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<p>Ah-ah-ah. We’ve been through that thread. ;)</p>
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<p>Sure; the market demands it. Rocket science is paid less than coaching football, but I would trust a rocket scientist to coach football a lot more than I’d trust a football coach to design a rocket.</p>
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That’s exactly the reason, but as you can see there are plenty of CS people around.</p>
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<p>No love for materials engineers, as usual. :(</p>
<p>I went with materials since I really like chemistry and physics, working with my hands, and producing a tangible product. I enjoy programming as a bit of a hobby, but I couldn’t spend 8+ hours a day on it every day for the rest of my life. I’m willing to write stuff in C++ or VB to perform calculations, manipulate data, or run simple simulations, but at most those should be one week projects. As it wears on longer than that I get really sick of staring at code and hating my life.</p>
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<p>There are lots of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo! etc. engineers who make the same claims about their work. After all, everyday people use the products and services offered by those companies. (In fact, a major part of those companies’ success is that lots of everyday people all over the world use them.)</p>
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<p>[The</a> Programming Task Considered as an Intellectual Challenge](<a href=“http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD02xx/EWD273.html]The”>EWD Archive: The Programming Task Considered as an Intellectual Challenge (EWD 273))</p>
<p>This article is written by Edsger Dijkstra, one of the preeminent computer scientists of all time. While you may not agree with everything he says, it provides some food for thought.</p>
<p>One big difference between engineering and computer science is that there are a lot of variations on the computer science degree. Some computer science programs could better be described as CIS degrees. There may be some CS programs that are more computer tech than computer science.</p>
<p>There are lots of part-time CS programs around and some of these are an order of magnitude easier than typical undergraduate day programs. At some universities, their day program won’t accept transfer credits from their evening programs. Evening programs tend to focus more on skills useful in the current job market making the education ideal for adults in the workforce adding to their skills or looking to change industries. Full-time programs tend to focus more on theory, as well as practice. Day programs can have five to ten times as much homework as evening programs as professors understand that adult students have a lot of other responsibilities besides classes.</p>
<p>I don’t think that the situation is the same in engineering.</p>
<p>This is a little off-topic, but how big is the difference between a Computer Science and Engineer major and a plain old Computer Science (B.S.) major? The former is supposed to mesh both computer science and engineering together, except that it’s mainly focused on the hardware aspect. However, isn’t electrical engineering above all what people major in to get into computer hardware engineering?</p>
<p>Many Computer Science programs require a few hardware courses. And there are CS/EE degrees at some places. I’d assume that a CE degree just has more hardware courses and fewer software courses. One way to check would be to look at the major requirements for the degrees at your school or at schools that you are interested in.</p>
<p>Electrical engineering is much more diverse, though it’s possible to go into computer hardware from electrical.</p>
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rofl… Am I the only one curious enough to ask why not?</p>
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<p>I think this is true in general of the engineering industry vs other fields. In fact, I think you talked about this in another post (the fact that there are less women in the field, so no need for “healthy” food and you can get right down to the good stuff)</p>
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<p>My computer runs on tiny hamsters in tiny hamster wheels. This “electron” stuff is just a ruse put on by the physics community to make me learn about made-up nonsense like “flux”.</p>
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<p>Would <em>you</em> offer cucumber salad in a light dressing to a mutton-chopped six-foot red-faced guy wearing steel-toed boots as he yelled into a Nextel walkie-talkie? That’ll get you a beatdown.</p>
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<p>Hahaha, I don’t know what women some of you people have been running into, but you sure haven’t run into me! ;)</p>
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<p>Aww. Materials engineers are great. All the people I know studying materials are so chill and happy with what they’re doing!</p>
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It all makes sense now.</p>
<p>Is doing CS still worth it? I’m worried about outsourcing, and considering going CE for that reason. On average, do they get paid a lot?</p>
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<p>You really need to stop ■■■■■■■■ these forums.</p>
<p>Yes, doing CS is still worth it, if you are primarily interested in the more fundamental aspects of computing (compilers, AI, algorithms) and somewhat less so in hardware, electronics, etc. (Some CS programs require you to take core EE subjects.)</p>
<p>Regarding outsourcing, offshoring, and the like, companies will do that if it helps their ROI. To mitigate the effects of job loss, try to stay out of debt, have enough saved to live for at least a year without income, and make sure people in your field know your value. I’d suggest something like contributing to an open-source project or being a valuable resource in a public technical forum.</p>
<p>Choosing a degree for the outlook in four years requires predicting the future. There are a lot of folks that were looking forward to IB jobs that are sweating now. It could be the same way for whatever you pick in a few years. CS gives you a lot of flexibility as there are a lot of jobs that look favorably on a CS degree. Many of those jobs don’t really use the heavy-duty math and science skills that you will learn but they will always be there, whether you use them or not.</p>
<p>Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering has a course EGR 10 that looks like it is a survey of the different engineering majors. I downloaded it last night and plan to watch the classroom videos to get a better idea of what the options are - just out of curiosity. The videos are on iTunes.</p>