Software Engineering: Is it too late?

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>Fascinated with websites and programs, Ive recently been open to the world of programming; however, as a senior, its too late for me to take any programming or computer science AP classes. Is it too late to try to enter the field for college?</p>

2

<p>Not at all.</p>

<p>While it is a plus that you know a little programming for the CS major, at most schools, the CS major is designed to start you from the ground up. All you realy need is to be starting Pre-Calculus (at a minimum) in your college freshman year. Your first few courses will be:</p>

<p>Calculus I
Object-Oriented Programming in C++ or Java I (prerequisite: Calculus I)
Object-Oriented Programming in C++ or Java II (prerequisite: OO Programming I)
Calculus II (prerequisite: Calculus I)
Discrete Structures (prerequisite: Calculus I)
Linear Algebra (prerequisite: Calculus II)</p>

<p>Now since you have very little programming experience, I would suggest starting with a “Intro to Programming” course before tackling the Object-Oriented Programming course.</p>

3

<p>Globaltraveler is right that every CS program is geared towards those who have no prior programming knowledge. Depending on your college, though, the list of courses you take will most likely be different than Globaltraveler’s list.</p>

4

<p>Globaltraveler: Our first few CS classes at Georgia Tech are taught in Python, why do you specify in C++ or Java?</p>

5

<p>Probably because C++ and Java are used at the colleges s/he is familiar with.</p>

<p>Introductory CS courses seem to vary a lot in computer languages used (e.g. Berkeley’s first three CS courses will have students using Python or Scheme, Java, C, and assembly language). It is, however, desirable for the various CS courses to use several different computer languages, so that students get used to different programming models and methods, some of which are easier to use in some computer languages than others. See [The</a> Perils of JavaSchools - Joel on Software](<a href=“http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html]The”>The Perils of JavaSchools – Joel on Software) .</p>

6

<p>Yeah, at a lot of schools, the first few programming courses use Java or C++, so I was using them as the generalization. A few schools start off with Scheme. What I should probably say is that most schools have the following format for the first few courses of a typical CS program:</p>

<p>Introductory programming course 1
Introductory programming course 2
Discrete Math Structures
Computer Organization
Data Structures</p>