<p>Just curious, are they about the same
or is one harder than the other? I'm sure it varies some, but I wondered if there was some kind of general baseline rules people notice</p>
<p>It always depends on a lot of things, but as a general rule EE is harder because you do a lot more physics.</p>
<p>I think the only folks who can answer that is someone who has TWO degrees…one in EE and one in CS. CompE would not count as CompE does not take ALL of the EE curriculum and ALL of the CS curriculum.</p>
<p>Firstly, there is no definite answer since it depends on the department. Secondly, there is no such thing as ‘CS is harder than EE or vice-versa’ since it depends on you most importantly.</p>
<p>Here is my experience:</p>
<p>I’ve taken a handful of EE courses, in fact, I was an EE major, but I switched to CS since I realized EE has little to no demand in the tri-state area(most of the seniors ended up in Finance, and I wasn’t quite feeling it). My CS courses now, are incredibly more difficult than my EE ones. In fact, in a course like CSE305 we are required to create our own version of Facebook, and let me not even get into what we are required to do in our other courses. In short, I feel like EE was more like a joke for me, while CS has been far,far more time-consuming, and it helps to know that it’s in far more demand(based on career surveys)when compared to EE. I love CS, and wouldn’t trade it for anything! </p>
<p>So in my opinion, CS>EE. However, like I said, It depends on your department. If you attend a school that has a mediocre CS department, you might think EE>CS, with respect to difficulty.</p>
<p>Our CS department is part of the Engineering school, so I think that along with ABET accreditation might have to do with the fact that it’s so not easy. When I say not easy I mean it to an extent where the had to remove a CS course from the Computer Engineering curriculum, since the CpE’s were flat-out dropping out the CpE program for EE, due to the course-rigor of certain CS courses that were part of their curriculum.</p>
<p>In conclusion, it depends on YOU!</p>
<p>See, that’s the dangers of difficulty measurement: the core curriculum may be easier for one than another, but professors, applied projects, and the like can skew it.
If you’re asked to design Facebook, or understand Maxwell’s Relations, or design a type of rocket fuel that NASA could viably use commercially, the standard difficulty of the class no longer matters.</p>
<p>Neo,
The OP is asking the question with respect to workload, and based on my experience(given that I’ve taken most of the EE core)the workload for CS at my school is pretty tough. Most people define a ‘tough’ class based on it’s workload, and given the rigor of our courses, EE can’t really be compared to CS here. I’ve taken the ‘project intensive’ and ‘theoretical’ EE courses, and the CS ones were required far more work.</p>
<p>Just my dos-pesos.</p>
<p>Another perspective: it is quite common for EE graduates to take CS jobs, it is next to impossible for CS graduates to compete for EE jobs.</p>
<p>
That’s the point. Your example shows that it doesn’t matter how hard the core curriculum is if they go far beyond that in teaching the major.
I’ve heard of CS programs where the applied projects are graded by representatives of Google. I’ve heard of ChemE classes where a 30% on a final curves into an A (25% into an F) because the material is impossibly hard (for a core course, not just a random elective). And then I’ve heard of programs that are just relatively straightforward with standard requirements.
The point is, your example shows two things:
- Programs can vary by school
- CS is hard at your school
However, it doesn’t show that CS is harder than EE as a discipline. Really, that question becomes irrelevant because the variance is so great.</p>
<p>
I’d argue that that is the case only because the market right now is REALLY good for mediocre CS grads. EE translates to mediocre CS because they know a bit, but not nearly as much. Also, even if a CS grad learned circuitry and electromagnetism like an EE(EEs, on the other hand, have to learn more languages), it would be much more expensive to test their competence.
I think that will fade as soon as schools realize you can just integrate a little bit of CS into most engineering curricula (more than just MATLAB I mean).</p>
<p>Here is a question for you would be engineers…</p>
<p>Why does it matter on which engineering major is harder/tougher/demanding, etc?</p>
<p>Is it for bragging rights?
Is there some “toughest engineering program award” out there that I do not know about?
If so, will it net me more money?</p>
<p>If there is not a good practical reason for knowing which program is MYTHICALLY harder/tougher/demanding, we need to open the freezer and decide on the best ice cream flavors :-)</p>
<p>Neo, I agree. Google actually visits our database class as well to check out our work, which ultimately makes the class even more difficult due to fierce competitions. My peers at other CS departments don’t go through the same stress at all. So in all, I concur with your post.</p>
<p>PCHope,
With due respect, you must not be active in the EE industry, because I’ve known Chemistry students doing EE work back when EE was hot(nowadays there is little to no demand for EE’s out here in the tri-state, most end up as unemployed, CS grad school, or finance industry). Ask an oldie EE, and he can tell you that not all of his co-workers had CpE/EE degrees. As Neo said, since CS is far hotter than EE(doesn’t Software Engineering alone have more openings than all EE fields combined?)mediocre CS guys pick up the void.</p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>
I have been in EE for several years now, and while I HAVE seen a few Chemists and ChemE’s working in EE jobs, it has only been in those narrow areas where the fields essentially overlap - generally variations of material science. In other words, where you could just as easily state that their peers were EE’s working in chemistry jobs!</p>
<p>While many EE areas overlap with other fields or disciplines, it is hardly universal and there are scant disciplines where you can freely cross over (physics being the only I can immediately think of). All the EE’s I have seen out side the material branches have been EE’s, CompE’s, and a handful of physicists - no ME’s, no ChemE’s, and no CS majors.</p>
<p>QCstudent,</p>
<p>1) Your assertion about me and my involvement with EECS cannot be more wrong.</p>
<p>2) Yes, one can find quite a few people with chemistry, physics, or even math background gainfully employed in perceived EE jobs. However, it is much harder for CS people to fill EE positions.</p>
<p>3) While what you said about EE job market in tristate area is somewhat true, your statement is NOT true nationally or globally. Just check out the job openings in SF Bay , Austin, …</p>
<p>PCHope,</p>
<p>1&2)I just stated the obvious, which is that I know people with Math, Chemistry, and CS degrees that are doing EE related work in sensors, they were trained. The aforementioned is similar to those EE’s who are presently filling in the void for CS related jobs.</p>
<p>3)It’s not ‘somewhat’ true, it’s true based on my experience.We can agree to disagree, however, most can agree that there isn’t much of a demand for EE’s. You can use ‘career surveys’(UCBALUMNUS)has a decent thread on it, and you can see that the responses aren’t as pleasing. I mean, the aforementioned should be a factor for potential EE’s, but if someone is truly interested in the field, I don’t mean to persuade them to change. One should wholeheartedly follow their interest. Also, rather than going by what your friend thinks, or what you think, we can go by career surveys from top notch universities, and the truth is there in the public i.e the demand for EE’s vis-a-vis CS is pretty pathetic, to say the least. The university that I attend has most of it’s EE’s and CpE’s ending up as analysts at financial firms/banks, and most who had CS as a minor, or who completed the CS core(very few) end up as Software Engineers.</p>
<p>Cosmicfish,</p>
<p>I concur with your statement, but the point I was trying to arrive at is the same way you have CS, Math, and other guys doing some minor EE work, you can find EE guys doing some minor CS work. It’s not like an EE curriculum specifically trains you in advanced CS topics. The most they learn is intermediate C, along with some baby-java(if lucky). Since CS is far hotter than EE right now, EE’s are filling in the void for positions, let’s face the truth, CS grads have it way better than EE grads. In no way does a traditional EE curriculum prepare you for a DBA, Software Engineer, Game-programmer, and other advanced CS related job-titles. I’m not claiming you said that, but often times CC’ers paint this false-image of EE’s as if they can graduate and magically know the difference between different algorithms.</p>
<p>It’s blasphemous for anyone to claim that “EE’s can do CS jobs, while CS can’t do ours”. Whichever field is hot would have other majors that are struggling(think EE)filling in the void. If EE ever get’s hot, I’m sure many EE companies would be hiring CS grads as well and providing them with the necessary training, similar to what CS companies are doing with EE young bucks. I personally switched from EE to CS because I realized software is my passion, and it doesn’t hurt to know that I attend a top-notch CS program. Also, aside from software being my passion, I didn’t quite enjoy the fact that I know quite too many unemployed EE’s. </p>
<p>Best,</p>
<p>QCstudent - I still disagree with you, not out of any sense of any EE superiority, but because of the unique nature of computer science and software engineering. There are VAST numbers of people working in the field with degrees outside of CS, or with no degree at all. There are several reasons for this:</p>
<p>1) Computer Science is a relatively young discipline, and many people wandered into it from different fields - there were professional computer scientists and programmers long before there were universities with CS degree programs! I know established, respected programmers with degrees in everything from Hospital Administration to English, as well as others with no degree at all! EE certainly went through this phase as well, but it was about a century ago.</p>
<p>2) Software is, across the board, a “low-overhead” discipline. On one hand, this is why there are so many software companies - the costs are extremely low. At the same time, and relevent to this thread, the low costs of learning to program make the skill set accessible to nearly everyone - learning most engineering skills takes a lot of time in labs and some often very expensive equipment, whereas nearly anyone can learn to program given a local library, a home computer, and a relatively small amount of downloadable software. This is a big reason why EE’s can get CS jobs more easily than vice-versa - an EE who WANTS to do CS has very few obstacles to getting an adequate education in the field, whereas a CS wishing to be an EE will have a hard time getting the resources needed to pull it off.</p>
<p>3) A lot of programming work is mundane, basic, and low-level. Sad, but true. While this is true to some extent for all professions, the shear breadth of software means that nearly EVERYTHING needs people to write a bit of code. For every job that actually requires all the tremendously difficult concepts and techniques that they teach you in a CS degree, there are a dozen more that require little more than can be learned in a year of semi-earnest self-study. </p>
<p>4) Programming in many jobs is essentially a job of translation, and in many cases it is better to find someone who can do the underlying job WITHOUT a seperate translator. As a personal example, I (an EE) was designing a mathematical model of a complex communication system. After I had designed the basic model, it was handed over to a group of programmers who then used every trick they had learned in college to produce a grand multi-channel simulation… which didn’t work. So it was sent back to me, and for about a quarter of the expense I simply expanded my own code to handle the full scope of the simulation. It was not as pretty and violated many precepts that the programmers swore by, but it ran in real time (i.e. 4x faster than their model did) and not only worked but matched the operational system.</p>
<p>Now this is certainly not true everywhere - as an EE I would not think to try and get a job someplace where software is a prime or sole product, like Google, or Microsoft, or Apple… but most CS majors won’t work there either. In many other companies, CS majors can be easily replaced (and even improved upon) by using someone with a degree and experience in a more related field, who ALSO knows how to code.</p>
<p>As I said, a lot of CS jobs are liable to disappear if schools find a good way to integrate a year’s worth of programming principles into ChemE/MatSciE/MechE/etc. Most of these teach some numerical methods but not really programming per se; this is either something you do on your own or else you have to get someone to do it for you.
For the moment, there are a lot of pretty nice CS jobs that really don’t demand too much of you in terms of technical knowledge. I’d say it’s only because CS is a ‘hot’ field right now. But I doubt it’s going to last; lots of CS-related money (mostly social media) is very bubbly.
Right now, it’s definitely harder to go CS->EE, but not as hard as you make it out to be. The classes you’d have to make up are: 1-2 Circuits, 1 Electromagnetism, and 1-2 Signal/Systems. Realistically, that’s about 2-3 years worth of study if you do it yourself. Without a few years of experience, you probably wouldn’t be able to do any of the more thoughtful EE jobs, but it’s enough to break into the field. A CS with those 4-5 classes could certainly design $2 digital watches or do routine grunt work which, for a field that is in need of more workers (unlike EE right now), would be enough.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Huh … this is being ignored for some reason when I feel like it hits the nail on the head :)</p>
<p>To add more fuel to the fire, I personally feel that EE > CS (and I’m a CS/Math double major). I have no EE experience but I do have some EE friends for my basis. The main reason I think this is because you don’t need a lot of pre reqs to go into computer science courses, but I think you do (maybe?) in EE. For example, at our school we have:</p>
<p>programming in java -> programming in C and discrete math -> programming in scripting and algorithms -> whatever breadth you want.</p>
<p>If you came into our school with AP Comp Sci credit, you could take arguably the most “advanced” comp sci course (Data Structures or Operating Systems), by the end of your sophomore year. Since there is less dependance on pre-reqs and since an EE has to get more credits than a CS major (at least at my school), I would say EE is technically harder. </p>
<p>Also, I think Comp E are the BEST people to ask on this because no advisor would recommend double majoring in both. They would say go into CompE. And (at least at my school), there are no classes a CS/EE student has access to that a Comp E does not.</p>
<p>It’s hard for someone who has never taken an EE course to claim ‘EE>CS’. That comment surely produced a quality ‘lol’.</p>
<p>All in all, it comes down to the ‘quality’ of your program, and the strength of your classes. Like I said, If you attend a top-notch CS school, your opinion would differ. Just because a CMU student takes a Software Engineering course, and your friend in ‘XYZ’ school takes a course with the same name doesn’t mean you will learn as much as your friend at CMU.</p>
<p>Difficulty often times is defined by work-load, and if you attend a tough CS program where you are required to analyze and understand millions of lines of code in your OS class(happens here, with our MIT professor), and expected to design your own social networking website, which will later be judged by Google(again, happens here), along with an array of other endeavors, then based on my experience, for someone who has taken the core of EE, CS here kicks your ass.</p>
<p>I’ve seen Software Engineering courses, I’ve seen ‘data-structure’ courses, and believe me, it truly all boils down to the quality of your program. You might have an EE program that’s kick-ass, but it’s sort of unfair to claim EE>CS just because in your school CS happens to be weak, and EE is strong. For the same aforementioned reason, it’s impossible to claim CS>EE.</p>
<p>Fair enough. My opinion was only for my school (UMD:CP) which is suppose to be a good school in both (though I know it doesn’t compare to MIT, Stanford, etc.) I think our school has a bit of grade inflation as well…</p>
<p>The closest class I took to EE was a class in fourier analysis and all I know is that the class went over my head lol.</p>
<p>Didn’t mean to get your underwear in a knot :P</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I knew it hit the nail on the head but of course if one wanted to continue discussing it, then why acknowledge the post that debunks all the other posts about it?</p>
<p>Actually, I lashed out because at least ONCE a week, somebody logs on and REFUSES to to a search on past threads and asks the VERY TIRED questions like:</p>
<ul>
<li>Which engineering major is harder? (like there is some "Engineering MVP Difficulty Award)</li>
<li>Does the name of the school matter?</li>
<li>What if I quintuple-major in MechE, CompE, EE, IE and ChemE and triple minor in Physics, Math and Comp Sci…will I have an advantage?..or get paid more?</li>
</ul>
<p>and the such…</p>
<p>If the hiring managers and HR folks actually did actions to make these question matter after what I have witnessed in 22+ years of software engineering, then I would have posted them. What what I have witnessed, the answers to those above questions are:</p>
<p>1) Nobody can give a valid opinion because you would need to survey enough people (large sample theory from statistics) who has completed BOTH degree programs in EE & CS. Even then, that sample of folks couls be totally different than another sample.</p>
<p>2) Not really, especially after one has experience. Even if they are fresh grads, “I” (only a sample of one) have seen top-10 grads next to State-U grads next to 2+2 grads, next to 3+2 grads with ALL of them waiting on tasking from some oldhead engineer like myself.</p>
<p>3) No…employers do not care about minors…and you are hired for ONE of your majors.</p>
<p>Carry on.</p>