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CS or IS major
SpeedySpeedBoy
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Registered User regular
I'm a sophomore and i have to pick my classes for next semester. I started out as a CS major and still am, but i don't like coding and can't see myself putting up with this crap for the remainder of my time here. My university offers an Information Science degree and i'm currently in the introduction class for it to see what it's about. It's an OK class, we just go over general computer stuff like hardware/software, databases, networks. I guess you can choose a track later, i'd probably pick the information systems one. I want to be a systems administrator or something similar. I was wondering if someone with an Information Science degree with possibly a CS minor would be less desirable to an employer than someone with a CS degree.
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The only worry would be that IS degrees might be considered more vocational, 'softer,' and less challenging than a CS degree, and therefore the CS degree might have more objective value. This is a perception issue, and I'd be interested to hear what other people's experiences are. Although for you IS = Information science rather than Information systems, so it might be a wash. 'Information Science' is interpreted more broadly - it could refer to classes akin to those you'd find in library science, and it could refer to something like MIS, which would be more management/business focused. It sounds like your Information Systems track is the more vocational style of education, though.
A BS in CS is good for most tech jobs because you'll get a good sampling of courses and disciplines. There was coding involved, but as a CS major, I was exposed to the following things before I settled into aerospace operations.
- low-level programming (C, etc.)
- high-level programming (C++, VB, Perl)
- Artificial Intelligence (Lisp, Prolog)
- Web Applications (C#, VBScript, SQL, DB design)
- Operating Systems
- Compiler design (Lex, Yacc)
Look at and pay attention to the electives list and take what seems interesting to you. If languages and programming aren't your thing, avoid classes like "Advanced Data Structures and Algorithms," but go for things like "Relational Database Design." Computer Science is so broad anyway that no two people walking out of a college with a CS degree have exactly the same degree anyway.It's probably fairly worth it if you're looking to transfer to a four-year university upon completion. Most tech jobs I've seen are looking for a bachelor's degree.
I already have a BS in Computer Science, and I'm very strongly considering a Masters or higher.
First, my GRE scores were better than expected (580 verbal, 800 quantitative, 5.5 analytical writing) and I REALLY enjoyed theoretical stuff as an undergrad (like that "computer languages" class -- BNF grammars, code transformation, compiler and interpreter design, that kind) -- but I've also heard a Ph.D. can actually close doors and make people afraid to hire you. Does anyone else here have a Ph.D. and can comment on whether it's worth it or not?
Second, I can't figure out what specialization to go into, for my Masters in Computer Science. I'm looking for random bits of wisdom or other comments. My choices:
1) Data and Knowledge Engineering. I mean, I work for a bank, and we have data warehouses, and my job has me writing queries that touch them, so this seems like the "I want to make a lot of money doing uninspiring work for the rest of my life" choice.
2) Theoretical Computer Science. This seems like the track to take if I'm Ph.D. bound, and I really enjoy learning about this stuff. It also seems like this'd be harder to find a job with, but I'm not completely sure I care about that.
3) I still can't quite let go of my "I want to make games someday" dream I've had since I was like 9 years old, so maybe "Graphics and Human-Computer Interaction" or "Numerical Methods" or something else that'd make me better equipped to handle game-related challenges than the average self-taught coder.
Third, my local university doesn't even have a Ph.D. program in pure Computer Science, but they do have one in Information Technology. Would I be better off finding a school that has an actual Computer Science Ph.D. program or does this seem pretty good?
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I am a few months away from a PhD in computer science, with a specific focus on software engineering.
If you end up actually getting a PhD, the doors that it "closes" will be the ones you wouldn't want to walk through anyway. Having a PhD will generally overqualify you from the run-of-the-mill cubicle coder or network administrator job. But if you got a PhD, you don't want those sorts of jobs (although if you want to work as a coder, you can do it for Google).
Every PhD has one major question to answer when finishing: Academia or Industry. If you have published enough, have a good advisor, and become part of the research community in your chosen field, you will have plenty of options in both areas. It's a tough decision for many people. If you do industry, you will be working on challenging, complex problems but you may not be able to choose what you work on, and your innovative/creative desires may be overwhelmed by the projects you're working on. If you go academic, (in a tenure-track position), you will have to split your time among research, teaching, and service activities. You will get to work on whatever problems you want, as long as you can get funding for them, make time for them, and publish your results at top conferences and in top journals. You won't be doing most of the legwork though; being a tenure-track professor is a lot like being a manager of a small company. Your grad students are the workers and you're the CEO (but don't treat them like employees). Your role is oversight and advisory, their role is development of ideas and tools.
Is it worth it? It certainly was for me. If I'm going to work 40 hours a week on something, I want it to be something significant. Could I go work as a line coder in a software shop, or a fixit guy? Sure. I'd probably be damn good at it and make good money. But it wouldn't be satisfying. The kind of jobs I get to consider now will let me work on real, unsolved problems, in interesting domains. Space probes? Sure. Satellites? Yep. Next-generation military systems? OK. Health care? Uh huh. Problems that can only be solved by fifty thousand computers running in tandem? Here ya go.
Fun stuff all, but it's not easy. Doing a PhD means being completely self motivated, doing a LOT of writing, failing over and over again and constantly pushing past it, and making shit money for 6 years. If you want to get rich, a PhD is no guarantee (but you certainly will never starve). There are far, far surer paths to money.
Also realize that PhDs compete on a global level. The people you will be collaborating and competing with for pubs and funding are among the smartest people in your field in the world. Top conferences in computer science have acceptance rates of about 10%. Top journals publish perhaps 40-50 articles per year. That means that the smartest people in your field will be submitting papers to a conference, and 9 out of 10 of them will be rejected. These folks are among the best of the best.
You have to be on your toes. A lot. You have to come up with the idea, execute the idea, write up the idea (and this isn't like 'final paper in a college class'-level writing, this is book-quality writing), and then present the idea, sell the idea, and sell the next follow-on to the idea. Mostly by yourself.
This is an interesting area I don't know a lot about. This is where a lot of the AI researchers went when AI didn't pan out, and where a lot of the database researchers went too. The challenges here are how to catalog, manage, and mine huge amounts of heterogeneous information. These could be images, they could be text, they could be Web pages, or Web server logs. Let's say you were given every search query done on Google, with IP identifiers, for a month. What could you do with that? How would you do it? How could you catalog it? Index it? Organize it?
That word you use, I don't think it means what you think it means. Stuff like BNF, compiler design and interpreter design are largely 'applied computer science.' All PhDs involve some amount of 'theory' but the question is how much science vs. engineering are you doing. When you say 'theoretical computer science' then you're talking about design and analysis of algorithms, formal (i.e., mathematical) proofs of correctness of systems, and so on. It's 80% math, 20% computers. Compiler and programming language design is a nice, active area of research, and there is some amount of formalism (e.g., proving the correctness of type systems). I just got back from OOPSLA, the premier conference on programming languages. Some very interesting research on extensions of Java, and Guy Steele (hugely important in the developments of Lisp & Java) gave an amazing keynote on his plans to develop the ultimate scientific programming language to replace Fortan. Fun stuff, but not exactly theoretical computer science.
Computer graphics is another active area of research, and the guys at SIGGRAPH do amazing things. Lots of math here, of a different kind than the Theory folks though. Will a PhD in computer graphics make you the ultimate game designer? Not likely. But you might get a job doing R&D for a game company someday. Human-Computer Interaction is a different, but still active area of research. HCI folks are probably 75% social scientists, and 25% computerists. They're the ones that study how people work with technology, and how technology works with people. They use techinques like ethnography and interviews and surveys and user studies to gather data and help people improve the designs of technological systems.
Finding a PhD program is very difficult, beyond just applying for college or a masters program (Masters students are considered by most faculty to be like 5th and 6th year undergrads). You have to find someplace with faculty doing research in your area of interest, and specifically you have to find a faculty member to affiliate with. You don't necessarily have to do this before you go to a place, but I've known more than one person drop out because they couldn't find an advisor after they completed their masters coursework. Have you done undergraduate research with anybody yet? Your professors are the best contacts to other professors.
The first thing to do is to figure out what general area(s) of research you want to do. Then, it's time to start doing research. Lots. Find out what the major conferences are in that research area. Look at who is publishing papers at those conferences. (The proceedings are online at the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore, you can probably get access to these from your University or its library). Find papers that seem interesting to you (even if you don't fully understand them). Who is writing those papers? What institutions are they at? Go to their websites. E-mail the faculty and their grad students (the paper authors). Try to establish a rapport. See if the faculty at your institution know them. Try to attend one of the conferences if you can - actually go talk to these people.
If you're not ready for all this, getting a Masters may be a good steppingstone. However, funding is generally not as available for MS students, and many PhD programs may make you retake significant coursework even if you have an MS from another institution. It's something you want to find out about early, if you're serious.
Thanks for correcting me -- I have a lot of experience at being wrong. I'm getting good at it! (I also just recently found out I've been using the term "Ph.D. candidate" incorrectly. It also doesn't mean what I thought it meant.)
I think I naïvely associated that class with theory because I had never thought of interpreting languages that way before, and it was very mind-expanding. (I took that class from Dr. Victor Winter, whom I think is the author of HATS, High Assurance Transformation System, if that rings a bell.)
What I learned in that class inspired me to think about combining a bunch of interesting technologies to do something that might be academically interesting, but I don't want to bore everybody with that here. PM?
Honestly, the messiness of the industry scares me. Unless the industry changes significantly in the next few years, I probably don't want to be working for a pure game development company. By the time I finish school things are likely to be very different, of course, but currently game-related technology companies appeal to me.
I'd love to work for a Havok or a GarageGames. I think I'd be very happy working somewhere where we take as long as we need to build something reliable and robust -- where the system is built to tolerate being abused by game programmers in unforseen ways. "We write tight well-engineered code so you don't have to." :-)
So back to the original question: I gather that Ph.D. programs are extremely personal, and there may only be ten or fifteen universities nation-wide that specialize in what I will end up wanting to do. So while at the undergrad level, "CS or IS" major is a great question to ask, at the graduate level I should never just settle for a program because the school is close.
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