Taking Calculus II and Programming II(Java) at the same time intensive? Should I register for more?

Hello everyone,

It’s that time of year again, registration is approaching us real soon… I wanted to ask, what are your opinions on taking calculus II and programming II (Java) during the same quarter? Are these two classes alone really intense? How is Java anyways? I’m currently learning Python, so I think the learning curve will be a spike. My advisor suggested for me to just take these two classes for spring quarter as she warned that these two classes are quite intense. She also suggested for myself to register for an additional seminar class for programming since a lot of people struggle in programming II more than the other programming series, which is already kind of scaring me.

Should I stick with what my advisor suggested or should I go all out and take Calc II, Programming II and another full credit class??

Any help is greatly appreciated!

It honestly depends on the person.
If you have a solid math foundation (in both reasoning and computations), I don’t think it’s undo-doable.

In fact, I think that schedule is pretty much the norm in college for a first year.
And I don’t want to sound elitist but… scheduling is only going to get harder from there.

I know of a sophomore taking Operating Systems, Real Analysis, Computer Networking, Compilers, Music, and 1 other humanities + part time job + 1 club and they seem to be doing fine. (though at this point, I do question the sanity of the sophomore in itself. Is he planning to take graduate math and computer science from end of second year? …) {this is semester scheduling but still, very intensive}

Anyways, while Calculus and Programming is quite time intensive, it is I believe the norm for computer science majors to take in the second semester / last quarter of college.
If you google almost any college in the US the schedule of a CS major, your schedule is more or less taken by everyone else.

Personally, I don’t know you. Maybe you have a full time job outside this. Maybe your school is harder than CalTech. Who knows.
However, if your school is like most schools, I recommend registering 5~6 courses and then tuning it down to 3~4 (depending on how comfortable you are with the scheduling).
I should not be claiming this (please don’t bash me as it is my opinion and everyone has differing thoughts about this) but… I don’t honestly think advisers in most colleges want to give a frank opinion about what courses to take, etc.
The role of an adviser in my belief is to ensure students cannot graduate in 4 years and instead has to drag to 5, 6, etc. to get as much money from the students as possible. This view to me makes sense since by convincing students to take less courses early, it makes those students struggle to graduate in the 4 years with the scheduling they have.

Honestly though, outside this pessimistic view I have…
just register for at least 2 more courses. Calculus II and Programming II is nowhere as time consuming as it is made out to be. It is the norm for almost all engineering/cs majors to take those together and it is not unusual (in fact, even greatly expected) for students to take more on top of that.
** Just note you want to take around 15 units a semester/quarter to graduate on time. Personally, I never experienced 15 since from freshmen, I took ~18 with all my AP credits to allow myself to take other courses I want to take outside requirements before graduating and considering I am breathing, it is completely possible.

Most advice I hear is to take 5 classes per semester. I have taken both java and python so I can tell you the differences that I noticed. You add ; to every statement you type. You have to mention the type of variable each variable is. Ex: int number = 9 in java compared to number = 9 in python. As for the concepts they are going to be the same except you just have to memorize a different command. Example print(“Apple”) in python is System.out.print(“Apple”); in java.

@waterangel501
Yap. At least 5 classes per semester.

However, the OP of this thread goes by quarterly schedule. 5 classes per semester is around the equivalent of in-between 3 and 4 courses a quarter which is why I’m trying to advise the OP to register for at least 2 more courses (before dropping if too heavy a workload).

And honestly, if you know python, Java is not ‘thaat’ hard. It isn’t put ‘;’ to every statement easy but as both Java and Python are inspired from C, the logic is all the same like waterrangel501 has pointed out.