afaik CS majors have on average the highest unemployment rate and lowest average wages nowadays because everyone and their mothers goes to community college and majors in it, so if job market is a big concern for you, you might want to look into something else

just be good at programming and it'll come to you eventually

do cool things it's an expanding market after all

the classes require a lot of effort unless it comes to you easily, you need to be patient and whatnot with coding and how much shit goes wrong

but hey i'm jsut garbage at programming i think, i'm pretty sure that if you have a cs degree it also means you're not completely incompetent in math. you might wanna branch out into other fields as well, but it depends on what you wanna do

Not sure where you got this from, but a quick search on Google pretty much shows that the opposite is true. The first result is a 2013 study from Georgetown (which I will assume trustworthy): https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/9t0p5tm0qhejyy8t8hub

Just ctrl+f'ing for "computer" gives you some key things:

• Unemployment seems mostly concentrated in information systems (14.7 %) compared with computer science (8.7%) and mathematics (5.9%)
  
• Moreover, the relatively low unemployment rates for experienced Bachelor’s degree-holders and those with a Master’s degree or better seem to indicate these majors have a stable employment outlook.

And then if you read through their big chart with all of the data you can compare CS's 8.7% unemployment with others, which shows that CS's unemployment rate is generally on par with or better than others. Additionally the "recent college graduate" in CS earns $50k a year, which is much higher than that of the vast majority of other majors.

that was probably what I was thinking of, my bad

When I graduated high school, I really didn't enjoy anything other than playing video games (shocking).
Math came pretty easily to me and I was taking an intro programming class in high school so that's how I chose it.

I'm taking CS @ University of Waterloo.
First year here looks like Algebra(think proofs), Linear Algebra, Calc 1+2 and 2 programming courses: One on functional programming(lisp) and one imperative(C).
I'm in my second year now, taking a c++ programming classes, along with more math.
They expect you to learn how to program as you work through the course, programming is not the main focus. My prof once told our classes that if you wanted to learn programming you might as well not pay for school. There are ton of resources online, you just have to look.

Cs is not just programming. It's a lot of math and theory and it's probably the harder portion of the curriculum.

There are plenty of jobs so you shouldn't be worried about that. Some companies are pretty anal about having a degree from a prestigious school while others care about your skills. In the interviews that I've had, they are really interested in projects you take on in your spare time.

Hope this helped.

I have a lot of opinions on this matter, so it's going to be hard for me to put everything together in a coherent manner, but I'll try to do my best to break it into easy-to-digest sections.

I'm in my senior year of a Computer Engineering. It's ~90% the same as a CS degree, but with a few different core requirements and a couple more hardware-focused courses. I went this route because I think low-level coding and computer architecture is more interesting than proving correctness of algorithms, but whatever floats your boat.

Academics
Demand for the major has become crazy recently. Within the last few years, the number of freshman applicants to my school's Computer Science & Engineering department has grown literally exponentially, which means that the odds of being accepted to the department have grown as an inverse of that (i.e. not good). In this regard, there's a bit of a disappointing disparity between people who want to study it and the number of people the department is capable of accepting. There's no way to state this without coming off as bragging, but the demand is probably because my school is one of the top-rated undergraduate schools in the US. I worked my ass off and barely got in 3 years ago, and I doubt I would get in if I applied today.

For any aspiring high school seniors, the best advice I could give would be to first apply to whatever schools you're interested in for direct admittance into their CS program. Most good departments should consider your application in it's entirety, i.e. they like to see good grades, AP courses, and a killer essay; in no particular order. If you get direct admit somewhere, take it. Do not hedge your bets with another school and roll the dice on applying as an undergraduate. Barring that, seriously consider going to a community college and fulfilling whatever prerequisites would be necessary for transferring into a 4-year CS program in the same state. Even at the best schools, prereq classes suck hardcore and are way too competitive since everyone is gunning for a spot in the engineering/pre-med schools.

Job Market
The job market is definitely not saturated in any way whatsoever. If the demand is lacking in your area, look somewhere else. The SF bay area, Seattle, and Texas are the hottest spots for tech jobs and companies there are always hiring. If you graduate from a top program, local recruiters will probably be breathing down your neck before you graduate. If this isn't the case, you just need to market yourself well and know where to apply (see the aforementioned markets). As with any job, networking is the key to get your foot in the door.

You actually don't even need a tech degree to get a job coding at a top tech company. If you have an insane amount of motivation, you could learn everything you needed to know online. The material is out there, and even professors in my department are teaching equivalent courses to what I've taken, only for free on Coursera. I'm not nearly self-disciplined to learn on my own, so I see my degree as a 4-year crash course in algorithms, coding, and computer architecture. A degree absolutely helps you get your foot in the door when looking for a job, but the minimum guarantee from surviving a 4 year CS degree is that it demonstrates a certain level of competence and discipline on your part.

Thanks for taking the time to read this wall of ramblings regarding my experiences over the last few years, I hope there's some value to be had in it. If you have any further questions, feel free to PM me or add me on Steam.

CS Classes are pretty easy if you dedicate time to it. You'll probably be referring to your book or online resources a lot, and it will feel a little bit self taught at times.

First I just wanna say - like any other career path, stick with it if you're really into it and you like learning about it.

In high school, the programming classes were bad and taught by one teacher, whereas networking and cybersecurity were really good. I'm in a community college so I don't really expect much, but some teachers are solid and know what they're talking about, while others know so much about what they teach that it's actually hard for them to teach it. and college classes get pretty boring when you already know things that carried over from high school.

Senior year I got really hyped on web development because HTML is faster and easier to learn, and also because I learned a lot about cybersecurity and the vulnerabilities websites can have. (Pen testing and XSS is so fun)

Thoughts about the job market? It's getting bigger and bigger as technology gets better. There's always gonna be a new device in the works, and that's gonna need more people to make apps and whatnot for it.

You're going to have good teachers, bad teachers, and errors for unknown or no reasons, so I would really recommend going into CS if you're a solid self-teacher and fast learner. Also, don't think of certifications as less than degrees - they actually mean a lot, if not more. It means that you're competent enough to work with a certain system, and companies that only operate with that certain system are gonna be looking for more capable people.

TL;DR Get into if you're interested in it, stick with it if you love it, make sure you're really good at self-learning/teaching, and take certifications seriously if you're lookin for a higher up job.

If you're coming from high school with no experience in cs like me (school too small to offer it) then it will be a learning curve. If you want to go into cs id recommend getting a head start on the course. Just program some things.

It's stressful and from what I've heard people don't really stick to it given the difficulty of every job. I would just go into it then switch to something IT if you realize it's not for you.

I will be graduating with a computer science degree next summer. I switched majors twice before settling with CS. What I love about the degree is it is entirely hands on. If you're someone like me that finds it difficult to get good at something because there is no feedback on how you're doing, or because you have to memorize a bunch of useless information, computer science is the perfect major for you.

If you are terrible at a specific aspect of programming, you will usually know it immediately because errors will come up or it simply won't work the way you had thought about it. It is also flexible. There is no "one way" to do things. You'll be getting a lot of small and large projects that will allow you to work at your own pace. There are also thousands of communities and websites that are available to help you if your teacher isn't. As mentioned by someone else, you could certainly learn programming by yourself, but a teacher + online resources is the perfect combination. CS also encompasses more than programming, and those topics are usually the trickier ones that require more than an online guide.

I also don't see a bad job outlook. Computer science combines a lot of useful principles into a single major, such as critical thinking, logic, managing of resources, and in some sense, art. All of these are incredibly useful, not to mention, we're in the computer age; I think every company will need someone like a CS major if they want to be successful

If you do decide to take computer science classes in high school, don't be discouraged if you have a bad time. I remember taking a class in BASIC and the teacher was incredibly useless and spent more time selling candy to fund her math club field trips than teaching. High schools usually don't have the budget to fill the needs required by a computer science class.

The courses vary a lot. Many people describe the CS major at good schools as an applied maths major for a reason. Expect a LOT of discrete mathematics, including probability theory, linear algebra, and a lot of reading and writing proofs.

CS has its foundations in math. Programming is easy compared to solving hard problems with elegant, efficient algorithms. If all you wanted to do was program, you have several other options. I have worked at several software firms where many of the programmers had a background in engineering, math, physics, or no degree at all. I can't emphasize this enough: CS is NOT mandatory if you want a career as a programmer.

I chose computer science because I thought I was hot shit at computers and the major had "computer" in the name - so naive. I didn't care much for the heavy math requirements and pretty much grinded through them, but the grind ended up being worth it because I adored the higher level courses such as operating systems, artificial itelligence, and networking.

Don't go to college and pinpoint a major because of "job prospects" though dude. You're probably not even 18 yet. Most schools don't force you to choose a major until junior year, so you'll have plenty of time to experiment with a breadth of subjects that your school offers to figure out what you're passionate about. You'll also have an opportunity to network with people and make friends for life. Yes, CS is so in demand that I had several peers get picked up by Fortune 100 companies before they had even finished the major. Yes, you will have no problem getting your foot in the door most places with that piece of paper. The thing is, your degree will never be as important for your CAREER as learning how to build and keep a strong network of friends, academics, and colleagues.

I've been phone screening resumes all week for interns applying

Object Oriented Design
Data Structures
Algorithms
Operating Systems
Databases
Embedded programming
Projects that they have worked on

These are the topics I ask them about

I'm majoring in CS at IUPUI (IU and Purdue at Indianapolis). My CS professor this semester is always talking about how the tech sector is booming around here and how lots of people call him wanting to recruit beginning freshman (he tells them to wait though). Granted, they're not Google or Apple, but I've been told I can go up to Purdue for career fairs and such, where companies like Google and Apple will be.

As for the curriculum, so far in the first course we've learned some introductory stuff like binary and assembly, and we've been going into Python. It's been pretty easy for me, but I've taken programming classes in high school. I can tell it's getting harder though.

At my college, there's a BS and BA in CS, as well as CIT and CE. The BS is basically a standard CS degree, while the BA has less of a math requirement and more room for liberal arts. The BS essentially gets you a math minor; you just need one extra class so there's really no reason to not get it. IDK the difference between CIT and CE though, I just know they're different from CS.

As for CS in high schools: generally anything related to CS gets put under the business department rather than the science department. While CS is important for business, I'd say it's really a science like its name implies. It seems to me like it's too much theory to be business, if that makes sense. I guess it's like classifying all math classes as business classes.

So that's my thoughts on CS.

Side note: My college's football team has been undefeated since 1969...

...but that's because we never had one. Apparently IU won't let us have one since we're managed by them and football is basically their big thing. Too bad they (and all college teams in this state honestly) suck.

CS major is basically all about logic, algorithms, and data structures. You'll probably never really use calculus directly as a CS major. Almost always discrete math or matrixes. Generally CS majors go into programming, but you could be a CS+EE, CSE, Applied Math, Math Computing major, etc to get into programming.

I'd explore other majors to make sure you want to do it. I did it because I wanted to do programming and I'd rather not deal with embedded systems or writing drivers that CSEE or CE people do (fuck Xillinx btw).

Semi offtopic rant, I've also been helping with interviews at work, and holy shit a lot of CS master students cannot code very well. I guess getting a good program does matter because people struggle on the easiest things like FizzBuzz or can't create their own class structures very well.

That's not what a CS major is for. You're in IT if you're at a help desk or a network tech. Certifications aren't really important for programming unless you're doing some special system fitting or security. Work experience is definitely important and something all employers really want to see (do internships guys), but I managed to get away with no internship experience with a lot of luck.

If you do go IT, certifications are really important though and honestly usually more important. Getting an AA degree would probably be more efficient than doing a Bachelor's and also getting certificates, but don't take my word for it. It's also not as in demand so I wouldn't recommend it if you want to get hired easily.

I'm doing a computer science degree.

I could be finishing my major by now since I entered uni 4 years ago, but the transition from highschool to uni was pretty shocking to me due to the whole atmosphere and general workload so I failed miseraby the first year, , despite having a really good overall grade coming from highschool. So I just stopped and was working for a couple of years. Came back this year with a bit more motivation.

Point is, if its anything like in my country beware of the shock coming from high school and be prepared for a crazy workload

Also, I hate calculus

I graduated and I’m on my gap year. I still don't really know what I want to study, but I’m leaning more towards computer science. I have a couple questions

-How open is a computer science major? Because I’m not too sure what i want to specialize in specifically (games, security, software design, etc...). Do you do a three/four year course, and then decide what you want to study or do you have to know from the start?

-I graduated with the IB, but I stupidly chose Math Studies. Is that going to be a problem when entering a university?

-How work intensive are the studies? Is it like medicine where you have to work 10 hours a day for two years straight, or do you have some spare time?

-To anyone who was unsatisfied with their choice of studying CS, why is that?

-How is class time organized? Is there a scheduled math class, that specifically focuses on the math aspects of CS, other classes that deal with a particular coding language etc... or is it all tied into one thing?

Thanks

I think it should vary a great deal between countries, well maybe not so much in europe if your univ adopted the bologna process, then its a bit more standard.

If its anything like mine, the first 3 years are very broad in terms of subjects but even if you only finish your bologna degree you're qualified to enter the work market already, even without a major. Majors are pretty broad I think, theres always those you mentioned then there stuff like Artificial Intelligence, Distributed Systems, Computer Science itself is a major, more linked to algorithms and mathematics.

Math studies is gonna help you with all the math classes I think, nothing wrong with that.

Workload is pretty huge, not gonna lie, between all the programming projects, weekly labs and assignments/tests. I am still adapting after being out for 2-3 years. But if you have discipline I think It can be done and still have time for other stuff.

I am mostly unsatisfied with the entry years because you have a lot of physics and mathematic classes that I never expected to be this indepth, but once you get through it I think you're pretty much over the hard part.

Obviously this varies between places but I only have classes in the morning, until like 1-2 pm. But sometimes I start at 8 am which is a bitch to wake up.

CS student in Norway here and Holy Shit a lot of people don't realize it's mostly math and theory. My class was initially 30-40 students and now we're 14. I have no idea why I need Physics and Chemistry for this degree. I'm really looking forward to graduating so I can start to mostly focus on sharpening my programming skills.

Are you still in your first year? Is it proper Physics and Chem with the boring formulas and un-rememberable names and bonds and such or is it somehow related to CS?

Applied computer science here, courses in the first 6 months are C#, Webdesign, Linux, Cisco networking, English and Communication Skills. More programming languages and databases soon + 6 months work experience in China/America in the third year.

You'll always find work in IT as it's a shortage occupation. Just make sure you get some practical skills I guess.

What uni/course are you doing?

I'm soon to be third year. Physics and chem was part of my first year. It's in no way related to CS except tangentially we set up physics models in MathLab.

Applied Computer Science@ Thomas More Geel, Belgium
Doing all the ones I've listed, they're mandatory in these 6 months
They're not very known of course but they're under the association of KU Leuven, which is one of our best universities. Reason I chose this one is though that they won an award in 2011 for being the best one in this course in the country. Constantly get assignments and projects, they focus on the job market right from the first day so you have experience and you're not clueless. They also guide all students well with coaching.

I think a lot of people are painting a wrong picture of CS courses here, at least from my experience in Europe.

A lot of people here talk about different programming languages but honestly out of 27 courses I did for my bachelors degree there were 3 courses you might call a programming course and 2 projects that were actual coding but even those didn't teach you how to code but taught you the ideas behind different algorithms. The rest is made up of theoretical computer science, maths and technical computer science for the first 4 semesters. After that I had a few courses I could choose. My topics of choice were Speech Communication, Communication networks, IP-based Multimedia & Perception and a project for a virtual agent. Additionally every student here had to do so called application subjects. These 2 courses must be chosen from non-cs majors i.e transportation. Other than that you have like 2 introduction courses in stuff like management and law.

Regarding work load, especially in the first 4 semesters the work load can be huge. Also having additional maths studies in school will help you out greatly, I'd even say more than having an IT class in school.

do computer engineering, not science.

bitches love engineers

and by bitches i mean bitches and interviewers.

best decision i made in life.

You'll notice some programs teach more 'practical' skills:
-Directly teaching languages
-Focusing on IT, networking, DB, OO, Linux

And some that focus on theory:
-Language theory
-Robotics/AI
-Graph theory
-Theres fucktons of sub-fields here

Keep in mind what interests you as you look for schools. If you just want a job, practical programs are what you want. But even then, some will teach you only a basic set of skills, so your job might not be as glamorous out of the gate.

I go to Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which I'd say falls in between the two camps that I've described. It's a mostly undergraduate school focused on teaching skills required to go right into the workforce. CS grads from here all get jobs (unless they are complete idiots) and the better ones go to the usual places (Google, Apple, Microsoft, whatever). Some will also go on to Masters or PhD tracks. If you aren't sure what you want, I recommend finding a school that has a pedigree of job AND graduate program placement.

In the end if you're smart and you work hard, you can make anything work out.

If you don't mind me asking, what schools are you looking at / have you applied to?

Edit: I just read through some of the other comments that might not put CS in the best light (do CE instead of CS, CS is all theory, etc.) This depends on where you go to school! Try to talk to students at schools you are applying to and ask them whats interests them and where they are / will be working, or if they'll be doing research.

I believe theory in computer science is essential if you only want to learn how to code computer science isnt for you, there is much more to it than that. So saying that it is theory centric isnt negative for me.