Perhaps I'm obsolescent, if not obsolete, since I've been out of the field for some years. Yet I suspect basic principles hold true.
You will find programming courses tedious, at least at the beginning, because you are learning new languages and new ways of thinking. The ability to learn new languages is extremely valuable in learning whatever is important to learn in future years. Learning to think in a disciplined way is valuable far beyond writing computer programs. We found that students who could really program got jobs, good ones. I found it easier to teach someone who knew a science in depth how to program than to teach a generic programmer the science behind the intended application. I didn't have much success teaching computing to people without some natural science background. I may be biased; my graduate degrees are in chemistry and in physics, back in the bad old days before there were computer science departments. I left the academic world as Professor of Computer Science to work in industry, doing mostly software engineering, as I found I couldn't afford schools for three kids on an academic salary in New Orleans. Choppy At 11:53 PM 3/28/05 -0600, Michael Dolan wrote: >1. Classes - I'm at LSU, and I'm set to graduate in a little over a >year. I'm actually an English major, but I don't know if that will have >any effect on my job prospects. I've taken the first computer science >class (which is just basics and MS office applications), and I'm taking >two ISDS classes right now. I'm set to take another ISDS class on network >security this summer. I would really like to take some interesting >computer science classes, there is one on e-commerce, 2 on networks, >etc. To take the interesting classes, you have to take more programming >classes than I have time to take before I graduate. I don't really want >to take any more programming classes, but I don't know if that will have >any affect on my job prospects either.
