Worst 'advice' from a college recruiter:

"O you want to major in computer science? Well our school is fantastic for women in comp sci because WHEN they find it too difficult they can easily transition to graphic design. How do you feel about graphic design?"

I decided that school was a bad choice.

Graduating this year with my BS in Comp Sci and going for my Masters in Robotics. Screw that guy.

Computer Science is probably the only major where if you suck at it and end up dropping out, you're more likely to be a leader than someone who is good at it and sticks with it.

There were roughly 200 people in my freshman class majoring in CS, by my sophomore year that number had dropped to about 120. A lot of people dropped out because it was too damn difficult for them, and they switched to less technical majors like "Business Information Technology" or "Management Information Systems." Almost without exception, the people who dropped out are now managing teams of developers, they actually have programmers reporting to them. Seriously, WTF?

This isn't even the worst of it, there are people who majored in art history who are now "product managers," who take the word "manager" in their job title literally, they think they're above developers. Some of them will even profess with no small amount of pride that they "know nothing about technology." You can hear the pride in their voice when they say it, as if they're saying "I'm a lot of things, but at least I'm not a geek." Is there any other field of study where people boast with such pride that they know nothing about it? I mean, very few people will say "I know nothing about history" or "I know nothing about literature", and if they do say it, they'll say it with a bit of humility. When it comes to Computer Science though, knowing nothing about it is almost a badge of honor.

Rant the f**k over.

So many people are applying for computer science majors that it's making me nervous.

My classmates don't know shit about tech yet almost all of them are applying for CS. It's even the most popular ranked major in the US.

I don't think I stand a chance against them. They all have higher GPAs than me, and they participate in clubs and sports.

If those cave people get accepted I'm not going to be too happy about it.

"What's your major?"
"Computer Science"
"Do you fix computers and stuff?"
"No"
"So wait then do you like hack stuff?"
"Yes, all the time, every day."

I go to college online and I was really excited to start my classes for my major as I finally wrapped up general ed classes. This is a week 1 assignment for Introduction to Computer Science....

I'm from the UK. My CS teacher took a dislike to me in junior high school, dissuading me from taking the classes I needed to take computer science at college. I ended up starting an economics major and then dropping out.

With the support of my family and friends I started over as a self taught as a developer.

I'm now a Tech Director in New York and love my job.

When you tell people you're a computer science major and they tell you you should get an education degree as well, because "our nation's children need to learn how to code." Which is fine, but no one tells my male peers they should become teachers instead of working in industry. Just saying. Doesn't make me mad, I just think it's funny

An un-rant on Universities. (UC Irvine)

A lot of my friends and I are about to graduate 👨‍🎓 from UCI, with Computer Science degrees.

Most of them are complaining that they don't know any current frameworks, and all that we learned is outdated.
And that pretty much any bootcamper knows more tools that any of us do.

I totally disagree. I don't think it's the university's job to teach you tools (node, tencerflow, ...), rather, I think they made us into programming Swiss Army knifes. I can pick up any framework (I wanna be a web dev) real easy, and when shit breaks down, I can easily figure out the issue.

I think that's the major difference between Computer Scientists and Bootcampers/Programmers. We know "why", while they know "how".

What do you think? Is the current price of a CS degree worth it?

This is going to be a rant, but personally, I'm pleased with the outcome of my life now.

I was part of a community for a few years and decided to help them out with my knowledge of programming Lua nearly 2 years ago since they lacked developers for the project itself.

Since it was sort of a custom language that they modified how Lua worked on it, it took me a bit to adapt, but within a few weeks, I was pretty fluent in this so-called custom language they had. Began working on some major updates, additions, removals, and just optimizing this code base. It was a pretty old code base and needed a good chunk of love.

A few months later, I've implemented loads of features, optimized the base whenever I could, and then things start taking a turn for the worse. We get new 'developers' who haven't ever coded the language, and worse they couldn't afford to provide them development servers thus they ended up breaking my servers. I helped them and they learned, they were decent, but now the Seniors and CEO's of the project began to take a toll on me.

I was told that this community had a reputation of driving out developers, ruining their reputations, and that is what started happening. I started getting questioned if I was loyal to helping them, that I've become lazy, even though they were explained I've had mental health issues for a few years and have been hospitalized multiple times.

These sort of attacks kept happening for months, and then they finally pushed my buttons, where I was talking to another Senior of how we should redo the base since it's just so massive and a few tiny updates to the base take a few days to implement across the entire code. What instead happened was that I went to sleep, and this Senior told the CEO I was going to steal the code base and go sell it...

I woke up to messages of how the CEO is all pissed off, and that this what the Senior said. At this point, I started responding with, fuck it. I was so sick and fucking tired of their bullshit. I was the only fucking competent developer, and I did more work in the few months I was there then some people did in 2 or 3 years.

A few hours later I decided to go chat with the CEO and explained what was truly brought up, and he just brushed it off like I was lying. At that point, I lost it. I told him why the code base was horrible since he hired stupid ass developers. He didn't know how to code. People wanted certain items, and he wouldn't be able to add them for fucking months and players sit there making fun of it. Some people state the only differences they see within the code is the code I've done. Basically, he was an incompetent fuck that said he knew what he was doing, and had all these big plans for the future yet couldn't listen to the only competent developer and fucking claimed bullshit.

Now a few months have gone by, I'm looking at their community and it's basically dead with no proper updates except for copy and paste updates claiming to be custom coded. While I'm working on my real life businesses (Which are currently being a headache, but within the year should resolve its issues), starting University for my Computer Science degree here soon, and even considering building my own game here.

Basically, karma is a bitch and that's why when you get loyal people in your life, keep them. (Writing this at 3 am after a few drinks, hopefully, it made sense, I think it does.)

Anyways, goodnight everyone.

On highschool I took a special major in which we learned various computer and mathematics skills such as neural networks, fractals, etc.
One of the teachers there, which for me was also a mentor, is a physician. He taught us python which he didn't know very well (he wasn't that bad either) and science which was his true passion.
My end project was to try to predict stocks market using a simple neural network and daily graphs of 50 NSDQ companies. The result reached 51% prediction on average which was awful, but I couldn't forget the happinness and curiosity working on this project made me feel.
Now, 5 years later, I have a Bsc and finishing a Msc in Computer Science, and would sincerely want to thank this mentor for giving me the guts and will to accomplish this.

Girl: What major are you studying?
Me: Computer Science.
Girl: Cool. Can you hack my boyfriend's Facebook, I think he's cheating on me.
Me: Go to hell. 😡

I've been lurking on devrant a while now, I figure it's time to add my first rant.

Little background and setting a frame of reference for the rant: I'm currently a software engineer in the bioinformatics field. I have a computer science background whereas a vast majority of those around me, especially other devs, are people with little to no formal computer background - mostly biology in some form or another. Now, this said, a lot of the other devs are excellent developers, but some are as bad as you could imagine.

I started at a new company in April. About a month after joining a dev who worked there left, and I inherited the pipeline he maintained. Primarily 3 perl scripts (yes, perl, welcome to bioinformatics, especially when it comes to legacy code like is seen in this pipeline) that mostly copied and generated some files and reports in different places. No biggie, until I really dove in.

This dev, which I barely feel he deserves to be called, is a biology major turned computer developer. He was hired at this company and learned to program on the job. That being said, I give him a bit of a pass as I'm sure he did not have had an adequate support structure to teach him any better, but still, some of this is BS.

One final note: not all of the code, especially a lot of the stupid logic, in this pipeline was developed by this other dev. A lot of it he adopted himself. However, he did nothing about it either, so I put fault on him.

Now, let's start.
1. perl - yay bioinformatics
2. Redundant code. Like, you literally copied 200+ lines of code into a function to change 3 lines in that code for a different condition, and added if(condition) {function();} else {existing code;}?? Seriously??
3. Whitesmiths indentation style.. why? Just, why? Fuck off with that. Where did you learn that and why do you insist on using it??
4. Mixing of whitesmiths and more common K&R indentation.
5. Fucked indentation. Code either not indented and even some code indented THE WRONG WAY
6. 10+ indentation levels. This, not "terrible" normally, but imagine this with the last 3 points. Cannot follow the code at freaking all.
7. Stupid logic. Like, for example, check if a string has a comma in it. If it does, split the string on the comma and push everything to an array. If not, just push the string to the array.... You, you know you can just split the string on the comma and push it, right?? If there is no comma it will be an array containing the original string.. Why the fuck did you think you needed to add a condition for that??
8. Functions that are called to set values in global variables, arrays, and hashes.. function has like 5 lines in it and is called in 2 locations. Just keep that code in place!
9. 50+ global variables/hashes/arrays in one of the scripts with no clear way to tell how/when values are set nor what they are used for.
10. Non-descriptive names for everything
11. Next to no comments in the code. What comments there are are barely useful.
12. No documentation

There's more, but this is all I can think to identify right now. All together these issues have made this pipeline the pinnacle of all the garbage that I've had to work on.

Attaching some screenshots of just a tiny fraction of the code to show some of the crap I'm talking about.

When you're a fourth semester Java student and decide to try your hand at making an android app... Only to find that it involves almost none of what you've learned so far.

Yes I am a computer science major; No I'm not volunteering to be your IT guy.

The number of people who responded to this with bile such as “yeah but how well” or “i bet she can only write hello world”.
Its sad that this attitude still exists in our industry. If you havent seen the story she responded by clarifying that she is on the iOS tutorial team for Raywenderlich, and has a bachelors degree with a double major in Computer Science. But she shouldnt have to explain that just because shes a woman. Are people that insecure about their knowledge that they need to resort to demeaning other peoples? for shame.

An hour before my Mathematical Expression and Reasoning for Computer Science final...

Have reviewed all the material available but past exams are useless because new_prof == new_format.

This is not even a rant, I'm just scared because to get into the major I need an average between this and programming of 82. I fucked up in the second midterm and got a 50/100. Everything was so perfect (at least above 80) and now I need more than 70 in this final. I'm feel I can get more than 70 but I had the same feeling during the midterm I fucked up.

This is going to take a second to get dev related, please bear with me.

So, I'm from a pretty small (and poor) town. Like most small towns, not many give a damn about computer science/IT (that shows by the fact I'm the only CS major. And there's one IT major).

Now, my high school offers a few "career prep" classes. There's (no exaggeration) almost 5 or 6 classes for medical majors to prepare themselves; like 4 different agriculture based classes; 2 business major classes; and surprise surprise...not a damn Computer Science or IT class.

Yes, we have a computer class. But can you even call a "How to Use Microscoft Products" class an computer class? Finally by my senior year, I got pissed off by this.

I had/have relatives that have worked/are working in the school system, so it wasn't hard to get a meeting with the superintendent and the assistant superintendent to discuss my thoughts. They were both open to and even supported my ideas. But due to funding, it wasn't a feasible idea at the time. (Especially since not many care about CS or IT.)

This is where I get really really pissed off. Being that the town is small, the people with money/a name tend to control things. So, a former principal retired with the expectations to work in another county. However, this job fail through. But there was a "magical" opening for a job that didn't exist before this job fail through.

This pisses me off. We can create a job for someone and afford a full time salary for them, but we cant get an actual CS class. (And this isn't the first time a job was created for someone.)

FIRST RANT: When someone tries to scam a CS major...

Ok, so today I received a msg from a super hot guy on Grindr (that's right, I went there >_<). We chatted for a bit, traded some photos, his full frontal matched his profile pic so I was impressed. Then suddendly he asked me if I could "check out his fanpage" through a link that he will send to me..

"Mmmmmmmm that sounds like a scam bruh."

The mofo didn't give up and even had the nerve to try and assure me that "scammers will ask for money upfront and they're usually from another country (WTF??)"

"DUDE, I'm a Computer Science student! Not particularly fond of links!"

And then he blocked me. HAHAHA #DODGEDIT

I’m new to programming. I first learned G-Code and M-Code for CNC machines and being a machinist got boring, so now I’m in School for computer science. But I swear, the amount of motherfuckers that act like they are the programming gods and they know everything there is to know just because they’ve been a programmer for so and so amount of years just grinds my gears. They act like some knowledge is important while other knowledge is useless, and generalize it and push that belief on everyone. But fail to realize that some people, such as myself, just love computers in every facet. I don’t give a damn how many years of programming experience you have and how many people you’ve taught. If you act like a stuck up know it all and walk around like your shit don’t stink, I wouldn’t work with you even if I had the same amount of experience as you.

Wow the security by captcha!

Guess what? IIT Kharagpur is considered one of the best institute in India to study Computer Science and its major in research include image processing

I just started as a computer science major, and I'm a little irritated because I think I know more than my proffessor. I was excited that I would be pushed to my limits, but the other day I asked him for things I should work on to get ahead...
Him: Sure, page 475 has some good projects. Just don't go past chapter 9 unless you're confident with pointers.
Me: I did C before C++ and I hated pointers.
Him: C doesn't have pointers, you must have been using a different version of C.
Me: OK
Like really? I just can't wait till next semester.

when you really want to code but you have a lot of school work and your course major has nothing to do with computer science or programming. ((

Ok I’m fed up. I feel that computer science major in majority of universities are filled with individuals that memorise code for their assessments as if it is history or civics major.
I mean wtf?
If all you are good at is memorising why did you that cs as your major?
And how far do you think is memorising the simple jackass 20 LOC long shit piece of coding program will take you in the industry?????????

What I say: I'm a computer science major.

What people hear: I can resolve any tech issue you have or will ever have on any machine that exists in this universe. I am jacked into the Matrix at all times. I am the IT god. Look upon me and despair.

What I mean: Sometimes I try to tell the computer to do something and I cry when it doesn't work.

about 2 weeks ago my mom's friend's family visit our house. one moment they introduce their brilliant son going to take Computer Science Major, and they didn't understand why, and apparently they are some kind of ignorant family. So my role here are to advertise and promote the world of CS (since i know their son are good at programming). one moment i am diving to deep into my own speech, i am like :

"I believe you guys using facebook, and Whatsapp all the time **give a smirk and sarcastic look* (which they actually did), that is our work there. and maybe you (my mom's friend) love to play candy crush with my mom, yes that is also our work, and we got a lot of money from you buying the candy to unlock the hard level (the microtransaction thing) MUAHAHAHAHA !" ---

and yes i am laughing like a monster in a film. and suddenly that becoming the most awkward thing i ever had.

and i don't know should i feel bad or not introducing CS like that.

Glad I wasn’t a computer Science major back in college 😝

How does a computer science major pick up girls?

put on my glasses;

Oh, shit thought this was google. :-)

So my friend who is currently attending University to major in Computer Science just started programming Java a few days ago. His first assignment was to learn bubble sort and make it organize a table of certain values provided in the assignment with a few other items on the side. Apparently, he was stressing over the assignment and waited till the last night to do this, and was running on 2 hours of sleep. Anyways, a few days pass and he received a 0% on the assignment with the comment "See me on Monday." and questioned what he did wrong (They use GitHub to submit their assignments, even though other classes at the University just commit to the University Server for Computer Science), and asked me to review the code. When I started looking at the code, all he managed to do was just make two tables, one that would print the unsorted table, and then print the "sorted" table. Plus, the catch that got him in trouble, he named his package "fuckthisshit", how does one not realize that when they're submitting their assignments... like seriously? Like I can understand the 2 hours of sleep, but with 1000s of examples out there, how do you manage to fake bubble sort plus end up naming a package "fuckthisshit" and question why he got a 0%. I do feel bad for him in the long run since there aren't many assignments in this class so this was worth 25%.

Rude Bystander: "Oh, you're a computer science major? So can you flaunt your looks to get the guys to hack stuff for you?"

*sometime during my sophomore year in university. I was a Biology major and just switched to Computer Science. I'm currently a senior graduating in the Spring.*

Me: "Mom and Dad I changed my major to Computer Science!"

Parents: "How will you be able to make a living playing games?"

Me: "I won't be playing games, I'll be coding/programming things and building software."

Parents: "I thought you wanted to become a doctor?"

Me: "Well I decided I wanted to choose a career that I like and I also didn't want to stay in school for 8 years. Also, the salary I can make as a developer/engineer is close to that of some doctors."

Parents: "Well we wanted you to go to be a physical therapist. We feel that it's the best option for you."

Me: "I think this is my best option because there aren't even enough people available to fill the jobs that will be around when I graduate. Which also means that I can make a higher salary."

Parents: "Well I guess we'll see if you can make a living and provide for a family just playing/making games."

Me: "That's fine I never needed your support anyways."

*My parents thought that if the job wasn't physical labor then it wasn't a "real job". (Idk how they decided that a Physical Therapist was a "real job") I moved out less than a year after this argument because I was constantly put down by my parents for coding/programming as well as playing video games in my spare time. They thought it was childish. This has shown me what I won't do when I become a parent.*

*Just a side note: I have paid for everything I own that wasn't gifted to me since I was 18 and had a job while attending college. I also got a scholarship to go to college, so my parents didn't have to pay for any of it.*

> be me
> studying 1.5 years liberal arts stuff and general education class at community college
> transfer to a 4 year university.
> realize I need a major
> Realize I also I wanted to 9ne day have a family.
> realize family would need money
> "struggling actor" not a great choice
> pray about what I should be doing
> get distinct impression that instead of attending the session on majors at the college of fine and performance arts to go to session with the college of Science and engineering.
> hear pitch for computer science.
> signup for introduction to programming taught with c++.
> A couple semesters down the line take 3 classes all at once Discrete Math 1, Linear Algebra, and database design and administration.
> around week 6 realize that all 3 classes revolved around sets and set logic and set math.
> realize rdbs's are "applied" set math and that Each class a little more "applied" than the former.
> Be genius at SQL and set math
> havereally smart database teacher mentored me
> get introduced to the recruiter at the career fair.
> get interviews
> get flown out for 2md interview
> get internship
> do work, and get project back under budget
> a job offer
> finish senior year
> start as a "real" developer supporting business data and analytics.
> ???
> profit.

I picked up an HTML book for kids when I was about 11. I didn't code again until college. I started as chemical engineering, but that wasn't really my thing.

I decided to take a computer science class and loved every bit of it, so I switched my major to computer engineering. I also started learning LAMP stack development in my spare time.

I actually only started programming a little less than two years ago. I entered my freshman year of college as a mathematics major, but as time went on I ended up enjoying coding in C++ much more than trying to work out partial equations.

I have since become fascinated with many aspects of computer science, mainly web development and systems programming (I discovered Linux and the command line only a year ago and I'm practically in love). I've since been working for a couple fairly new startups with duties from developing a mobile native app in AngularJS/Ionic to migrating content to new servers and developing custom themes on WordPress. I have deep, deep aspirations of eventually being employed by Google as a Senior Software Dev (although I'd definitely prefer working for a company that would allow 100% remote work 😁). I've even finally began developing my own projects, ranging from a URL shortening service to a basic online encyclopedia.

I wanna spend the rest of my life doing this shit. Hell, I hope I die at my computer.

I was working at a doctors office while going to (and still attending) college. Everyone knew my major was computer science which meant everyone came to me when their browser didn't open. The night before April fools I turned off all of the wireless mice and used a label maker to print out "April Fools" on the bottom of each mouse next to the "on/off switch." This prank is miniscule in comparison to others here I'm sure, but the next day was my day off and I had the entire office calling me asking me to come in and fix it. "Taco what do we do???" They frantically asked. And so I very calmly said, "Did you turn the mouse over?" And hung up.

When I was a child I was allowed to use my dad's PC (my parents are divorced) (~1995-6, 3-4 yrs) - back then I played blockout and space Invaders on that windows 2.0 machine. My mum later got a win 3.1 box and I often played around in paint - so did I on my dad's new windows 95 pc. Back then I wasn't able to read (which usually isn't uncommon for a 4-5 yr old) but I was so fed up with those constant "do you want to save this thing dialogs" that I started to learn reading with the help of my parents. (Thanks to that I was able to play Monkey Island 2 :D )

Fast forward to the first years of school: we had two PC's in the classroom and I somehow fixed basic errors so my teacher signed.l me up for the computer course in the second year - usually only students in the third and fourth year may attend this course. I was so thrilled and that was the time where I learned basic DOS stuff and how to build a PC. Again fast forward some years to the 6th year - again another teacher saw my interest in it and asked me if I'd be interested in the basic programming course where I then learned basics in HTML, CSS and JS but that was not enough for me and so I did some research and learned php. In high school, my major was science and IT and in the last year, my IT teachers sat in the IT class and I held the courses as my knowledge was greater than theirs. And yep, that's pretty much how I started coding

When I was taking a programming course as a Mathematics prerequisite, and then object oriented programming basics (inheritence, interfaces specifically) all just clicked at once. Immediately decided I was going to pursue the computer science major instead of math.

You know, I've really been thinking about renouncing my love for Microsoft's products. I got into the tech world through them, so their stuff was all I really knew. It's like a non-dev growing up using Mac and iPhone. You don't really know what other hardware and software can do (especially since Microsoft is now acting a LOT like Apple nowadays). Ever since they killed Windows Phone, I started seeing past the rose-colored glasses. They've annoyed me with one slip-up after the next. The only things that have kept me tied to them are my Windows Insider membership, and their developer platform. Now that I've seen things like Fuchsia and Linux, I realize that the way Microsoft is going about technology is painful to developers and consumers alike, and this is now beginning to hurt their bottom line. I'm sick of it.

The issue is that if I leave the Microsoft platform, I will have no time to waste. I spent the last 2 yeas cozying up to them, and now I will need to find other platforms, languages, and utilities to build a portfolio from. This also means that I will despise pretty much every major tech company for different reasons (Apple for locked-down hardware, Microsoft for locked-down software, Google for it's monopolistic actions and its unfair policies and terms, Amazon for its invasiveness, etc). If things get worse, I'll probably end up going to Linux and joining the open-source community. The only worry I have is what I'll do for a career. I'm almost halfway to getting an Associates in Computer Science, but where do I go from there? Can't make a living open-source (unless I get patrons, which is unlikely), will probably abandon my dream of joining Microsoft or Google, and I don't currently specialize in any particular area of development yet. I want to spend my life dealing with tech and software. But right now, I've got next to no plans. I've got a lot of thinking to do...

I don't have a Computer Science (CS) degree, but I do know a lot of Computer Shit. Major Computer Shit. So yeah, I guess I major in CS after all.

I’m extremely frustrated with my job situation. I want to code, I absolutely love building stuff with software. My current job is a “tech” job, but involves absolutely zero coding. I don’t know what else I can do to stand out more or make myself a better candidate.

-I’m a new-grad with a flawless in-major GPA (computer science major)
-I have other past internship experiences that involve coding
-I frequently do my own side projects and post them to GitHub
-I work well on teams (life-long and collegiate athlete)

I apply to tons and tons of places only to get no response, or to have a single fucking interview and then get dropped

Fuck this stupid shit I am so frustrated

The University Struggle: when you want to actually code and learn your major but you have an English essay, a Spanish project, chemistry homework, and a book to read all within two days.
.
.
.
Not to mention my actual computer science classes don't teach anything useful in terms of programming

If you could solve *one* of the major unresolved problems in computer science, which one would you choose and *why*?

Lots of good suggestions up in here.

My personal prefference:

Such as there are governing bodies indiciating how a programming language evolves and a web consortium...there should be a computer science one. That dictates fundamental approaches covering everything that belongs to this wonderful branch of science. Everything from math to differenr scientific branches all the way down to turtles. And for it to be standarized and updated. Indeed, if you want to spend your entire existence gobbling js in the form of web sites then that is fine, but you should have sufficient knowledge to branch out into more academic pursuits if required.

Also, updated tools would be better, every aspiring computer scientist shall be able to navigate through all major operating systems and programming environments regardless of their beliefs and or prefferences and schools should provide said environments in their classrooms.

Data Strucrutes and Algorithms should be a must. Software engineering principles should be a must. Calculus, Algebra and Statistics as well as Physica should be a must.
And succesfully navigating over different engineering areas should be a must.

Not to cleanse the industry. Fuck your elitist mentality. If you think that programming is a sacred art that should exclude people then I really hope you fucking disapear from existence. No, not to cleanse. But to expand the industry and maybe show people that there is more than fucking around between node modules or gemsets.

Peace pendejos

**drops your mom's fatass...i mean mic**

My best friend's ex is really cool. But while they were dating, I was a bit frustrated, mainly because he was interested in many things she wasn't.

One thing that annoyed me was that his major is computer science, and her major is medical research.

GIRL, IF ONLY YOU WERE ALSO MAJORING IN COMPUTERS. YOU CAN ASK THE GUY FOR HELP WITH YOUR ASSIGNMENTS. EXPLOIT HIIIIM. HAVE COFFEE DATES AT STARBUCKS AND CODE TOGETHEEER. HIT TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE

One of professors has an interesting philosophy in regards to how software is planned. He makes us forget that we dealing with a computer and has us write instructions as if we are teaching a human (no optimization, binary, or unnecessary numeral variables). Then we change it into code, then we optimize it. Every time. It freaks me out, but it gets us thinking. Not sure. If that is genius or insanity.

Why does college have to have so many core classes? I'm a Computer Science major, I don't want to learn about the history of the economy or chemistry, I just want to code! About to finish my first semester of my second year and I've only taken 3 computer-related courses, and about 15 useless cores that add nothing to my education

I'm studying a mix of computer science and engineering. This semester we were tasked with hacking a "smart-production"-production-machine.... And OMFG it's shit!

This is a product by a major company and it's version 4... How the fuck is it this bad?
Like, using the same 5-letter password on all the PLC's FOR THE ROOT USER!!! WTF!!! AND open, unencrypted Telnet.....
This is a million dollar machine and, as soon as a hacker is on the same network it is done for! wtf.... I just can't believe how easy it was to get in and reek havoc.

I spent 4 months in a programming mentorship offered by my workplace to get back to programming after 4 years I graduated with a CS degree.

Back in 2014, what I studied in my first programming class was not easy to digest. I would just try enough to pass the courses because I was more interested in the theory. It followed until I graduated because I never actually wrote code for myself for example I wrote a lot of code for my vision class but never took a personal initiative. I did however have a very strong grip on advanced computer science concepts in areas such as computer architecture, systems programming and computer vision. I have an excellent understanding of machine learning and deep learning. I also spent time working with embedded systems and volunteering at a makerspace, teaching Arduino and RPi stuff. I used to teach people older than me.

My first job as a programmer sucked big time. It was a bootstrapped startup whose founder was making big claims to secure funding. I had no direction, mentorship and leadership to validate my programming practices. I burnt out in just 2 months. It was horrible. I experienced the worst physical and emotional pain to date. Additionally, I was gaslighted and told that it is me who is bad at my job not the people working with me. I thought I was a big failure and that I wasn't cut out for software engineering.

I spent the next 6 months recovering from the burn out. I had a condition where the stress and anxiety would cause my neck to deform and some vertebrae were damaged. Nobody could figure out why this was happening. I did find a neurophyscian who helped me out of the mental hell hole I was in and I started making recovery. I had to take a mild anti anxiety for the next 3 years until I went to my current doctor.

I worked as an implementation engineer at a local startup run by a very old engineer. He taught me how to work and carry myself professionally while I learnt very little technically. A year into my job, seeing no growth technically, I decided to make a switch to my favourite local software consultancy. I got the job 4 months prior to my father's death. I joined the company as an implementation analyst and needed some technical experience. It was right up my alley. My parents who saw me at my lowest, struggling with genetic depression and anxiety for the last 6 years, were finally relieved. It was hard for them as I am the only son.

After my father passed away, I was told by his colleagues that he was very happy with me and my sisters. He died a day before I became permanent and landed a huge client. The only regret I have is not driving fast enough to the hospital the night he passed away. Last year, I started seeing a new doctor in hopes of getting rid of the one medicine that I was taking. To my surprise, he saw major problems and prescribed me new medication.

I finally got a diagnosis for my condition after 8 years of struggle. The new doctor told me a few months back that I have Recurrent Depressive Disorder. The most likely cause is my genetics from my father's side as my father recovered from Schizophrenia when I was little. And, now it's been 5 months on the new medication. I can finally relax knowing my condition and work on it with professional help.

After working at my current role for 1 and a half years, my teamlead and HR offered me a 2 month mentorship opportunity to learn programming from scratch in Python and Scrapy from a personal mentor specially assigned to me. I am still in my management focused role but will be spending 4 hours daily of for the mentorship. I feel extremely lucky and grateful for the opportunity. It felt unworldly when I pushed my code to a PR for the very first time and got feedback on it. It is incomparable to anything.

So we had Eid holidays a few months back and because I am not that social, I began going through cs61a from Berkeley and logged into HackerRank after 5 years. The medicines help but I constantly feel this feeling that I am not enough or that I am an imposter even though I was and am always considered a brilliant and intellectual mind by my professors and people around me. I just can't shake the feeling.

Anyway, so now, I have successfully completed 2 months worth of backend training in Django with another awesome mentor at work. I am in absolute love with Django and Python. And, I constantly feel like discussing and sharing about my progress with people. So, if you are still reading, thank you for staying with me.

TLDR: Smart enough for high level computer science concepts in college, did well in theory but never really wrote code without help. Struggled with clinical depression for the past 8 years. Father passed away one day before being permanent at my dream software consultancy and being assigned one of the biggest consultancy. Getting back to programming after 4 years with the help of change in medicine, a formal diagnosis and a technical mentorship.

Double rant....whattttt!!!

1) That moment when you're like god this code is awesome/I'm a genius/Can anyone else other than me even comprehend how to do something this awesome? AND THEN you shift to "wait a second..." Is this actually super convoluted/inefficient/there is a way easier way to do this? :o

2) Do people even know that google can provide them with like any and all of human knowledge? I feel like 50 times a day in my head I'm screaming "GOOGLE IT!!!!!!!!!!"

2 examples....

Earlier today I ctrl+alt+down arrow my co-workers computer because he left it unlocked and I was feeling especially awry so when he kept saying I don't know how to fix it, I was like google it!!!! I'm teaching you a valuable life skill...

Second. I was at my in-laws house and we got on the topic of what does "impeachment" actually entail? So my mother in law was like hmmm I thought it meant so and so....I'll have to ask my friend so and so the next time I see her....she's a political science major or something like that....

In my head....

I'm like.....

Or....

You could.....GOOGLE IT!!!!!!

When people think that because they can "fix" computers that they should major in Computer Science. 😂

We have people from all different types of backgrounds here on DevRant, and I feel like lots of us just kind of spontaneously discovered the dev world without really planning on it.

That makes me wonder, what did you major in during college, and is it related to what you're doing now? Did you major is Computer Science/Software Engineering/Web Development, or something completely different?

I double-majored in Algebraic Geometry and Astrophysics, and while my math background does come in handy as a developer, I'm very rarely applying what I actually specialized in to my dev work

I was always somewhere in the range of not athletic enough to be a jock and not smart enough to be a geek during high school so it left me in a fun little purgatory between social groups. Ever since I was a kid though I saw my cousin make flash games for fun and thats where my interest in programming started but I never really did anything with it.

It wasn’t until I broke a bone during a football game and couldn’t play or workout for 8 months that I started jumping head first into programming and IT WENT DEEP. After tearing through and intro to java book I started reading and watching courses about data structures and learning how to make mediocre apps and games. It was terrible as any beginner usually is but god was it fun.

Then college came around and I decided to major in computer science, got myself a nice starting job at a typical big tech company with an actually decent team to work with and I still have the same love for it all since I started with it.

I finished a double major IT and computer science as a minor.
Am trying my best to find a job in programming to be specific mobile apps dev
and am failing miserably
Can you please tell me what's needed and what i should enhance to get accepted

I'm a computer science major... Is it really worth all this hard work😣

After watching the Falcon Heavy launch up close, I’m severely regretting having changed my major from aerospace engineering to computer science and then to information systems. Anyone else feeling the desire to go back to school and get a degree in something that’ll land you a job at SpaceX or some other company?

tl;dr
that moment was a full semester

full
I was an Electrical Engineering major taking a Data Structures class and for the first time, I understood the title computer SCIENCE. In EE, you just blueprint all day long, but you never build anything. In CS you build and blueprint at the same time.

I had a relative that used to come to our house to study because her home was kinda far and also because we had a computer .
She was studying computer science at the time and I was only 13-14 years old. One day she came with 3 CDs of red hat. I asked her about it and she told me it's something like windows. My reaction was wow it must be something huge because I knew at the windows XP was only the size of one CD .
My relation with computers was only to play games and some music that's why I couldn't hold myself not to install it. I fucked my computer endless times, It was like playing puzzles let's try this option and then switch to another... It took me like 4 days to install and I was really impressed with it you know seeing the terminal and stuff. Weeks later I switched back to Windows because I couldn't install my games and play mp3 files (require to install some libraries and I had no internet).
Fast forward 8 years later and I was studying linux system for CS degree and guess what? I was the major in class because I knew about many stuff like partition systems (ext2, swap..) and how to install linux on a computer...
This was my feeling 😎 at class.

Hi devRant!
I need some help on figuring out what to major in
My options are:
-Computer networking
-Computer science/programming
-Computer system administration
-Information Technology

Warn: long rant is long

So for the past couple of weeks I've been frustrated/confused over my thesis course with the kids gloves the professor gave us. This week I found out that in actuality this class isn't just for the IT majors, but a mix of Software Engineering majors, IT majors with minors in the SE department (me), and Information System majors who do product management but don't know much about coding anything.

As a result, we have this really strange set of discussions going on where on one hand we have the professor giving the okay to students making a website in !!Wix because they don't know much about HTML and CSS, to students like me busting ass to get a Java/MongoDB/Bootstrap web application off the ground from scratch.

I'm not as nearly upset as a I was, but it's still a really bizarre thing to lump these two departments together and getting it all coherent. The SE and IT majors is a much easier fit as there's so much overlap between the two that it's next to impossible to see any difference, it's the IS majors who are off in their own little world.

One thing is relieving to me from all this. I've realized I didn't need to major in Software Engineering to become a competent software engineer. It's amazing what one can self teach in 2 years to get the equivalent knowledge and skill sets. In the end this makes it all up for when I dropped out Computer Science in my mid 20's.

It's jaw dropping to me how much my perception of the education system for STEM has changed from when I was freshman to being a senior.

Looking at colleges on summer break between learning python and some projects can't decide between computer science and cyber security as a major 😰 why can't I choose

Studying computer science with people who have studied biology as their major in high school. Stupid and unreasonable answers when teacher ask some questions.

Am really worried about this major ( Computer science major ) in my country ( Lebanon ).

We have a very good potentials and very low salaries compared to it. And in case we apply abroad there is always an indian who have the same experience at least and most of them request a very low salary.

Trust me am really worried.

the red haired girl and the blue haired girl.

there was this story about a programmer who spent years studying computer science before finally getting a job.

the dev studied only computer science and was put on blue team after a few days.

a few hours into one of the constant coding sessions, the boss told the devs that red team members and blue team members would be working in pairs.

the person from red team transferred the devs work to their data base without the dev knowing, then locked down the devs computer. the dev could not do anything. later, the dev got fired for not doing any work. after that, the company got millions of dollars, and the dev did not see any of it.

both the dev and the managers made a note not to hire any programmer who cannot secure their work.

it is not ethical to teach people programming without also teaching them cyber security.

computer networking, programming and security should all be the same major.

it is a bad idea to teach people how to build anything without telling them how to secure it.

the story above was just a scenario, but it probably happens way more often than people think.

Schools should teach both things in the same major.

Typically every computer science major begins with either C C# C++ java or python , creating so much abstraction from the hardware which just loads your mind with questions that remain unanswered.When ever i program something i always think of how the under lying stuff is working.They never explain how and where software meets the hardware.Why are they keeping students away from the hardware. I think a cs graduate without knowing the underpinning of a computer should not be considered a cs graduate as opposed to being a software engineer a computer science major relates to everything that is a computer that includes the theoretical stuff and a little bit know how of computer hardware. Instead of teaching this stuff and assembly as a language in the first semester they teach you java or C++. Could not speculate on why this is so.