<p>I am currently a chem e student and need a couple professional electives (supposed to boost your resume) and was wondering if learning a programming language was worth it as a chem e. I do want to go to grad school eventually so I am also curious in the use of programming in research vs. industry and which languages are better for which field.</p>
<p>Any help on this topic would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>Well, generally one must take an intro to programming class for the engineering curriculum. The language varies by institution; I know some who had to use MatLab, whereas I had to learn Java. Check to see if your institution already has a class laid out for you in the first two years of the curriculum. If you are given a choice, well I’m no expert, but I believe all the languages are pretty close. So six of one, a half dozen of the other…</p>
<p>maybe i should have said this from the beginning…i am a sophomore in chem e already and i know that our program doesnt require a programming class. i was hoping to get some feedback from someone already in the field</p>
<p>Matlab is mostly used in statistical/modeling research and much easier to learn, where as C++ is a general purpose programing language. I would say Matlab if you want to learn something useful for graduate school</p>
<p>I would definitely say Matlab, just because anytime you need to do anything with vectors, or crunching massive amounts of data, then it’s useful. C is more for lowlevel programming, and is MUCH harder to learn/work with. :)</p>