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"if you know you want a technical major but you're not sure which, choose Computer Science." I completely disagree. I am not even convinced that a computer sci

"if you know you want a technical major but you're not sure which, choose Computer Science." I completely disagree. I am not even convinced that a computer science degree is the best degree to have for a software job, but a computer science degree is useless unless you go into computer science. The other degrees can yield multiple career opportunities math being the most widely applicable to different careers. Disclaimer: I have a degree in mathematics.

Xichekolas 17y ago
I'd say just the opposite, and not just because I have a degree in CS. My reasoning is: in the next 50-100 years, there will be a ton of breakthroughs in other fields brought about by sheer number crunching. Biology is seeing this with bioinformatics, physics is seeing it by being able to process the humongous amounts of data thrown off by modern equipment like the LHC, etc. Having a CS degree allows you to work in any of those fields, applying your knowledge of computation to help others achieve decidedly non-useless breakthroughs. To give an example, the biology department at my alma mater is recruiting CS grad students as fast as it can to help implement some distributed system to simulate protein interaction (or something like that, I know so little about biology that it's embarrassing). I'm not saying CS should be the default choice of every technical person, but it's not utterly useless to other fields. In fact, I'd say CS is _more_ useful in this case than it is to cubicle software jobs, because in the average Enterprise Doohickey, you aren't doing anything complicated enough to care if your algorithm is O(n^2) vs O(n).
- endtime 17y ago
  Agreed. I've seen people in both linguistics and bio looking for CS RAs in the past few months. If you have a BA in Software Engineering then I agree it's probably useless for anything but programming, but a good BS in CS can get you a job in finance or a spot in law school (and some of my fellow CS majors from undergrad are doing those very things right now). It's definitely not a limiting degree.
- bbuffone 17y ago
  Your still doing CS - not biology and that was my point. The article seemed to be saying if you are not sure about what to do choose CS. I think that is the wrong choice. I love software and can't imagine doing anything else but if I had a CS and didn't like it I would need to go back to school and get another degree to do something else. That isn't true with say a math degree.
  - Xichekolas 17y ago
    I guess I fail to see how math prepares you better to do biology than CS does. Neither major contains the domain specific knowledge that a biology degree would impart, so it seems like neither would prepare you better than the other. I'd also imagine that both involve more math than biology, so they are both sufficient in that department. And as I pointed out in my last paragraph, I'm not saying I agree with the article either... I was just pointing out that CS knowledge is useful outside of CS.
jimbokun 17y ago
As a math person, I would like to get your response to this question: 'When's the last time you heard a math person refer to some real-world situation as "a real elliptic curve"?' I imagine that "a math person" sees real world situations in terms of mathematical concepts constantly. Your thoughts?
- bbuffone 17y ago
  I see the world as a series of problems that require solutions.
  - jimbokun 17y ago
    That's a pretty good advertisement for the benefit of a good math education, actually.
- jrp 17y ago
  From that quote, I would assume the author's argument is "Math contains many unapplied topics, whereas CS contains many applied topics. Therefore CS is more useful for outside-domain work." I would suggest looking for applications of say, linear algebra or group theory. I don't know enough CS to come up with an equivalently unapplicable topic to match elliptic curves.

Xichekolas 17y ago

I'd say just the opposite, and not just because I have a degree in CS. My reasoning is: in the next 50-100 years, there will be a ton of breakthroughs in other fields brought about by sheer number crunching. Biology is seeing this with bioinformatics, physics is seeing it by being able to process the humongous amounts of data thrown off by modern equipment like the LHC, etc. Having a CS degree allows you to work in any of those fields, applying your knowledge of computation to help others achieve decidedly non-useless breakthroughs. To give an example, the biology department at my alma mater is recruiting CS grad students as fast as it can to help implement some distributed system to simulate protein interaction (or something like that, I know so little about biology that it's embarrassing). I'm not saying CS should be the default choice of every technical person, but it's not utterly useless to other fields. In fact, I'd say CS is _more_ useful in this case than it is to cubicle software jobs, because in the average Enterprise Doohickey, you aren't doing anything complicated enough to care if your algorithm is O(n^2) vs O(n).

endtime 17y ago
Agreed. I've seen people in both linguistics and bio looking for CS RAs in the past few months. If you have a BA in Software Engineering then I agree it's probably useless for anything but programming, but a good BS in CS can get you a job in finance or a spot in law school (and some of my fellow CS majors from undergrad are doing those very things right now). It's definitely not a limiting degree.
bbuffone 17y ago
Your still doing CS - not biology and that was my point. The article seemed to be saying if you are not sure about what to do choose CS. I think that is the wrong choice. I love software and can't imagine doing anything else but if I had a CS and didn't like it I would need to go back to school and get another degree to do something else. That isn't true with say a math degree.
- Xichekolas 17y ago
  I guess I fail to see how math prepares you better to do biology than CS does. Neither major contains the domain specific knowledge that a biology degree would impart, so it seems like neither would prepare you better than the other. I'd also imagine that both involve more math than biology, so they are both sufficient in that department. And as I pointed out in my last paragraph, I'm not saying I agree with the article either... I was just pointing out that CS knowledge is useful outside of CS.

jimbokun 17y ago

As a math person, I would like to get your response to this question: 'When's the last time you heard a math person refer to some real-world situation as "a real elliptic curve"?' I imagine that "a math person" sees real world situations in terms of mathematical concepts constantly. Your thoughts?

bbuffone 17y ago
I see the world as a series of problems that require solutions.
- jimbokun 17y ago
  That's a pretty good advertisement for the benefit of a good math education, actually.
jrp 17y ago
From that quote, I would assume the author's argument is "Math contains many unapplied topics, whereas CS contains many applied topics. Therefore CS is more useful for outside-domain work." I would suggest looking for applications of say, linear algebra or group theory. I don't know enough CS to come up with an equivalently unapplicable topic to match elliptic curves.