Uni and Computer Science
 

Has anyone done a degree in computer science and can tell me what to expect when i start mine? (i will learn that when doing my access course but i would like to know a actual persons view of it), i will proboly be doing software engineering, and i will most likely be going to loughborough, what in your opinon are the "best" unis for computer science other than of course oxbridge?

Re: Uni and Computer Science
 

Loughborough uni student checking in!
Computer Science at Loughborough, as I have learned slightly to my cost, doesn't have a lot to do with coding. Therefore, you've probably made the right decision by going with Software Engineering, which (afaik) is actually run by the Engineering department, not the CS department.

I didn't have advanced warning and wound up having to change course :up:

Re: Uni and Computer Science
 

I'm currently in my second year of Computer Science with Games Development at the University of Hull. This course is fairly coding centered, and also pretty fun as well. Hull is pretty good uni for Comp Sci and has good links with Microsoft, who let all Hull Comp Sci students have copies of Windows and Visual Studio etc for free. Also last year the top three teams in the UK round of the Imagine Cup were all from Hull and the winning team went out to India to compete in the finals. I've had a couple of Software Engineering modules for my course, and they have been by far the most boring modules I've ever had to sit through, I'm constantly falling asleep in the lectures.

Re: Uni and Computer Science
 

I did CS at Warwick, pretty theoretical.
You get taught how to program in Java- beginning with standard language constructs (loops etc.) and moving on to Object Oriented Programming.
We had a pretty broad 'hardware' module, that focuses on how various bits of a computer (Processor, memory, I/O, storage) work (both physically and logically).
There's a lot of maths, covered by a broad module in the 1st year that (supposedly) prepares you for every other module during the course.
We also got taught functional and logic programming (with SML and Prolog respectively), though not in as much detail as Java.

The 2nd year involved formal logic, concurrency (theoretical and practical), networking (including Information Theory),databases (both in terms of SQL and relational algebra) and language-representation (parsing, automata etc.).

1/3 of the 3rd year was devoted to an individual project, with options making up the rest. I did AI, Robotics, History of computing and then a couple of Business-School options.

I enjoyed it, but as far as programming goes, possibly not the best choice.

Re: Uni and Computer Science
 

computer science courses tend to be more theoretical, and maths orientated.
applied computing courses tend to be more practical and coding orientated.

both will probably teach you in java, c++, c#, vb.net and probably asp.net
theres also a hardware element to the course as symm mentions as well as a databases and sql aspect.

Re: Uni and Computer Science
 

I'm almost done a certification in computer systems technology over here... One of the applied programs. VB.net, C#, Sql, oracle, java, j2ee, and flash is what I've covered. Although I'm north american so chances are this doesn't help you much :p

I would have thought that VB.net, C#, and sql would have been the big ones across the board however.