need help with majors (1 Viewer)

[LyricalYellow9]

Hi so during enrollment for my course at usyd, I was interested in choosing a major between the following:

• Computer Science
• Software Development
• Neuroscience

I would really appreciate if anyone who is enrolled with these majors at any uni could maybe share some insight into things like

1. What kind of units / subjects you study
2. Job opportunities once you graduate?
3. Any advice regarding the major

Also I'm sure this has probably been asked before, but what is the difference between computer science and software development?

This is a lot in one thread I know, but I'd appreciate any replies, thank you

 

[Drdusk]

Hi so during enrollment for my course at usyd, I was interested in choosing a major between the following:

• Computer Science
• Software Development
• Neuroscience

I would really appreciate if anyone who is enrolled with these majors at any uni could maybe share some insight into things like

1. What kind of units / subjects you study
2. Job opportunities once you graduate?
3. Any advice regarding the major

Also I'm sure this has probably been asked before, but what is the difference between computer science and software development?

This is a lot in one thread I know, but I'd appreciate any replies, thank you

Well I’m enrolled in Computer Science and the courses I do are all programming courses. Your first course should be intro to programming.

Job opportunities when I graduate? I mean anything to do with programming but I’ll be looking at cyber sec which is my major and so I could make it into the banks who require cyber sec or any organisations for that matter that do anything online.

The best advice I can give is start your assignments the day you get them. Trust me on this one haha. Another thing is try to perfect your programming. There’s usually many ways to program the same thing so instead of just doing something the way you know, try something better that might reduce your complexity and in my assignments for this term I had to make sure my algorithms were as efficient as possible in order to get full marks. So try out new things in programming, don’t just stick with method you know.

 

[LyricalYellow9]

Well I’m enrolled in Computer Science and the courses I do are all programming courses. Your first course should be intro to programming.

Job opportunities when I graduate? I mean anything to do with programming but I’ll be looking at cyber sec which is my major and so I could make it into the banks who require cyber sec or any organisations for that matter that do anything online.

The best advice I can give is start your assignments the day you get them. Trust me on this one haha. Another thing is try to perfect your programming. There’s usually many ways to program the same thing so instead of just doing something the way you know, try something better that might reduce your complexity and in my assignments for this term I had to make sure my algorithms were as efficient as possible in order to get full marks. So try out new things in programming, don’t just stick with method you know.

Thank you for the reply ! Just a quick q, I've just gone with software design before seeing this but I was wondering if there was a difference in the subjects you study between computer science and software design? is CS more programming based? ty again

 

[Drdusk]

Thank you for the reply ! Just a quick q, I've just gone with software design before seeing this but I was wondering if there was a difference in the subjects you study between computer science and software design? is CS more programming based? ty again

At the end of the day there’s not going to be any major difference between the two. I suggest you go into usyds handbook and look at the courses for each major. Compare them and decide which courses from each of the majors you prefer that are different and then go with that major.

Just as a whole CS tends to be the more theoretical and rigorous course focused mainly on programming techniques and programming theory. Software design as the name suggest will likely incorporate software design classes where the focus is NOT programming but rather design, and you can see this distinction in the handbook by looking at the courses for the two majors.

 

[brent012]

There's only so many "programming" subjects you can do without repetition/being better off self studying and it's not really the goal of universities to provide you with a diverse range of experience with different platforms/techstacks as the core part of a course.

So after a few intro courses, most "programming" subjects will have some other focus that you are actually studying while coincidentally also doing programming - data structures/algorithms, different programming paradigms (e.g. OO, functional), systems programming, operating systems, high performance computing, compilers, AI, development life cycle and devops stuff, project management, architecture, design patterns, requirements analysis, validation/verification/testing etc.

The latter half are the type of things you'd cover in a "Software Engineering" course (which Software Development major seems skewed towards) and the first half are more Computer Science topics. But there's obviously some cross over between the two.