Hi andrewflnr, thank you for your kind comment. Nearly everything in the software/computer science world can be an area of active research if you start looking

Hi andrewflnr, thank you for your kind comment. Nearly everything in the software/computer science world can be an area of active research if you start looking into it. It takes a lot of digging to get to the point of active research in some areas, particularly in the ones that have been well studied. Most of a typical undergraduate course will only prepare you for reading the research; most of a master's is about getting you ready to actually contribute something (the thesis). The PhD is where the real action starts happening for most people. Why is that? The '10000 hours' in computer science is usually needed to get you to the point where you can start contributing significant work. It is absolutely worth your time to spend time working on real research. The caveat is the place of research determines the coolness. Some places... you run tests. Some places... you do some really awesome work. Look into REUs if you're still an undergraduate. Those are essentially internships for academics. They are paid. :-) I would be happy to communicate further with you; my email address is in my profile.