p>CompEng or EECS would be great for doing robotics.</p>
<p>CS, MechEng, or EE would be decent too, depending on your interest. If you want to design the AI and/or control programs for robots, CS might be your best bet. If you would rather work on designing the chassis, the motion systems, etc. then mechanical would be better. EE would be prime for doing the low-level device drivers, the wiring of the electrical stuff, designing circuitry, etc.</p>
<p>EE has a concentration in control engineering where Cs, Me, and vast knowledge of EE tools and concepts are required. I write all functions for motor control and I’m not a CS major.</p>
<p>Most people would consider programming to be the backbone of the CS degree. It has the most jobs as well. Electricians do the wiring, engineers do the schematics. Actually, thats at the very low level.I mean, do civil engineers acutally pick up bricks and place them on the wall?. </p>
<p>How many EE job postings have a “wiring experience” listed as a requirement? compare that with postings that have c++,c#,java,oracle,sql… listed (usually at the very top) for CS majors.</p>
<p>" Well, this is a double-edged sword. First off, it may not be listed, but assumed. Second, jobs != majors."
-What? OK let me get a Mechanical engineering degree and see if Intel bothers to hire me. And if it’s not listed, then it’s probably not that common which brings us back to the point where I tell you that most engineers are not required to attach wires( as a primary job responsibility). </p>
<p>“A common misconception.”
-If you are saying that math and sciences are the fundamentals of CS, then i agree to that as well<em>. But no one goes around with calculators in their pockets. The basic courses are *tools</em> to help students understand the “basics of the basics”. </p>
<p>“And do engineers not do any wiring or soldering?”
-Just not enough to mention it when discussing electrical engineers. You dont know much about electrical engineering and thats probably why you bring up things that dont make sense. We dont wire anything ourselves(97% of the time). The only wiring i have done is to check if the capacitors/resistors/inductors were working. EEs dont go around with yards of coppers wire. On the other hand, I am sure a good number of CS majors will definitely write some code during their careers. </p>
<p>" In theory, they could. And I’d be surprised if there weren’t anything a CivE major does with the hands…"
In theory, you can be a doctor and an engineer and a chef and the president of Bulgaria at the same time. Whats your point? I am only mentioning what is <em>actually</em> out there.</p>
<p>^ I know a lot of EEs here that do a lot of soldering, at least for this one project I’m involved in. Granted, they may be doing it because we don’t have a host of technicians to do it for us, but the fact of the matter is that <em>I</em> don’t do any of the soldering, and they learned to do it somewhere along the line. “wiring” may have a negative connotation or something that I didn’t necessarily mean to imply.</p>
<p>I think you misunderstand my first point. Most programming jobs require a knowledge of, say, recursion. Now, you can know how to program perfectly well without knowing anything about recursion. Why not? I’ve never seen a single word about knowing recursion, or linked lists, etc. on an application. I get asked questions at interviews, yes, but they never cover every minute detail. People assume that I will know how to do these things, even though I may never run into a scenario in which I need to do it. Yes, they don’t pay EEs to do wiring and soldering, but in a sense they don’t pay Software Engineers to type up the code… they have programmers for that, and I have tried countless times to bring to light the difference between the two fields. They are considered separate in the academic literature, by the BLS OOH, and you can see differences in industry as well. The primary job of the programmer is to code. The job of the college-educated software engineer - what I would consider as being closer to what you are calling an electrical engineer - may write code but needn’t do so (if they do so, it is because it is less manual and more cerebral than wiring, but intellectually it’s about the same). Programmer would be more akin to electrician in my mind’s eye. Of course, there’s a lot of confusion about these terms, and some programmers are called software engineers and vice versa, but I’ll write that off to the field being newer than other technical disciplines.</p>
<p>(Now, if you want to argue that programming is more intellectual than wiring, I can argue that you’re not programming correctly. All of the creativity should - again, in theory, but this is becoming best practice as the field becomes more mature - be spent before you sit down to hack it out.)</p>
<p>“I am only mentioning what is <em>actually</em> out there.”
For someone making a lot of very strong claims about knowing the truth, you’re not throwing a lot of sources at me. This needn’t be an indictment of you. I wouldn’t know where to look for sources of what must inherently be undocumented information. Anyway, I’ll agree that EEs aren’t circuit monkeys. But I think it’s only fair to admit that, regardless of the major, there’s some tedious, tedious, monotonous stuff that you have to do.</p>