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Hello people..
I have 3 questions and I need some answers .

- What are the most important advantages and disadvantages of the CS or IT major?

- What are the things you find enjoyable and intersting?

-What are the things that needs to be improved?

2007-11-14 03:13:40 · 2 answers · asked by Romai-13 1 in Education & Reference Homework Help

2 answers

I quite agree with the first poster. I may have a different spin, since I teach part-time, but work in the field full-time.

Advantages: working with something I love to do. Programmable machinery is one of the best toys ever invented. It's magic when it works, and an interesting problem when it doesn't. Programming and design is a great mixture of known methods and art. It's also fun to see a finished product go into the world and realize that I helped build something faster, more useful, and more full-featured than has ever existed before. It's the pleasure of a job well done.

Disadvantages: The field requires a fair amount of facility at both left-brained and right-brained styles. You spend a lot of your time figuring out how much latitude you have for inventiveness at various points of the project, not to mention the various problems when the project requirements don't match the field requirements well enough. You need to be able to communicate clearly in a variety of fashions. You need to be able to write, research, and plan for a month or two, and then spend six months primarily your left brain.
Now, I happen to *like* the consistent ebb and flow of style interplay, but it's not for everyone.

The most interesting parts are getting to work with people from all around the world, both in person and over phone and email. Also, this field brings me some of the nastiest problems in applied math, and I get to figure out where we balance difficulty against functionality. Sometimes, something turns out to be impossible; other times, the needed item is trivial. Most things are in between. It's something new every time we change tasks, and I get to see my part of it from requirements definition through delivery.

Improvements:
(1) Communication skills: Virtually everything really interesting requires multiple people. If the idea is good enough to make a living, it will grow to where one person can't handle the business traffic. You need to be able to write unambiguously, clearly, and concisely, just to handle the daily tasks. You also need these skills in speaking, as well as being able to shift your level of syntax and vocabulary to match the audience. Getting through high school isn't enough: you have to be *fluent* in English. Most CS programs don't stress the communication aspects enough.
(2) General problem solving: you need to be able to attack a problem from start to finish, completely and methodically. If you aren't used to gathering and completing requirements, analyzing the needs, and developing alternate solutions, you're not going to last long in the industry. Mere programmers are easy to find -- they're showing up with A.S degrees all over the place.
Sure, you develop a certain level of problem-solving skills in the normal course of a Cs program -- given clear input and output requirements, you can find one solution and code it. What do you do when your boss says, "We need a better user interface for this tool; the guys on the factory floor are ready to go back to pencil and paper. You and Pat get on it."? This requires a much broader set of skills.
(3) Learning skills: Most people who make it through college pick up reasonable learning skills, but some don't realize the need for consistent education. Technology is a moving target, and the CS professional needs to keep up in the local niche. This will require learning refined tools, new techniques, and a variety of added skills. I learned half a dozen computer languages for my B.A. degree, and several more through my M.S. Only one of those is in my current workplace, and the primary languages hadn't been so much as *outlined* when I got my M.S. I've had to learn new ways of attacking modularity, new forms of expressing algorithms, and several other facilities that are much more than the mere syntactical differences among general-purpose languages.
I've run into too many CS heads (a small minority, but too many) who believe that the only new thing they'll have to deal with is their own market-breaking products. Asking some of these to change to the local version of the favored language brings a diatribe on why the rest of the department really needs to change to the dialect used back at the university.
(4) Attitudes: you need to be able to work alone, work in a team, and keep plugging away when things get rough. you need to be able to make your own way, and to ask for help when you need it -- not to mention the wisdom to know the difference. You need to be flexible enough to adjust to department planning and coding standards, and firm enough to stick to your guns when you believe the others are headed in the wrong direction.

2007-11-14 06:04:28 · answer #1 · answered by norcekri 7 · 0 0

Computer science deals primarily with computers while IT is a broader field encompassing all the updates in technology involving communication an knowledge acquisition.

2016-03-14 13:11:16 · answer #2 · answered by Penelope 4 · 0 0

Advantages: CS and IT programs teach you skills that are in high demand. And it's fun! How many people get to do what they love and get paid for it?

Disadvantage: It's difficult. For example, we make our CS students complete eight hours of calculus. And once you are on the job market (in the USA or Europe) you are competing with lots of cheap (but relatively unqualified) labor from India and other countries.

Enjoyable and Interesting: I enjoy most aspects of CS/ IT, everything from theory to programming to networking.

Needs Improvement: Better PR. Undergrads think that since the tech bubble burst a few years back (that is, you can no longer start a web company, rake in millions from your IPO, and retire at 25) that there is no demand for CS or IT, so we're hurting for students. But the market is hungry for qualified entry-level CS/IT workers and our graduates have no trouble at all finding good jobs. For example, qualified entry-level database programmers can get good jobs almost anywhere.

2007-11-14 03:55:08 · answer #3 · answered by jgoulden 7 · 0 0

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