Comments on: What is it like to study Computer Science?

By: Of Zen and Computing

Of Zen and Computing — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 23:05:46 +0000

Computer Scientists are concerned with making the computer work, while an IT person’s business is to use the computer to complete a task or solve a problem. Of course this is a broad generalization, and there is a degree of overlap since the two are so closely related.

By: Teo

Teo — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 22:26:44 +0000

I always have trouble differentiating IT and CS. Thanks for clearing it up! After talking with my friend who is major in CS, I came up with this conclusion (I’m a linguistic student):

CS = Linguistics
IT = Social Arts

Maybe I’m wrong about this.

By: Of Zen and Computing

Of Zen and Computing — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:14:02 +0000

The way I have always seen it, I’m prepared to learn and adapt to any of the high-level “usage” stuff because I’m educated in the low-level theoretical side of things.

I’d agree in the futility of majoring in something like “web programming”. If you can write C, you can write PHP, but not always the other way around.

By: jambarama

jambarama — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:42:24 +0000

In my experience, CS is for people who want to be code monkeys. And not any kind of code monkey, but one who writes local apps only. We learned java, C, lisp (smalltalk) and some perl – but usually the course didn’t dictate a language and you could use whatever you wanted.

My school had an IT degree for people who want to be admins, rather than code monkies. The degree was far more vocational, less theoretical, but undoubtedly more marketable. It was heavily into teaching systems (altiris, MS, whatever) and networking. I also thought it seemed more interesting, at least from the outside.

We also had an Information Systems degree which was a merger of CS and IT – mainly for people who wanted to do “web programming,” rather than “real programming.” The joke was that they didn’t learn enough about anything to be hireable, but knew enough about everything to be a pain in the rear.

By: Of Zen and Computing

Of Zen and Computing — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:25:29 +0000

I’ll admit that times were sometimes things scary or boring, but I can’t say I regret anything. It was all for the best!

By: SnailRover

SnailRover — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:36:57 +0000

After reading the title I realized that I probably couldn’t describe what my training and motivation has been like without scaring or boring the listener (reader). Congratulations on capturing the essence of what goes into us twisted folks who think its FUN to count in binary!