<p>Hey guys,</p>
<p>I got into both Carnegie Mellon's SCS & CIT's ECE programs. I'm really excited, and yet, really confused. At my accepted students' day event, I could only visit SCS (ECE wouldn't fit on my agenda), but I'm not sure exactly what the differences with be.</p>
<p>"Software" vs. "Hardware" is an explanation that just doesn't seem to cut it for me. If anyone could provide extra information on what would go on in our classes, the things we'd study, the opportunities we'd have, etc., I would greatly appreciate it :)</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>One of your best bets might be to pick up the CMU course guide and look through the list of suggested classes for each major and read through their descriptions. See what looks more interesting.</p>
<p>Thanks - good call 
will do!</p>
<p>Keep in mind you can always minor in one of them without much difficulty. Lots of ECE students minor in CS, and I’m sure there’s a number of CS students who choose to minor in ECE (since they have to minor in something). So don’t feel you’d be locked into a particular program for good, since you always have the freedom to take a just the handful of classes you find interesting in the other field.</p>
<p>ECE: Low level details. You will need to learn about physics, voltages, circuits, and how the things work from that level to create machines that process logic. Signal processing is also a big difference. Highest level is systems level programming. Can work on other electronic systems…not just computers.</p>
<p>CS: High-level. Includes classes that require mathematical proofs, abstract thinking, algorithm analysis, language theory. Also get to touch some of the detail stuff, but never go below the hardware layer. Lowest level is operating system level programming. Nothing about physics and hardly have to talk about machine representation (except for systems).</p>
<p>One difference that was mentioned during my visit to an Operating Systems class: If you’re in CS, the compare-and-swap operation is free. If you’re in ECE, the compare-and-swap operation is really expensive.</p>