<p>^^^“Nerd” and “misfit” are not the same word, though. At least not in my book.</p>
<p>My computer science teacher is the biggest nerd I know…and a master sky diver with over 1000 jumps. Don’t judge a book by its cover!</p>
<p>Would OP’s son consider minoring in girls?</p>
<p>Midmo-
By misfit I’m pretty sure he means along the lines of being unable to communicate to anyone, hygiene may be a problem and generally never want to do anything outside the computer lab.</p>
<p>mommusic-
We get all that… he does like to problem solve, program and math (algorithms). But his complaint about some of the other students is that a)some never EVER talk and b) when they do it’s more on the lines of just <strong>weird</strong> things. </p>
<p>***Now I know weird is subjective, but, for example: thinking Darth Vader is real or which adult sites one visited is generally not normal startup conversations, no?</p>
<p>OK ^^ that’s weird. But surely not all the students are like that.</p>
<p>If your S is great at programming and also has social skills & can communicate well–more power to him! He’ll have a leg up when it comes time to get a job, and keep it.</p>
<p>An anecdots from my CS major son, about to graduate. He had an excellent paid internship with a well known software design co last summer. There was another, brilliant intern who was fairly anti-social, but a nice kid. My son, very social, played on the company noontime soccer team and was friendly (and very much himself) during his summer. Caveat: he likes and appreciates nerdy guys, and likes having both the nerd side of himself and the more frat boy side). But guess who had the job offer in October of his senior year? I think his social nature, combined with his CS knowledge and tolerance of his colleagues of ALL stripes got him the job.</p>
<p>SJTH-
It probably did help, personality and fit are important in cs kind of jobs, despite popular perception. Among other things, the stereotypical ‘cs nerd’ that some have mentioned might be brilliant at hacking code, but that is a far cry from developing things that actually work, in many environments those writing the system have to interact with users and other tech people to solve problems, and many companies, to lean out process, have cut out methodologies like the waterfall process where someone writes a spec down to the level of practically telling someone how to write the code, today developing code is iterative, team based, so the geek great at code but a social introvert is going to have a hard time. Some companies still do this kind of thing, it is requisite if you outsource programming, but in many positions it requires all kinds of skills that in turn require interacting. Plus quite honestly, these days the hours tend to be long, you have to sit in close proximity and work with others for 10-12 hours a day a lot of the time, and being around a social misfit type in their own world doesn’t help the grind, either. I’ll also tell you that in the ‘real world’ most programmers are not what the OP’s son thinks, believe me:)</p>
<p>It’s true that the sterotype exists and some percentage of the CS students tend to fit the sterotype but it’s certainly not all of them. If the stereotypical ones don’t appeal to him he can hang out with the other CS majors and unless he’s going to a college that’s almost exclusively CS majors he should have plenty of options for matches of people from other majors (where he’ll find they don’t all fit the sterotypes either).</p>
<p>In reality, once he gets into the workplace, he’ll find that there are all types of people in the CS field and some of them will still fit his sterotype image but some of them won’t. It’s really nothing worth worrying about or changing a major over.</p>
<p>The important thing is whether he likes the major itself and can see himself working in that field or another field that a CS degree prepares one well for.</p>
<p>“***Now I know weird is subjective, but, for example: thinking Darth Vader is real or which adult sites one visited is generally not normal startup conversations, no?”</p>
<p>Unlikely there are a higher percentage of CS majors starting up conversations about adult sites than your general population. People who actually think Darth Vader is real are genuinely crazy, not weird, and not the norm. Perhaps he is confusing a couple of people who started up an awkward conversation, and those who enjoy role playing games (which is indulging in their imagination, not pretending it is reality)…overgeneralizing about a few people and thinking it’s the norm?</p>
<p>There may be some valid generalizations about many of the people who are CS majors, but being porn addicts and insane are not accurate ones.</p>
<p>At my son’s internship last year, he had three roommates. One fit the stereotypical gamer - always in his room in front of his laptop, another was an athlete and very social, he didn’t describe the third. The kids in the intern (there were about 20 I think) held lots of parties, meals, events, etc. Overall, quite a social bunch of kids.</p>