About You
Where did you go to college?
I went to the University of Rhode Island.
Did you attend college online, in person on campus, or both?
I did all of my undergraduate work in person on campus.
Did you know what you wanted to major in before your Freshman year?
I did, but it wasn’t Computer Science. I spent my first 2 years of college studying Chemical Engineering. The summer before my junior year I had two jobs on campus — one as a research assistant for a Chemical Engineering professor, and the second as developing software for the staff of the engineering computer lab. After a while, I realized that I was having a lot more fun at the programming job.
Did you receive any scholarships throughout your time in college? If so, what kind?
I did receive a full merit scholarship to attend URI, however my father was a professor of Civil Engineering, so my tuition was paid by virtue of his employment. I was pretty lucky!
Why did you choose this major?
Once I decided that programming was for me, I made the switch so that I could learn all aspects of programming and computer science. I had several friends already in the program, so it was a pretty easy decision even though I had a lot of catching up to do.
About the Major
What type of courses did you take for this major?
Typical computer science programs will start by teaching you the basics of programming. Then you learn about programming languages, compilers, operating systems, algorithms, databases, networks, and fundamentals of computation. There are also a lot of math requirements — I needed to learn calculus and linear algebra.
What course did you find the most fun/least fun?
I really enjoyed learning how to create new programming languages. You start by writing a program that breaks up the language’s source code and then converting that into commands that the computer can understand.
The class that I had the least fun with was the fundamentals of computation. It was interesting enough, but it was highly theoretical. The concepts you learn don’t really help you in your day to day life as a programmer.
What course did you find to be the hardest/easiest?
I wouldn’t say that any of the courses were “easy” but most of them were a lot of fun. I really enjoyed doing the homework and projects.
The hardest course was also the least fun — the fundamentals of computation. In it you learned about how computer binary logic works, and how to construct more complex circuits out of simple ones. This was one of the few computer science classes that didn’t involve any programming.
What skills does this major require and develop?
You don’t really need any skills in order to start a computer science major. However, it helps to be really inquisitive and tenacious. The basics of computer science can be taught pretty easily. One skill that you’re not taught is how to debug your code. This is absolutely necessary to become a programmer, and requires a lot of patience and logic.
What type of internship would be ideal for someone with this major?
That’s a great question! An internship as a software developer should absolutely be a paid position. After you graduate there are so many different directions you can go with your career. It’s worthwhile to explore your options as an intern — try working in an industry you wouldn’t necessarily consider. Sometimes the programming challenges can make a “boring” job a lot of fun!
What minors or other courses might complement this major?
I personally ended up with a Math minor because I had taken so many credits between engineering and computer science. That would be very helpful if you want to develop Artificial Intelligence. You could also study Art or Music if you wanted to develop games.
Are there any special groups/associations for this major?
There are basically two associations — the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) . I wouldn’t say either is particularly important unless you wanted to go into academics.
Post Degree
What can you do with this major?
The most obvious thing is to become a professional software developer! Basically everything we interact with these days has software involved somewhere. Whether it’s this very website, or the apps on your phone, or the games you play. Every one of these things was created by software developers.
But the best thing is that you can do all of these things without a Computer Science degree. All it takes is some learning and dedication, and you can start learning right now.
However, if you wanted to put your computer science degree to work, you could design the next programming language, or a new operating system, or maybe construct a new deep learning algorithm.
Is graduate work usually required to work in the fields associated with this major?
Definitely not — in fact a degree isn’t always required. I’ve known plenty of non computer science majors learn to program. They tend to make great programs for their particular field. They’ll have a lot more domain knowledge than a computer scientist. For example, it’s a lot easier to teach a physicist how to program than it is to teach a computer scientist about high energy physics!
Peter Kovacs, Guest Contributor
Comments