How difficult is the Computer Science course?

[Anonymous]

I wasn’t a natural at high school math, but if I sat down, focused, and tried to break it down, I could understand the concepts. I just don’t know what my threshold is.

[RavVid]

It is more logic than math and control structures. IF... THEN... ELSE... , DO WHILE, DO UNTIL.

There is seldom math more complicated than Brackets Division Multiplication Addition Subtraction but you do need to know the order of operands. e. g. what is 10 - 10 * 10 - 10?

There a lot of concepts in IT but at the end of the day every thing has to be implemented as programs with input variable and output variables but we might look at them in different ways and structure them differently. For example Object Oriented sees programs in a different way to other paradigms. Callable interfaces is another way.

How we look at programs seems to always change but programs stay programs.

Data also has different views and might be structured differently and stored differently but it is still stored data that programs access. The how it is accessed does change over time.

Where IT gets difficult is in the complex volume of it. It is a bit like juggling a lot of balls mentally. Or akin to thinking three moves ahead in chess.

[Asker]

what do you do, IT or something adjacent?

[RavVid]

Fairly hard core IT. Come from a database background but I tune programs.

[Asker]

i was a C student in maths in the last grade

[RavVid]

I always went for a Credit in maths because it was easy for me and let me put more effort into harder subjects.

Most of maths doesn't help you. IT is logic and maths only helps you in that it is logical. This is especially so in commercial software. Addition subtraction and percentages is as complicated as it gets. Logic is at the program level and at the system level.

There might be discounts for example. Say one for buying a lot and one for a coupon so there is going to be logic about which discount should be applied at the checkout. There is lots of logic in commercial systems. That should be specified to you so you just have to implement the logic.

I've rebuilt things and found logic errors that have existed for many years. So I would say to the sponsor do you want me to duplicate this error or fix it. For compatibility at times they chose to duplicate an error.

It is not very mathematical.

[Asker]

what i also always wondered about is how many of that syntax experienced programmers know by heart? surely you can't have it ALL in memory

[Asker]

do you think AI is a threat for you

[RavVid]

There are lot of different programming languages now and you are not going to know all of them but just out of repetition you know most of the ones you are using currently. It isn't that hard and not something to be bothered by.

[RavVid]

AI is a threat to a lot of traditional programming. I deal mostly with SQL - a data access language - and it has always had artificial intelligence in it. For myself and what I do - I don't consider it a threat.

The bigger problem to me are packages because there is reluctance to modify them.

[Asker]

"How willing are you to spend 1–3 hours wrestling with a bug or error message?" why would Chat ask me that when assessing? if one writes a good code, why would it be crashing?

[RavVid]

It is not necessarily crashing that is a bug; It can be incorrect output. The environment around a program can change and that causes it to fail.

In fact my favorite bug was in a program written in the 60's. It was defensively coded expecting errors cause it was reading paper tapes. One day it got perfect input without error and failed. It wasn't written to handle perfect correct input. :)

There is a lot of old code kicking around in large corps but with new stuff it might be a new version doesn't operate well with other current software. Bugs happen due to changing environments with maintenance being applied... or not being applied when it ought to have.

A necessary skill is to be able do what I call partition a problem. Identifying areas where the problem could be occurring and excluding where it can't be. I've spent a lot longer than 3 hours on operational probs. Sometimes there are dusk to dawn war rooms. You just have to keep going till it is solved.

Another aspect you might not like is social. I have noticed a lot of women prefer the more social areas of IT. Gathering business requirements rather than coding.

[OneViewpoint]

"The" computer science course? You know there's more than one course, right?

As for programming, it's more like learning a language than learning math. Although math is a language too. What they have in common is logic and rules. If you suck at logic and languages, you likely aren't good at math or programming.

[rachel776]

do the Harvard CS-50 course, it will have everything you want

the link to the whole program is below the video

https://www.youtube.com/embed/h6lqxDwUmJQ

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhQjrBD2T383q7Vn8QnTsVgSvyLpsqL_R

[Asker]

what do you know about this?

[rachel776]

it's the computer science class every student at Harvard has to take in their first semester, whether they're a computer major or not, i'm sure it's quite good. Harvard has required it since 1989. David Malan (on the video) has been teaching it for 18 years

[slatyb]

High school math? Like calculus? If you can handle calculus, you can likely handle computer science but... computer science requires abstract thinking. If you can follow a mathematical proof, you should have no trouble.

[DryGermanGuy]

Without you posting at least its rough curriculum, impossible to say.

[Osborne775]

Depends
If you know the basics of programming then it should be fine if not its always possible to learn
The math part shouldn’t be to hard but might be challenging

[RedInnocent69]

Need more context. You doing a comfy sci major in uni?

[Asker]

I am itnerested in doing that

[RedInnocent69]

If you have to ask and don’t love it, don’t do it; you’ll suck and be miserable

[Asker]

Why not? There are things I do well but don’t like to do, and vice versa

[RedInnocent69]

Ok, you’ll be decent and miserable…

[SoJust]

I don't know, I've never read such a course or section.