Computer science, where?

[Prabhakar Ragde]

endless @ Sat May 15, 2010 7:55 am wrote:

don't get me wrong, i think cs115 and 116 are at an appropriate level for those they are intended for: people with no experience. but for anyone who has programmed before, i feel 115 wouldn't provide sufficient challenge from what i've seen of my friends.

Back before there was a CS 115, I plotted ICS4M marks against CS 135 final marks -- and this was among people who volunteered to take it as an alternative to the mainstream Java course. There was essentially no correlation. I think the coefficient of correlation was 0.07. (Those who had no prior experience in programming actually had a slightly higher average in that offering of CS 135 than those who did.)

Every fall offering of CS 135 since the first one in 2004 has had failures who had pretty high ICS4M marks. I bet, if I bothered to dig around in the appropriate databases, I can find CS 115 failures with ICS3M or ICS4M credits.

Too much high school experience in programming can be described as "Tweak this example to get it to do something slightly different, even if you don't understand what you're doing and can't explain it." And too many students take such experience as license to slack off during their first university CS course.

[chrisbrown]

Prabhakar Ragde @ Sat May 15, 2010 8:23 pm wrote:

Too much high school experience in programming can be described as "Tweak this example to get it to do something slightly different, even if you don't understand what you're doing and can't explain it." And too many students take such experience as license to slack off during their first university CS course.

No argument, although I think the lack of a definite high school CS curriculum is more to blame. UW (or at least Ontario) should introduce a "recommended" high-school CS standard in which some value is placed on efficiency and modularization.

Edit: Case-in-point: I got close to 100% on an O(N^3) final project.

[Yuun]

lilboikule @ Fri May 14, 2010 8:51 am wrote:

Ha well... I got into Waterloo, but for Geomatics... which is supposedly geography and computer science.

I don't think I'm going to take this offer though.

Does anyone know anything about this program?

I got an alternate from Computer Science to Geomatics too :[.

I'm debating where to go though, UTSC, McMaster, Guelph and York accepted me for Comp. Sci but I really wanted to go to Waterloo .__.;
Should I just go to Waterloo Geomatics and switch into Computer Science?
Is that really hard to do x_X;?

[Prabhakar Ragde]

Do not go into Geomatics assuming you will later be able to switch into CS. This is the first year I have heard of such deflections. I don't think CS sees Geomatics as a back door for marginal students and I certainly don't think Geomatics sees themselves that way. Geomatics may not get the exposure that it should, and they probably figured that some students who like computers would also like the idea of applying them to geographical and environmental situations. Go into Geomatics if you are willing to give it a fair chance. Otherwise take one of your other CS offers.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

methodoxx @ Sat May 15, 2010 8:41 pm wrote:

UW (or at least Ontario) should introduce a "recommended" high-school CS standard in which some value is placed on efficiency and modularization.

There is almost no consideration given to efficiency in our first course, and modularization is treated only to the extent that it is quite natural to write small functions in Scheme rather than large ones. We place emphasis on systematic development, testing, really understanding what one's code is doing, and writing it in a style comprehensible to others. Efficiency is introduced in our second course.

[lilboikule]

Geomatics was an alternate offer I got from Waterloo, but I'm not really that great with geography. It sounds interesting and I might actually like it, but I'm not sure if i want to take that chance.

Also, I got accepted to UofT Mississauga as another alternate offer for Studies in Communication, Culture & Information Technology, which I'm not 100% sure is about.

[yoursecretninja]

Quote:

Also, I got accepted to UofT Mississauga as another alternate offer for Studies in Communication, Culture & Information Technology, which I'm not 100% sure is about.

I think it is really important that you do what you are passionate about and not just accept an offer because you got one. Think long and hard about what interests you both academically and professionally. What you study needs to be a good fit for both your academic and professional interests since you will study it for 4+ years and then you'll work with it for presumably a lot longer than that.

If you didn't get into the program you wanted at the school you wanted, either try again later or consider going to another capable school to study the same thing. If it sets you back a half-year or a year, so what. You'll probably miss your school days once they are over anyway so enjoy them now and don't rush and settle in the process.

I never studied geomatics, so I can't comment. I did however study communications. When I decided to go back to school again, I was originally studying communications but then I switch to computer science. While I enjoyed communications, it was nothing at all like computer science. It is a discipline on the border of humanities and social sciences; requires a lot of reading and writing.