I'm a recent freshman in college currently wanting to persue a CS major, but the things I've been hearing from people have been worrying. See, the reason I wanted to get into CS was because I really like programming. Back in high school I taught myself C++ from books, and love making things like it work. I've even started having fun with Windows GUI programming.
The problem is, everyone tells me that CS is not about programming, it's all about logic diagrams and math, both of which I can do, but don't really enjoy. The CS course I'm in right now though DOES have programming (Although we use ADA, which I hate every line of, although I guess it isn't Java.)
In all, I guess I want to be a programmer, not another math robot. I love programming, and can do it, but math bores the hell out of me. Luckily my Univ only requires up to 200 level math for a CS major, so I wouldn't have to deal with it for THAT long.
My question is, should I be looking into CS? I honestly just want to program, and was told that having a degree in this is the best way to find a job doing that.
I didn't take CS, but I never understood the aversion that most CS majors and indeed Programmers in general have to math. It is a very useful, if syntactically dreadful, way to formalise your thoughts and learning more math has only increased my programming abilitiy. YMMV
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Anonymous2009-10-16 23:10
I think formalizing thoughts takes the fun out of having them, for some people.
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Anonymous2009-10-16 23:11
CS is not about programming. You can do a programming course at any technical collage.
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Anonymous2009-10-16 23:12
>>4
Then what exactly do you call a program, if not a formal description of some problem?
>>5 But you won't get hired, at least over a person with a four-year degree, with a degree from a technical college.
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Anonymous2009-10-16 23:18
>>7 I'm actually not quite sure I thought that statement through before I typed it; the people who dislike formalizing ideas probably wouldn't like programming either, I guess.
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Anonymous2009-10-16 23:33
So, you guys think I should stick with it, even through the math, if for no other reason than getting a job when I'm done?
I like making computers do stuff, making things I write work and watching people use them.
Math is really more just boring shit like figuring out what X is in an overly complex word problem.
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Anonymous2009-10-16 23:51
>>13
Then you have been taught a very limited view of what constitutes math.
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Anonymous2009-10-17 0:31
>>13 Algebra is really more just boring shit like figuring out what X is in an overly complex word problem.
FTFY. Algebra and arithmetic are a tiny fraction of math. They don't actually teach you what math is in public school, because it's such a general concept that it's hard to explain.
Programming is a type of math, but obviously not a type of algebra. However, refactoring is more or less the same thing as algebra. If you spend a lot of time programming in a language that encourages lots of refactoring and makes it easy to think about, you'll find that you've mysteriously gotten better at algebra for no apparent reason.
Finding and learning such a language is left as an exercise to the reader.
>>16
If you don't like algebra, you're not going to like Calculus and certainly nothing like Laplace transforms. I suspect that the kind of math most people on /prog/ would like would be things like propositional logic, set theory, information theory, lambda calculus, graph theory etc