<p>Ok to make a long story as short as possible, I am one semester away from graduating with a B.B.A. in Information Systems. I am still getting this degree no matter what. Now, at my school to get an IS degree you have to take a 16 credit concentration in Computer Science, which includes 2 VB.Net courses and 2 Object Oriented Programming(using Python) courses. </p>
<p>I am considering adding a B.A. in Computer Science. I enjoy programming more than drawing diagrams and analyzing systems and I like the technical aspects of my classes more than the IT management aspect. </p>
<p>I do however value my business degree, in other words I don't want to hear how I should have done CS in the first place, I want both degrees not one over the other. </p>
<p>Adding this degree would involve staying another 2 years putting my total time in college at 6 years. Money is not an issue, and I really do want this. What do you guys think, is this career suicide?</p>
<p>I think it’s career suicide if…
(a) you’re going to be looking for jobs that ask for a what you already have and not necessarily for jobs which are strictly limited to CS/SE types,
(b) you’re not good enough or in love enough with the math to do well in a CS program,
(c) you cannot get into any CS or IS/IT graduate programs instead.</p>
<p>A CS degree goes pretty far beyond programming. As part of the curriculum here, I chose a minor in CS and both courses I have taken so far actually had no programming component at all. I do not consider a love of programming to be the same as the love of CS.</p>
<p>Ok Auburn, thank you for your quick reply. Now to reply/ask some questions. To answer (a) it seems to me in my job hunt, I may be able to get a phone interview for a developer job, but whether I have the actual programming knowledge to comfortably perform the job let alone get the job, remains to be seen. </p>
<p>To reply to (b) The B.A. simply requires I take Discrete Math, above and beyond the calculus I already have for my business degree. I do realize that the theoretical classes I must take for CS like Automata and organization of programming languages, etc…, will require math I am uncertain as to whether I have done that sort of math or how hard it is to learn that type of math. </p>
<p>The reply to (c) is in short I have good enough grades to get in to a grad CS program but I would need to take at least 4-6 undergrad CS classes before I could start actual grad school. So essentially I could get in to a program provisionally. I am not sure if grad school is for me though.</p>
<p>P.S. This is BHolc86, for some reason I wasn’t able to login with this account before, but in another browser it auto-logged me in.</p>
<p>To reply to gthopeful, I agree. The CS program at my school explains the theory classes as classes necessary to make you a better and more efficient programmer. This is not out of my mouth, its straight from my professors mouth. With that in mind my goal is still the same. </p>
<p>The question is (A)Will this hurt my career, and (B)Is an average math student/decent programmer with a lot of passion and dedication, good enough to complete this degree.</p>
<p>Some CS programs will provide you with a core set of programming
skills in C++, Java, Scheme and Python while others will will provide
you with programming skills in products (as in your reference to VB.NET). The idea of the former is to provide generalized skills for
your career while the latter will give you an edge in getting a job
with a specific skill.</p>
<p>There are lots of jobs out there for CS or CIS grads that have a
laundry list of skills. Your typical grad won’t have those skills
unless they are the generic skills that grads have. Employers have to
take what’s available so you might have a shot if you have some of the
things on their lists.</p>
<p>I would suggest doing the interviews; if you are offered a job for the
spring, then it might change your direction.</p>
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<p>Most CS programs that I’ve seen require at least calculus 2; my son’s
program requires calculus 3 and mathematical statistics. Some programs
require linear algebra and differential equations. Some students have
trouble with Discrete Math because they haven’t seen proofs before.</p>
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<p>You can go to the MIT OCW (Open CourseWare) site to look at materials
and problem sets of the types of math needed for computer science.
Much of it may be unintelligible to you at this stage.</p>
<p>The way to determine if you can do the math is to try to do it. You
could try Discrete Math or Calc 2/3 to get an idea as to your math
abilities. You should run into proofs in Discrete Math or Calc 3. You
should run into some abstract algebra in Discrete Math. If you feel
comfortable with those subjects, then you have a good shot at
succeeding in Computer Science.</p>
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<p>The graduate program will move faster than the undergraduate program
and should provide you with a broader range of computer science topic
areas. It will provide a more marketable degree. You could just take
the 4-6 undergrad CS classes to see how you would fare in the CS world
and then continue with the graduate degree if you liked it.</p>
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<p>These courses can make you a better and more efficient programmer but
they aren’t necessary for most real-world programming work. There are
very useful if you’re working on engineering software systems where
performance is very important but there are vast amounts of programming
where performance isn’t that big of an issue.</p>
<p>Facebook presents a good example of this where they use PHP for a lot
of their programming. The Facebook Slashdot entry for today talks about
the environmental impact of Facebook running PHP instead of C++ at
49,000 tons of CO2 per year.</p>
<p>I don’t think that taking additional CS courses will hurt your career
but an interviewer might consider it a bit odd to do a combination
CS/CIS degree. I think that CS majors tend to be math people and I
generally see CS degrees combined with math, physics, and electrical
engineering.</p>
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<p>I think that you need to be a better than average math student to
complete the CS degree. At my son’s school, the CS completion rate is
under fifty percent. I can’t compute it exactly due to transfers in
from community colleges but a lot of students find that it is
tough. My son has a friend that dropped from CS to CIS because he just
couldn’t pass the mathematical statistics course (I think that he
tried it twice). The stats course required for CIS was a lot easier.</p>
<p>I’m presenting a devil’s advocate case here. I hope that I’m not
coming across to negatively but I do think that you should know what
you’re looking at doing. You can probably gauge how well you will do
overall by taking a few of the math courses required for the CS
degree.</p>
<p>BTW, I have a CIS undergrad degree and an MSCS so I went through this
process via undergrad/grad. I did a lot of consulting early on and it
was a lot of fun working at a variety of companies doing a variety of
things. You generally don’t get those opportunities working in
software engineering (there was a long discussion on that a few months
ago here). I switched over to engineering many years later and that’s
provided for much more stability - something that’s nice to have when
you’re raising a family.</p>
<p>Thank you BCEagle91, I did check and re-check the requirements for the B.A. and it is simply Applied Calculus, Statistics, and Discrete Math. The B.S. requires Calc 1-3 and stats and linear algebra, as well as discrete math. The B.S. is way more time for me because of all the extra math.</p>
<p>I have completed the Applied Calc and Stats class already. I am not saying I am capable of doing the math involved in CS well, I am just stating my current progress in mathematics. I did take a 300 level Econ class that involved a lot of math and did ok, but I am 99% positive that the math was completely different than that of upper level CS courses.</p>
<p>I have scheduled a meeting with one of my professors who took the B.A. option at my school although years ago, and then got a masters. He stated the lack of pure math classes involved did not hurt him in grad school or the industry. I would just like to see what he says.</p>
<p>My thought process in getting both degrees is, I enjoy software development and I have people and business skills already both naturally and through my IS degree. My technical skills in software development are limited, and my knowledge and skills in software optimization are non-existant. Sure I can write small programs and modify other peoples code in a handful of languages, but is that enough in the industry?</p>
<p>Thank you for all the replies, they have all taught me something new about the industry or degree.</p>
<p>There is no reason you cant get a M.S in CS with a B.S in Business. Some programs may make you take some pre-reqs your first semester, but if you have a good gpa and gre you should be ok. Good Luck.</p>
<p>CS graduates will have more programming experience through the sheer
number of labs involving programming assignments. The theory part
serves two purposes: it allows you to go into computer science and
improves your programming if you go into software engineering or
programming. It is needed in a few programming areas. The theory
allows you to understand the algorithms that others have developed
and allow you to develop your own and understand the relative time
complexity involved in your algorithms or algorithms of others.</p>
<p>There are lots of algorithm books around so that if you need an
algorithm to do a sort or walk a tree; you can just fish one out of an
algorithms book. You do not necessarily have to understand how it
works on understand time-complexity issues if you just need something
for a program that you are working on. You can also go on the web to
get code or code samples on how to implement something. In many cases,
you can go to forums with a problem where generous programmers will
partially (or sometimes fully) answer coding questions.</p>
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<p>With a CS degree you have mostly the same thing. The programs may be a
little larger on the order of several thousand lines of code. There’s
a limit to how much code that you or a small team of students can
write in a semester. You can work on projects with tens of thousands
to millions of lines of code if you want to via the magic of the open
source community. University courses can do this too but I think that
those that do are scarce.</p>
<p>I appreciate the advice, I am going to meet with a professor in the department and see what happens. I am taking an online introduction to discrete math. I will update this thread with the results.</p>
<p>First off, I would like to thank everyone for their advice. 2nd I would like to let you all know that I have decided to apply to UNC Greensboro’s Graduate Certificate program and then continue on to grad school. </p>
<p>If I do not get in to the program then I will likely stay at my current university and take the necessary pre-reqs for grad school. Thank you.</p>
<p>It doesn’t matter if the degree is CS, IS, IT, Math or Physics or even Business. As long as you have the following, you will be ok…</p>
<ul>
<li>C++ and Java Programming</li>
<li>Operating Systems course (and prereqs)</li>
<li>Computer Networks course (and prereqs)</li>
<li>Database Systems course (and prereqs)</li>
<li>Systems/Software Engineering course (and prereqs)</li>
</ul>
<p>Most jobs are IT-related anyway. For every 1 or 2 jobs doing compiler design, there are 100 database/operating systems/network jobs. For a typical corporation, they are developing software for either internal or external customers using databases running over operating systems and networks. A systems or software engineering methodology (waterfall, scrum, whatever) will be used to development, testing and deployment.</p>
<p>If you happen to get into more scientific software development, then you will need the math and other prereqs.</p>