<p>Hi, I am about to enter my senior year in high school and plan on eventually pursuing a combined BS/MS degree with a major in Materials Science and Engineering (biomaterials specifically) and earn a masters degree in biomedical engineering. For those of you with previous experience, how important is it to be familiar with HTML and computer programs such as Java? I am debating whether I should take a class to advance in my computer programming skills if it will be important throughout college. Thanks.</p>
<p>I'm going to be a freshman next year and almost all the colleges I looked at before applying require engineering students to take some sort of programming course. So while having some programming background in Java or C++ or the like may help you in those courses, it is far from necessary. Knowing HTML (which isn't even technically a programming language) will do nothing for you other than allow you to make your own websites.</p>
<p>^ actually, if you add a little bit of knowledge in Photoshop and Flash, you can make a lot of money sitting on your butt in front of a computer.</p>
<p>But yeah, it really doesn't help with engineering.</p>
<p>If you need a skill, such as programming, a decent school will make certain it's a part of your required curriculum. For things like Bio Engineering, you might need to use and program, say, Matlab -- they should teach this as part of your coursework. Likely, the course will be geared to practical applications in your major, vs. a course designed for CS majors that focuses more on theory than application.</p>
<p>Yes, thanks for the help. I saw the list of courses for my propsective major and it says required 2 credits in computer programming under engineering core classes.</p>