8

I study both mathematics and computer science at Delft university. There's a difference between the approaches these two studies have.
Mathematics is usually about going to lectures, learning complicated stuff there and then using the obtained knowledge in a exam at the end of the course.
The CS courses are kore about engineering. They have practicals way more often than the math courses and the exams usually are of les importance.

It feels as if the "academic level" of the CS courses is lower. In math, we learn the real deep, abstract matter, while CS is more about "tinker up something nice in the practicals and you'll be fine."

I'm not sure if either approach is better, but I'm sure I like the maths version more. The CS approach is more HBO-like (HBO being the lower-level universities)
It is even that, generally speaking, the people who study maths seem more serious about studying than the cs people.
Not all of them, and no offense meant, just an observation.

Well, that was not really a rant. If you read up to here, I'm curious what you think about this.

Comments
  • 1
    I remember my math teacher say: a good mathematician can be a good programmer but a good programmer cant be a good mathematician.. i think this is true, if all cs teaching is based on maths, we can produce good programmers
  • 0
    The main difference that is emphasized at my university is that many can code but only few and mainly CS people can and have learned to work together and build "large" software successfully.

    I stumbled across many* great coders but the moment the projects grew beyond just 2 or 3 people everything broke down many many times.

    I don't think you learn design patterns workflows and such stuff studying maths.
    At least most of my friends from different fields can code pretty well, but they didn't learn those software development basics in university if they have learned them at all.
  • 1
    True. I don't say you don't learn anything in a CS course, but the same goes for a plumber's education. The type of things learned seem to differ. CS has a larger focus on doing things, while mathematics seems to focus more on knowing and understanding things. I like the latter better, but I don't know if either one is better.
Add Comment