<p>How important is computer science to an engineer? Specifically chemical/materials. Is computer science just one of those things that knowing the bare minimums is enough, or will learning enough of it actually improve your performance as an engineer? I mean directly, not the skills acquired by taking extra computer science classes, I already understand that that clearly can indirectly help you in problem solving.</p>
<p>Programming knowledge definitely helps, even in chemical engineering. At the very least you should be able to program in matlab, and maybe write Excel Macros.</p>
<p>Don’t many Engineering Schools require an Intro course in either the C++ or Java languages?</p>
<p>COMPUTER SCIENCE IS NOT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING OR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING.</p>
<p>Just thought I’d get that out of the way, for the benefit of anybody reading. That said, the ability to write your own programs may or may not come in very handy in whatever job you do. You might want to ask some actual engineers rather than students, I don’t know.</p>
<p>Decide for yourself if you want to do the type of engineering where you may need to write your own software tools from time to time or if you want to do the type of engineering where the only software you use will be off-the-shelf.</p>
<p>TomServo COMPUTER SCIENCE IS NOT COMPUTER PROGRAMMING OR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING.</p>
<p>Dude exactly what I’ve been posting everywhere. CS is so much more than that.</p>
<p>Most engineering students I see lack adequate programming skills. They don’t learn what they should from the required classes they have to take and of course don’t take any other programming classes because they “hate” programming. While it’s entirely possible to land a job where you don’t have to program, it’s a really good skill to have. You don’t need to be a programming expert but you should at least be comfortable writing basic applications.</p>
<p>Being the only good programmer among your co-workers later on can definitely help. It could make you an extremely valuable employee, especially if you get to know the ins and outs of the source code of the software you use at your job. It makes you virtually irreplaceable under the right circumstances.</p>
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Some professors treat all of their students like CS / CpE majors, and expect them to write fancy codes even as starters.</p>
<p>Some professors are so considerate and make the programming so easy…</p>
<p>The ideal one would be engineering lab + programming - but hahaha, who has that money?</p>
<p>my few CS classes have no labs and expects nobody to work together. In fact its cheating on most projects if you work together.</p>
<p>meanwhile over in CpE you get labs that require programming. I have worked on teams writing low level assembly, vhdl, verilog, c/c++</p>
<p>sometimes I feel like CS is a factory for web designers</p>
<p>That isn’t what I am referring to, really. I was referring to the introductory class… for non-computer major engineering students…
If you cheat - fine, but if you can’t do the coding on your own at some other times, bad for you :)</p>
<p>I think that you need to know what certain computers/embedded/logic switches and devices, etc. are now a intergral part of engineering. </p>
<p>You will be engineering things. Learn the tools and materials. Won’t need them all, but need to be aware of them.</p>
<p>IMO, YMMV</p>
<p>As Linda Richman says, “Computer Science is neither a computer, nor a science. Discuss.”</p>