CS vs. IST

[gopunk]

<flame> duhh, cause its a lot easier </flame>

yea i know

okay so at orientation today, the IT guy was talking about all the resources available to us... and this old guy next to me goes, "will i have problems if i choose not to use microsoft products?" in that snobby anti-ms way, and the IT dude goes "Yes." that was my favorite moment.... and then the old guy starts rambling about what OSes he uses and blah blah blah blah. what a f*cking loser. <nerdy voice>heh heh, yea, i have red hat 7.2.... i decided to "peak out" at windows 2000... heh heh...</nerdy voice>

anyways.... part of me wants to double major in it just for the chicks

 

[stonecold3169]

Originally posted by: gopunk
<flame> duhh, cause its a lot easier </flame>

yea i know

okay so at orientation today, the IT guy was talking about all the resources available to us... and this old guy next to me goes, "will i have problems if i choose not to use microsoft products?" in that snobby anti-ms way, and the IT dude goes "Yes." that was my favorite moment.... and then the old guy starts rambling about what OSes he uses and blah blah blah blah. what a f*cking loser. <nerdy voice>heh heh, yea, i have red hat 7.2.... i decided to "peak out" at windows 2000... heh heh...</nerdy voice>

anyways.... part of me wants to double major in it just for the chicks

hehe, not to burst you bubble, but if you decide to do comp sci get prepared to learn a lot of unix. It may seem like a pain in the ass at first, but for a programmer learning different OS is critical. I'm not saying that MS puts out a bad product, don't get me wrong... for a "have fun, normal gaming/surfing/IMing" desktop OS, microsoft wins hands down. For stability and the amount of resources available, 'nix owns...

Now, lol, to lift perhaps a bit of intimidation off of you, I'm a sophmore CS major at Clarkson University, and although I like computers I'm not what you'd consider a "computer geek". Before I came into the course I knew nothing of 'nix. If you're open to learn, people will teach you and you will take a load of stress off yourself when you realize the tools you have and the aspect of control you get. Your first year Pico and g++ will be your best friends

Another thing to keep in mind is that when you get in the real world many many corporations will have you running none-windows based machines (IBM being a big one here), and it's very nice to be able to put on your resume that you know it pretty damn fluently.




Now to give light on the CS vs IS debate, the CS course will be much tougher, involving much much more math in addition to learning more languages and what not. To give you an example, CS142 here, a second sequence of c++, lines up as a IS500 something or other course. If you stick with CS, be prepared to take calc, dif eq, foundations in mathmatics, lots of calc based physics, and then several "pointless" languages (who the hell uses Scheme, anyways?). In the end, you will find that cs majors know much more then IS majors, and if/when layoffs come, guess who will be the first to go?

 

[gopunk]

hehe, not to burst you bubble, but if you decide to do comp sci get prepared to learn a lot of unix. It may seem like a pain in the ass at first, but for a programmer learning different OS is critical. I'm not saying that MS puts out a bad product, don't get me wrong... for a "have fun, normal gaming/surfing/IMing" desktop OS, microsoft wins hands down. For stability and the amount of resources available, 'nix owns...

no bubble burst, i use unix every day at work

 

[quirky]

hey ameesh. im heading to ucsd this yr as a ce major (like only low level stuff). is it difficult to get in their BS+MS program?

 

[FrustratedUser]

No idea

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: quirky
hey ameesh. im heading to ucsd this yr as a ce major (like only low level stuff). is it difficult to get in their BS+MS program?

its pretty selective, but you have until your junior year to apply.

 

[FatAlbo]

one note about informatics.... um... the chicks in it are WAY hotter than the cs chicks.

Yes, they are.

 

[quirky]

yea but who wants a computer geek girlfriend? id rather that my gf be a literature major or soemthing

 

[Kev]

Originally posted by: CKDragon
Well, I'm a sophomore at Drexel University and a Computer Science major that is considering switching to Information Systems after this semester. Does that qualify me to participate in this thread?

Deeko, What someone said earlier about the CS requirements looking a lot like an engineering course isn't far off. CS at Drexel are soon going to be considered engineers. There was a BIG issue here recently that the tuition for CS majors would be raised to reflect that of an engineer (a/k/a just another BS way of raising tuition again). Most freshmen who come in here that are looking for a career in computers come in as a CompSci and quickly change over to IS. Last year, my freshmen year, 70% of the entering CS majors dropped by the 3rd quarter to go to another major, mostly to ISYS.

The transition from CS to IS is very easy, requiring only a GPA of 2.75 and almost all the class credits transfer so you don't have to take additional IS-only classes to catch up. The transfer from IS to CS is very hard, however, as you will have to almost start from scratch to catch up in core classes.

My recommendation is to do exactly what I'm doing. I took a year and a half of CS courses and now I'm not entirely sure if this is where I want to be or not. I have the option to switch, if I was an IS major considering switching to CS, I would not have that option unless I wanted to put myself way behind my 5-year plan.

Hope this helped,

CK

I'm pretty much in the same situation as this guy, except I am a 3rd year student at Drexel. I was in CS my whole 1st year, then I switch to ISYS (IST) right before my 2nd year because I started to not like programming and realized my pure hatred for math & science.

CS seems to have more to do with math and science than computers, and ISYS concentrates on computers more. And the ISYS program here at Drexel isn't glorified tech support, as I read somewhere in this thread.

But my advice to you would be to start out in CS and see for yourself if you like it, because:

a) it will be easier to transfer out of
b) when you do transfer, you will know a hella lot more C++ than ISYS majors (their C++ classes are nothing compared to CS's.

ISYS has business elements too (in fact you get a business minor with your Information Systems degree). So you get all the hot business chicks in your classes. (There are maybe 5 females in CS.)

Oh and another thing, I lived in Kelly during freshman year, it was a blast.

 

[LordSnailz]

I'm surprised at all the comments regarding how difficult or how many math courses they had to take - personally, I had an easier time with my upper d math classes than the programming ...

 

[gopunk]

CS seems to have more to do with math and science than computers, and ISYS concentrates on computers more.

you mean isys concentrates on higher level computer stuff, like applications and higher level programming languages. deep down inside, computers are all about math and science.

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: gopunk
CS seems to have more to do with math and science than computers, and ISYS concentrates on computers more.

you mean isys concentrates on higher level computer stuff, like applications and higher level programming languages. deep down inside, computers are all about math and science.

deep down all science is math.

 

[Kev]

Originally posted by: gopunk
CS seems to have more to do with math and science than computers, and ISYS concentrates on computers more.

you mean isys concentrates on higher level computer stuff, like applications and higher level programming languages. deep down inside, computers are all about math and science.

yeah and with isys you don't have to go deep down inside with the math & science bs.

here's some examples of isys classes i've taken:

Data Structures
Intro to ISYS (bullsh*t class)
Human-Computer Interaction
Distributed Computng & Networking
Systems Analysis I (database design, SQL, etc)
Database Management Systems

...thats all i can think of right now

 

[shawnman]

I graduated from Purdue with a BS in Telecommunications and Networking [which is a branch of IST ] here at Purdue. I started out in CS and moved over to IST/TNT because CS is mainly programming. I am a good programmer, and aced my CS courses, but I didnt want to be coding all the time. So I switched - with IST you typically get to do a variety of programming, networking, database, etc....

Also as far as IST getting paid less, that might be true at some schools, but Telecommunications and Networking grads have the 2nd highest average starting salary in the entire university - more than CS and Engineers. Pharmacy beat us out to be #1. Here is a link comparing salaries Article

So basically if you really like to code, go with CS... if you are more interested in network and systems administration go with IS. At least that is the way things are here at Purdue, YMMV.

and btw can't we all just get along and agree that liberal arts majors are really the ones that suck

 

[Kev]

Originally posted by: Ameesh

Originally posted by: gopunk
CS seems to have more to do with math and science than computers, and ISYS concentrates on computers more.

you mean isys concentrates on higher level computer stuff, like applications and higher level programming languages. deep down inside, computers are all about math and science.

deep down all science is math.

my teacher used to say: "all biology is basically chemistry, and chemistry is basically physics, and physics is all just math"

 

[Ameesh]

Originally posted by: shawnman
I graduated from Purdue with a BS in Telecommunications and Networking [which is a branch of IST ] here at Purdue. I started out in CS and moved over to IST/TNT because CS is mainly programming. I am a good programmer, and aced my CS courses, but I didnt want to be coding all the time. So I switched - with IST you typically get to do a variety of programming, networking, database, etc....

Also as far as IST getting paid less, that might be true at some schools, but Telecommunications and Networking grads have the 2nd highest average starting salary in the entire university - more than CS and Engineers. Pharmacy beat us out to be #1. Here is a link comparing salaries Article

So basically if you really like to code, go with CS... if you are more interested in network and systems administration go with IS. At least that is the way things are here at Purdue, YMMV.

and btw can't we all just get along and agree that liberal arts majors are really the ones that suck

cs isnt just coding, coding is just a means to an end, computer science is much much more then that.

 

[gopunk]

Originally posted by: maladroit

Originally posted by: gopunk
CS seems to have more to do with math and science than computers, and ISYS concentrates on computers more.

you mean isys concentrates on higher level computer stuff, like applications and higher level programming languages. deep down inside, computers are all about math and science.

yeah and with isys you don't have to go deep down inside with the math & science bs.

here's some examples of isys classes i've taken:

Data Structures
Intro to ISYS (bullsh*t class)
Human-Computer Interaction
Distributed Computng & Networking
Systems Analysis I (database design, SQL, etc)
Database Management Systems

...thats all i can think of right now

i don't see how the math and science is bs...

 

[Kev]

you're reading too much into it, buddy. i only called it bs because i don't like it, not because it's unimportant.