Most important and useful CS courses?

turbo93
Thu, 16 May 2013 22:32:21 +0000

Not sure about the software engineering class… Of course when you go out in real life some Facebook youngster may throw a fit if you don’t have the proper software engineering (cough) exposure…

Definitely computer architecture, esp if taught on modern hardware (let’s hear it for the ILLIAC V once again!). Database systems, sure, networks, meh, it’s likely to be too theoretical “I’ll see your topology and raise you two nodes” to be useful. I’d add a class on serious systems programming (maybe part of Operating Systems) and one on the ‘creative’ aspects of CS, be it game design, graphics, and the like.

If the software (cough) engineering class or OOP course covers things like design patterns or uses useful and cool tools and technologies (like DOORS or ReqPro for requirements capture and the like), maybe.

Today I was working on the gadget to cloud connector software. All standard Linux socket calls, virtually identical to what I did 30 years ago on BSD Unix. Scary.