<p>I plan to go into chemical engineering and want to be as prepared as possible for next year. I hear that engineers need to learn how to program. </p>
<p>At this point, all I have is a year of visual basic. But the summer catalogs are coming out from the local colleges and I plan to take a few courses. Should I take any computer programming, and which languagues (C++, Java)? Would I also need to learn autocad as well for drafting?</p>
<p>So do engineers typically learn programming in engineering courses or in actual computer science courses? Would I be better off learning them now or is it pretty easy to learn in college (I know I stuggled a bit in visual basic)? Thanks in advance for the help.</p>
<p>All you need at U of I is a basic CS 101 course. Check at your college and if you do and want to get it out of the way. Take the class at a community college because it really won't be that important especially for chemE. Most other engineering requires more.</p>
<p>you might need a basic programming course just for the problem solving part...depends on your college...but usually it'll be sth "simple" like c...where it's mostly just structured programming implementing algorithms and what not...versus the event driven programming in vb...</p>
<p>acad's mostly for ce's or me's....</p>
<p>but in any case, check w/ the specific college and department...</p>
<p>I was at Cornell for two years and they required all engineers to take at least one CS course. Both taught Java and Matlab, but each taught more of one than the other. As a ChemE you would probably use programs like Matlab more than stuff like Java, C++, C, etc. </p>
<p>CAD? Like firai said, CAD is mostly done in MechE and CivilE. I like using 3D CAD programs like SolidWorks, but will be using AutoCAD for a summer internship. If you want to learn some CAD, I would says programs like Solid Edge and SolidWorks (I prefer SolidWorks) are good. I haven't used much of AutoCAD because I can use SolidWorks to make 3D objects and let it make the 2D drawings.</p>