How is the Computer Science Major Like


Recommended Posts

Hi guys! With Neowin being one of the biggest tech communities online, I figured I'd ask this question here. How is the Computer Science major like. From what I've heard it's pretty hard and the students are pretty much doing work all day long. I would like feedback on this topic please especially from people who are currently CS majors or those who have CS degrees. This information will be really helpful for me :)

It depends on the specific school. Usually CS degress involve programming and software development. My school's major starts with java, works in some C, and finishes on creating software. We also learn basic logic and you can take a variety of electives, like game development. Also, you need to take a bunch of math and physics for the CS of Science degree. These play into cryptography or algorithms.

I did my Computer and Mathematical Science in Australia in Victoria university, Melbourne. It was a hard work but a lot of fun and things we learned, seems useless when I started my job at first but as I grew senior with more and more experience; I found a lot of things that I learnt were useful.

Remember a good education and knowledge is never a waste and joke.

Yes, make sure you check the modules.

Some universites can be just theory theory theory, which I hated.

Well my college is UCLA, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science is the Engineering school, tho I'm not in it since I'm an undeclared major

It really depends from place to place.

I'm doing CS at Kings College London, and the majority of the course is theoretical - based around logic, etc. 2 of 8 units this year are programming based, and of that, actual code is only worth 35% - so programming is only worth 8.75% of this year.

Although sometimes I do wish there was more programming involved, I'm fairly happy with the course and enjoy every minute of it (even if it is ridiculously hard :p).

Well, depends how good you are at programming i guess.

I just graduated from a CS course in Ireland this year. It was a tough enough course but very satisfying.

If you like computers and are interested in creating software then go for it... :)

Well I like technology and am pretty good at it, but I hear all these discouraging stories lol

Each school offers different majors. Here's a list of the ones I've seen decreasing order of "hardness"(that?s a very loose term):

  • Computer Engineering - hardware oriented, more practical applied experience
  • Software Engineering - software development oriented, more practical applied studies than other majors
  • Computer Science - the practical side is software development, but you also get some theory with it
  • Game Programming - I haven't seen this one in the US, but i hear it exists in Europe. I can imagine this has less theory than CS, but more focus of software development.
  • Web Design - more art oriented, not the same level of applied programming other majors get
  • Information Technology - more management and business oriented than programming

I'm CS, so I can't vouch for the other majors, their just the impression I got for what others have told me about them and what I researched of them. A lot of this can be mixed and matched. A CS major can dip into some CE courses if they want to learn about the hardware side of things, but they?re not going to get the same level of detail as a CE major.

Skip Computer Science. Computer Science is a joke. It's incredibly easy. However, you are much more limited in jobs.

Pick up Computer Engineering. Computer Engineering is very difficult, but it's worth it and you can do so much more than with just a Computer Science degree.

My personal choice was to avoid Computer Science and Engineering. I did not want to turn a hobby into a career. For me it was a personal choice. School will work you hard, will give you many frustrations. It is nice to sit back and work on something not related to your work. I instead chose Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Plus Chemilcal engineering, at least for me, is much more challenging. CS&E is not easy, but I figure I might as well do something hard and rewarding.

Almost any engineering major will have you in the library for a while working on problems.

Edited by Intelman

Thats also another thing. What can I do with that degree, with so many tech layoffs, im not sure about the future of tech jobs, imo the era of big name companies like Microsoft, Google is over. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what Bill Gates, Sergey Brin, Larry Page did will not happen to people soon. The future seems to be with BioTech, or that's the impression I get from reading all the articles online. If someone wants to make it big, especially in this times, with computers becoming more and more commonplace, am I wrong in assuming that in the future computers and software companies wont be the status that the giants were

This is all opinion that could be either true or false, and its based on trends that appear online

For example I was reading that Intel is looking at human DNA and the brain in order to gain inspiration to design chips in the future

That's why you don't do Computer Science and instead do Computer Engineering if you are interested. Computer Science is pretty limited to just programming, while Computer Engineering you can get into hardware and all sorts of stuff.

You are right though. BioTech is getting to be a pretty big industry. Anything related to medical field really is a good bet.

That's why you don't do Computer Science and instead do Computer Engineering if you are interested. Computer Science is pretty limited to just programming, while Computer Engineering you can get into hardware and all sorts of stuff.

You are right though. BioTech is getting to be a pretty big industry. Anything related to medical field really is a good bet.

Well at UCLA, the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, you can get a B.S. in two computer science majors. Regular Computer Science, and Computer Science and Engineering. Also about BioTech, I remember that at a community college Introductory Computer Science course which I took, we discussed that the "current techniques" of Computer Science/Engineering will soon be "outdated" Were they right in that BioTech will soon take over them

CS Major in California? Well, since California has the highest unemployment rate (and in tech), I would highly recommend either going into CS with a minor in something different or skip CS all together and do more marketable degree with less theory and more real life applicaiton. Gaming design is more marketable (if you are interested).

CS Major in California? Well, since California has the highest unemployment rate (and in tech), I would highly recommend either going into CS with a minor in something different or skip CS all together and do more marketable degree with less theory and more real life applicaiton. Gaming design is more marketable (if you are interested).

Thanks for the input Jonathan, im not too big of a gamer, so im not sure abt the game design part lol, i was thinking of maybe doing cs as a minor along with something better like you said, is that a more viable option ?

The thing is also that I like tech, but Im not sure abt making it a major, any ideas here

The best thing for you to do is to (assuming you're still in high school) talk it over with your guidance councilor. If your school has some computer science courses, talk to the instructor and ask about what they majored in and ask what it was like. Visit some colleges and talk to the department heads.

The best thing for you to do is to (assuming you're still in high school) talk it over with your guidance councilor. If your school has some computer science courses, talk to the instructor and ask about what they majored in and ask what it was like. Visit some colleges and talk to the department heads.

Actually i'm a UCLA freshmen already

^what he said

ECE is a very good course. If I were you I'd probably transfer to UIUC, they're ranked 4th (after MIT,Stanford, Caltech). They're SAT score req. is around 1900-2100. I'll probably meet you next year there anyway :p.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Microsoft finally admits its default Windows 11 25H2, 24H2 action broke key legacy component by Sayan Sen Microsoft last week released Windows 11 KB5094126 and KB5093998 as the latest Patch Tuesday updates. Following that the company also published the accompanying dynamic updates under KB5094149, KB5095971, and KB5094156. So far the company has acknowledged two known issues that have popped up after the release which include bugged-out Office apps as well as the Recycle Bin; though there could be more at play too. Speaking of bugs and issues, Microsoft seems to have finally acknowledged a problem that probably has been around for close to a year. That's because back in July of 2025 the company made a default change to the latest Windows 11 versions, wherein it switched to JScript9Legacy on Windows 11 24H2 and later releases. Hence following the release of version 25H2 in October 2025, JScript9Legacy also remained default-enabled. As a result there has been a compatibility issue ever since then. For those wondering, by switching to JScript9Legacy Microsoft intended to improve the security of modern Windows PCs by reducing vulnerabilities tied to legacy scripting like cross-site scripting (XSS), among others. XSS exploits can allow cyber-attackers to attach malicious code onto legitimate websites and use them to execute the code when a potential victim loads such a website. Hence the new JScript9Legacy engine enforced stricter execution policies and improved object handling, which should help mitigate such attacks. Microsoft today has published a new support article detailing the problem. Neowin spotted it while browsing. The company says that JScript global definitions and execution context may fail to persist across scripts, potentially breaking older dependent apps and web-based components that relied on this legacy behavior. In the article Microsoft has confirmed that the issue stems from its move away from the older jscript9.dll engine in favor of jscript9legacy.dll. As mentioned above, while the newer engine was designed to address vulnerabilities and strengthen security it also changes how JScript handles execution context. As a result functions and definitions loaded by one script could no longer remain available to subsequent scripts once execution ended. The company notes that some applications worked correctly on earlier Windows versions because the older JScript engine automatically retained global definitions and execution state between scripts. Under the newer model though that behavior is disabled by default causing certain legacy workloads and polyfill-dependent scripts to fail. Microsoft says it addressed the problem via the KB5077241 update though the fix had not been enabled automatically in the following updates. As such admins must explicitly turn on persistent JScript execution context using a Registry setting that the tech giant shared today. The configuration can be applied to individual processes or system-wide through the FEATURE_ENABLE_PERSISTENCE registry key. The steps have been outlined below: Run the following command to create the feature control registry key: reg add "HKLM\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\FeatureControl\FEATURE_ENABLE_PERSISTENCE" Under this key, create a new DWORD (32-bit) value. Configure the value as follows: To enable persistence for specific processes only: Set the value to 1 for each target process name. To enable persistence for all processes: Add * as the key name and set its value to 1. You can find the official support article here on Microsoft's website.
    • The possibility that milk gathers back into a glass implies that gravity can be 'reversed'.
    • VidCoder 12.20 by Razvan Serea  VidCoder is a DVD/Blu-ray ripping and video transcoding application for Windows. It uses HandBrake as its encoding engine. Calling directly into the HandBrake library gives it a more rich UI than the official HandBrake Windows GUI. VidCoder can rip DVDs but does not defeat the CSS encryption found in most commercial DVDs. You’ll need the NET 8 Desktop Runtime. If you don’t have it, VidCoder will prompt you to download and install it. The Portable version is self-contained and does not require any .NET Runtime to be installed. You do not need to install HandBrake for VidCoder to work. Feature list: Multi-threaded MP4, MKV containers Completely integrated encoding pipeline: everything is in one process and no huge intermediate temporary files H.264, H.265, MPEG-4, MPEG-2, VP8, Theora video Hardware-accelerated encoding with AMD VCE, Nvidia NVENC and Intel QuickSync AAC, MP3, Vorbis, AC3, FLAC audio encoding and AAC/AC3/MP3/DTS/DTS-HD passthrough Target bitrate, size or quality for video 2-pass encoding Decomb, detelecine, deinterlace, rotate, reflect, chroma smooth, colorspace filters Powerful batch encoding with simultaneous encodes Customizable Pickers to automatically pick audio and subtitle tracks, destination, titles and more Instant source previews Creates small encoded preview clips Pause, resume encoding VidCoder 12.20 changes: Updated HandBrake core to 1.11.2. Download: VidCoder 12.20 | 47.0 MB (Open Source) Download: Portable VidCoder 12.19 | 89.3 MB Link: VidCoder Home Page | Github | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Too soon, I'm still not over this death!
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Jordan Smith earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Reacting Well
      BizSAR earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • First Post
      AndreaB earned a badge
      First Post
    • Week One Done
      Huge Trailer earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      Classifyskilleducation earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      593
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      185
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      77
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      73
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      66
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!