Comments on: Pursuing A Career In Computer Science.?

By: Colanth

Colanth — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 10:09:10 +0000

1) Choose a career that will make you glad to be able to go to work every day. A rich man who can’t stand looking forward to the next 40 years of his life is a poor man. The subsistence farmer who enjoys being able to work on the land is a rich man. We didn’t evolve to live longer if we have more money.
2) Programming is always a challenge. If you enjoy the feeling that comes when you solve a puzzle you never thought you could, you’ll enjoy programming.
Engineering is designing computers. Been there, done that, redisigned the t-shirt. It’s also interesting, if you like working woth hardware.
Forensics? That’s mostly civil service. Solid and pretty secure, but no one ever got rich working for the man. And you’d better like playing office politics, have a good rabbi, or like drowning.

By: tommizzy

tommizzy — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 08:00:09 +0000

This answer is going to be a little oversimplified but hopefully you will take some advice from it.
Coming from someone who has changed their major almost 20 times since i started college, don’t jump straight into one area. The best thing to do is take the broad intro level classes and just feel it out. See what interests you.
There are plenty of basic/into level computer classes that you will need. You are going to have to take at least one class in each of those fields to move on in that certain field so when you take your intro to software development class and you LOVE it, you might want to start aiming towards programing at that time. Don’t just jump into programing because you like to problem solve, ya know. It’s smart to plan a little ahead but don’t put all of your marbles in one bag. Your life is going to change dramatically by the time that you get your degree. Take things in on a yearly basis. Come June/July start thinking about where you want you life to be for that upcoming year and make that your goal, not 10 years down the road.

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 07:01:18 +0000

If you enjoy problem-solving, and you have a natural ability for solving problems by breaking down into smaller parts, then programming may be for you. Just remember that many programming jobs in the US and other western countries are being outsourced to India, China and other developing countries that have cheaper programmers.
Computer engineer – this is very broad – I presume you mean computer hardware engineer. For this, you would probably need to study Electronic Engineering rather than Computer Science, because most of it is circuit design and working with electronic components. And again, be aware that many of these jobs have been outsourced to the Far East.
Computer Forensics – this may be the best choice for long-term job stability, because governments still need more fraud / crime analysts to deal with the growing amount of computer crime. And this isn’t so easy to outsource, because it relies hugely on trust – governments & private forensic companies need people employed locally to ensure this (and also, hard disks cannot be simply and securely sent across the globe, unlike programming code or circuit designs which can easily be emailed).
Salaries are about the same for all 3 of these. Sometimes, there are extremely high-paying jobs in one of them, but you can usually earn $60k+ in any of these if you work in a big US or UK city (especially after getting a few years’ experience). Not sure about demand – it changes so often and depends on where you are, and how good you are at the job.
Pre-requisites for all: A technical mind, ability to work well in a team as well as being self-motivated, ability to understand other peoples’ work even when it’s done in a different style to your own, and the ability to think logically in a way that a computer would do.
It all depends on what you enjoy. Above all, choose something you love, because spending 40+ years in a career means you’d better like what you do!