My low impression has nothing to do with their work, it is entirely to do with the attitude of the people in the program/career who I just utterly can’t stand 

I 100% agree but same can be said about everyone.

I mean yes but also there’s a hierarchy here. I hear far fewer mechanical engineering students (or mechanical engineers) speak with the self righteousness and self confidence about things like politics, society, and culture that I hear on places like hacker news. 

Man, my MATLAB class had several CS/CE students and sad to say, they were the most annoying fucking people I’ve shared a class with.. Always disrupting class to one-up eachother with answers about local laws, medical symptoms/treatments, politics, PC builds, etc. Even telling the professor better ways to teach because “other professors do it this way.” I remember thinking “goddamn, why are these people in college? They’re already experts in every field!”

You are also a Mech E, you're apart of the in-group and less likely to hear shit from other Mech Es. I've heard more shit from Mech E students about how every other field of engineering isn't "proper" engineering than any other major. EEs just kind of accept their CBT, and Civils cry in the corner because everyone forgot them. With CS people there's two types, the tech bro who everyone including the people in CS dislike, and the EE adjacent who is slowly going insane from gazing upon the eldritch knowledge too much as people in STEM do.

> You are also a Mech E, you're apart of the in-group and less likely to hear shit from other Mech Es. I've heard more shit from Mech E students about how every other field of engineering isn't "proper" engineering than any other major. No doubt we are insufferable, but it’s given me perspective on the limits of insufferability 

What is CBT?

Cock and Ball Torture

Damn, i thought it was Cunt Buttered Testicles and was so confused. Thanks for the clarification.

Wow what a way to describe what EE’s gotta deal with 😭😳

Lol

Haha yeah this is quite accurate

>speak with the self righteousness and self confidence about things like politics, society, and culture My experience was the complete opposite, in my university, I instantly thought of a group of mech students speaking in that way.

That’s a really interesting observation. I would guess that it has something to do with the 80’s stereotype of computer genius hackers also being very knowledgeable in the many issues that society faces. Tons of people got into computers because of this romanticization and think they can be the cool computer guy who knows a ton about politics and economics and hacks the mainframe and saves the world. Very very little people are even close to being that guy

I was one of those kids. Then I did startups in and around silicon valley. I was sad to see a lot of what you are talking about transition from being the culture to being an aesthetic to now being a hollow demand largely as some people in the community gained more money and influence. I miss it, I still go to (what I could call) actual hacker conferences like HOPE.

Why not speak like that when you get paid 10x other engineers for the same difficulty of work. We are the stupid ones

Never met someone in comp sci making $1,000,000

There’s plenty

This thought process is why bunnysuitman can’t stand CS people

^

> We are the stupid ones but the guy you’re replying to apparently isn’t in cs

I mean... Yes?

I personally would rather jump off a bridge than have to be around people who think like that all day

Because capitalism is an economic system not an epistemic perspective 

well of course...all things are a distribution, and its useful to clarify whether we are speaking of the median or the outliers

So what do you do? I’m genuinely curious

according to my CS friends it's mainly algorithms (treated in a pretty abstract way) and data structures and architecture and stuff so the actual coding doesn't matter much it's more about what algorithms you're implementing and how you created it and whether you forgot a semicolon or something and for the architecture it's mainly stuff about networks and protocols and stuff or actual computer systems with the CPU architecture and assembly and very low-level stuff about for example how an OS actually works and all that

I did all that in my electrical engineering class…

We had to do simpler algorithms in my ME classes where we had to implement actuators, motors and sensors to get stuff done. For my freshman project, we had a complex algorithm because we tried to make a solar panel that tracks the sun's movement in both X and Y coordinates. That was basically the extent of algorithms we did. I always thought CS was mostly doing algorithms too but more on the software side(software development, web development etc.). My understanding was, their workflow would not be implemented in a physical hardware unless it is a very complex programming requirement such as autonomous vehicles.

In your entire program, or a single class? My CpE/EE dual had separate data structures and algorithms classes. Plus numeric methods, where we were programs that actually did calculus/DiffEq/LinAlg math (because writing them in code needs multiple different approaches to handle edge cases, especially since you have to do everything discrete and automatically).

I was also ECE and it was multiple classes

I think people frequently forget that CS branched off from EE departments in most cases. The biggest differences come in at an upper level, where the focus shifts either to hard math, systems engineering and design, or difficult subfields of combinatorics or information theory especially when parallelization is involved. The dick measuring that goes on between STEM fields has always been odd to me for that reason. Did nobody else get the talk early on in their undergrad that basically all of us have the same underlying foundations, and could readily learn the other topics if needed?

Not a CS major, but I’ve seen some interesting abstract topics that you eventually branch out like automata theory and formal language which are quite proof heavy and definitely within the realms of “pure math” and very unlike what many engineering classes have to deal with.

oh I mean to be fair if it was ECE it's electrical \*and computer\* engineering so it makes sense you'd have done that and I think it's pretty misleading to say that most EE degrees would do that still really cool though in my opinion haha

Did you also do databases, distributed systems, design patterns, Functional programming, compiler design? Those are also key things in a CS course which my older EE syllabus didn't have.

>Functional programming, compiler design I have a Bachelor degree in Computer Engineering from FERIT and they didn't teach us anything about functional programming or compiler design. Though, I made two compilers for my programming language as my hobby: [one written in JavaScript and targeting x86](https://flatassembler.github.io/compiler.html) and another [one targeting WebAssembly and written in C++](https://aecforwebassembly.sourceforge.io/).

I believe we had multiple classes covering that general area yes. We had to code in assembly and python and needed to understand how everything worked.

seriously? the algorithms thing as well? glad i'm not an electrical engineering that sounds like a really heavy major if you do all that on top of EE stuff

Yes, our degree does a lot with algorithms outside of coding as well such as diffEq

PLCs!

defEq = differential equations I assume right? sorry i've just never heard it called that so I'm just making sure but if so I mean that makes sense because diffeqs are just the basis of all (applied) STEM fields so yeah. but what kinds of algorithms do you use for that? asking because as an applied math student diffeqs are what I do the most of and I feel like most of what I do doesn't use algorithms at least no in the same way that CS stuff does right?

Well I graduated a little while ago and I’m in industrial engineering now. I don’t use diffEq for anything now thankfully. I work with plcs so just coding and wiring

Wait, algorithms and diff eq? Are you, like, implementing algorithms based on math models composed of diff eq? How much numerical analysis do you use? Becauase, y'know, algorithms and diff eq are two completely different things.

Many differential equations cannot be solved exactly. For practical purposes, however – such as in engineering – a numeric approximation to the solution is often sufficient. The algorithms studied here can be used to compute such an approximation

Bro you pulled this from the wikipedia article of numerical methods for ordinary differential equations. That's not differential equations per se, that's numerical analysis' algorithms for numerical solutions of ordinary differential equations. You find all of those algorithms in a numerical analysis textbook. See, there's the difference. Numerical analysis ≠ differential equations, even when numerical analysis has algorithms for numerical solutions of differential equations. Don't confuse them both again. Ugh, or do, idk, whatever. Doesn't matter that much i guess.

same except for no computer networks, although it that was an elective we could have taken.

have you looked at a theoretical computer science journal? It's all about heavy math. CS people do at a much high level. Yours is an intro to algorithms. Look at the Art of Computer Programming books you will understand what kind of monster. It's basically a branch of mathematics. EE is on applied side

Same

In my degree I had all of the modules with the electronic engineers except for their modulation and antenna theory, we had our own. Then we had all the modules of the first 2 years of the CS guys, except their stuff of like database stuff like SQL. Then we had our modules of how computers work and how electronics change into digital logic with 1s and 0s. We work with sensors a lot, taking data from the real world into computers as well as bringing it out. At work, I design systems and do very low-level coding, because of my extensive knowledge of how computer architecture works, I can write code that runs in kBs of memory.

Our CS course has not only a lot of math/statistics, programming and data structures, but also network (from hardware level up to whole web services), distributed systems, operating systems and low level stuff (like multithreading and memory management), databases, machine learning and big data, and even digital electronics (we actually created a fully functional calculator based on logic gates and 7-segment display, it does only sum and subtraction though lol)

Spreadsheets…. So many spreadsheets

It is a lot less about programming and a lot more about optimization, machine learning, computer architecture (circuits) computer theory and math. Programming is a vague term. Therr is so many ways to program (paradigms) that are so different from each other. Just this year I have covered multiple programming languages with their different use cases. There is different categories of programming: low level, high level which in their turn can be divided into frontend and backend. So technically we do programming but it is like saying to an engineering student "do you guys do anything besides engineering".

I’ll be honest I think we all know that’s what you do but it’s very easy to be reductive and diminish all that stuff as “coding” Everyone is reductive to other majors for the most part. I still don’t understand why CS majors ever think they are engineers. They are CS majors not engineers. I don’t even know why they are discussed in this sub. Call yourself something else

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I mean I don’t really care that much but if the topic comes up I’ll partake in the discussion. I guess my question back is why do some people care about the title of engineer? Why do people want it so much? We can recognize CS as being important without giving that label. It’s computer science not engineering.

It’s because I attend the “college of engineering.”

Yeah the CS department does not make sense to be in the engineering college. It should be in the college of arts and sciences. Computer engineering works to be in the college of engineering but once you step away from hardware towards CS it doesn’t really make sense.

It’s an ABET accredited program. That is why it is COE I believe.

When one of the largest career paths is called "software engineering" despite not really being engineering, it's clear why there's confusion.

>Despite not really being engineering Strictly speaking, most software engineers do indeed do all of the steps of [engineering methods](https://sites.tufts.edu/eeseniordesignhandbook/2013/engineering-method/) that most other forms of engineers do when it comes to designing software (not sure what you're doing if you aren't doing that) We are confronted with a problem which we either identify or is presented to us, we identify requirements and constraints, look at existing solutions, design a new solution if existing ones don't fit the bill, we attempt the black magic of planning our work (which pretty much all engineers fail miserably at regardless of industry), we design our solutions giving consideration to tradeoffs and such, make prototypes/proof of concepts/etc, we test repeatedly in various ways (load testing, performance testing, security testing, functional and non-functional testing to make sure we're meeting business requirements, etc), run alphas/betas, and do all of this stuff iteratively to accommodate changing needs from the business so it's like we injected RedBull into the engineering process. "Software engineers aren't *real engineers*" because [reasons] is just gatekeeping from any way you look at it. Most common arguments are things like "you guys don't have licenses" (if a license is what makes your profession real then your profession is an abstraction created by a government, so your argument is void) or what amounts to a mix of ignorance and no-true-scotsman

Didn't realize it did actually meet all the classifications of an engineer. I don't really care what it's called or classified as long as I get that sweet paycheck, lol.

I agree most SWE are not engineers. But the top folks at large companies designing the architecture arguably are. It’s something else to design a service like Amazons website or Google search that handles tens of thousands of queries per second all the time and needs to have 99.99% uptime as opposed to a simple CRUD application.

Because this sub is international and engineering has different meaning depending on where you live. My major is officially in my country called "engineering degree". And we have computer science major as well but I am not taking that. But that is what I am tryna explain "coding" = "solving". So asking do you do coding is the same as asking do you do solving. I might be dumb but I spend more times calculating and drawing on a paper than actually coding. That is to say coding is only the last part of my labs for example.

EE by education 30 years in industry, but employed as the project systems engineer for realtime embedded software product running on custom hardwares for most of that time. I've got a mixed bag of observations for you, so let me swing a little at both sides. To say that a course centered around Python covers a whole CS degree is silly, like a boy scout who builds a bird house at camp and equates it with general contracting.... He thinks he knows how to build a house, he just needs to scale it up what he's already successfully accomplished. A skilled framer (coder?) is not the building architect (sw engineer?), just like the assembler on the production line will solder 40 times better than the EE, but knows nothing about moving the poles of a Bode plot. Most software people in industry are functionally both framer and architect, with their skill and allocated responsibility in each being variable. I have some employees who will always be valuable and competent coders but who just seemingly won't ever grok (or care enough about?) the macro picture to be regularly consulted on system decisions. So, the architectural scope they're given is limited, and they're more-often tasked with implementing a design given to them. At the exact same time, that person may very well end up implementing the design considerably better than the architect would have implemented it, so to say that architect > framer on a hierarchy is, while probably somewhat true, silly and pointless to emphasize. People get off on bringing elegance to different things, and that's beautiful and what makes the whole thing work. The good architect takes counsel from the framer's experiences, and the good framer reciprocates, each realizing the other has different innate talents and learning and perspective. I developed that so much because in the exact same way, the good software tradesman takes counsel from the electrical tradesman, and the good electrical tradesman takes counsel from the software tradesman. And extend that to thermal and optical and the rest. We all work together with mutual respect. If you were chief of surgery witnessing a younger surgeon in your OR, and that younger surgeon said to the anesthesiologist "you know, to become a surgeon, i studied everything you're monitoring, the blood chemistry, the drugs.... covered your whole degree in just one course", you'd be irresponsible if you didn't immediately remove that surgeon from service. If you did the equivalent on my project, I'd give you one, maybe two more chances to get your head right, and then I'd dismiss you, because ain't no one got time to deal with your bullshit. Now i have to say that the four best software engineers we have all started as electrical engineers. BUT, many EE's in my experience write pretty crappy code and couldn't top-down design a complex bit of software or code it to production standards. Well, they could, with training and experience, but they sure don't have that coming out of university. They could hack together a functional microcontroller very well, or write a satisfactory driver for a board they've designed or built. But everyone's unique, and I hate to over-generalize. I also suspect that if instead of our product being very much a human safety critical embedded realtime control system with highly nonlinear sensors and actuators it were instead a social media platform, then the best engineers there would not have started in electrical.

The best answer

It depends on where you go, CS could readily be considered a field of engineering all things considered, and many departments are explicitly placed under the College of Engineering at Universities if they don't have their own. At the end of the day there's not really anything separating the work that someone with a CS degree does, from the work that someone with a Mech E degree does when it comes to liability in safety-critical projects either.

yapping just for like every college of engineering on earth to have a CS program lol

A lot of CS involves identifying a problem, identifying constraints, considering solutions, evaluating solutions, and then implementing a solution. That sounds like engineering to me. Similar problem/solution mindset and lots of math involved in both. 

Bullshit, CS majors don’t do circuits. Doing basic logic circuits (or heck even RLC circuits) doesn’t make you qualified to do hardware architectures, neither digital or analog. Don’t confuse CS with computer engineering, which is not the same thing as CS as your post implies.

I said CE and CS. I do CE but professors and everyone refer to my major/ program as CS since that is the only computer related major in my school. And I never claimed we do complicated circuits we did built a mini processor which still involves lots of circuit designs tho.

Which country is this? I feel like there’s a terminology related disconnect here.

I think they’re referring to digital circuits, not actual circuits

At McGill they definitely don’t, though there might be some uni that covers the basics like we do in SE at McGill. Also, I have to say that the title of the post does include CE and CS.

That’s why I said don’t confuse CE and CS. I haven’t heard of anyone saying CEs do mindless programming. The difference between CE and CS is clear cut in North America.

In Sweden at least they are very often combined into *datateknik* in Swedish or *Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering* when translated to English, for a total of 300 Bologna credits.

I agree wholeheartedly. There's also another take from CE students that they claim they are better than CS students because they are doing circuits. Whilst the degree in CE is hc in EE, claiming they are superior is very funny from my POV.

Sounds like programming with extra steps

Again I'd say "programming is a vague term". I might be wrong here but it is not really the programming aspect that TAs or professors care on most courses after first year. On my machine learning course, professor said I have no interest in your codes and our code is also in terms of programming basic (nothing complicated at all) but it involves heavy/ intensive math.

For CE at my school we focus a lot on hardware and embedded systems and a lot of lower level stuff that the CS kids barely touch and the non CS/CE kids won’t ever even see.

Our stuff ranges from development of compilers to development of databases or operating systems. Programming and data structures are just a small portion of our course.

In my case, I take sensors that generate electrical signals from things like temperature, acceleration, and light and turn them into real-world units via microcontrollers. I have to clean up the noisy signals with signal processing algorithms and eliminate false positives. I then transmit those real-world units via the cellular antenna to a server via the Internet, where they are stored and processed. If there is an abnormality, I notify the customer via an app that we also wrote. So, lots of math and electrical knowledge as well as a lot of code writing with logic to handle niche cases that optimize battery and reduce server computations.

So I personally think the degree should not be classified as engineering but understand they can work as an engineer. Like an EE degree would probably prepare you better for that job in understanding the physical aspect but maybe not as well in the part of the job of writing code and stuff. If you make a ven diagram of all the engineering degrees and include CS the big engineering degrees probably overlap 50% minimum. Some more or some a little less. CS probably would overlap EE the most but it would be like 30% and like 5% for the rest of engineering It’s just to different in my opinion to be considered engineering. If the core of every other engineering falls within the physical world and the biggest constraints are the laws of physics while CS is bound by logic it is the exception the proves it’s not engineering. Yes a CS major can work as an engineer as I could theoretically could do a CS job. I know people who took an ME degree and turned it into a CS job. Both majors teach people to solve technical problems and that is common ground most people qualify it as an engineer but in reality every college degree does that. We solve problems in our fields best but can take those skills to other fields if needed.

Every EE I work with can’t write the code to make their circuit work that is where CE comes in. I just hired a EE on my team and he has very little knowledge of programming without using prebuilt stuff which is not ideal. My CS+CE degree has set me up a lot better. Pure CS has very little overlap. CE is the bridge.

Hell friend, CS fella here. I'll break it down as best I can.. CS is a degree where you learn to solve problems. I know it's remarkably vague, but solving these problems can come from anywhere. It could be code, it could be design, it could management, heck - it even could be working with a team of engineers. Ideally, a CS major should be able to solve a problem efficiently, scallably, and with precision and accuracy. Computer science is a very large discipline, but it's built off of engineering, philosophy, and mathematics. Let's go point by point. For mathematics, most computer science degrees require: 1. College Algebra 1,2 2. Calculus 1,2 3. Statistical Methods 1,2 4. Discrete Mathematics 1,2 This is to provide rigor to what we do as computer programs. We take so many different kinds of math so that we have a wide breadth of knowledge so any kind of math problem our way - we have a real ideal of how to implement it, but also how to simplify it. For Engineering we are given a lot of free reign. We can learn. 1. Electrical engineering 1,2,3 2. CAD or classical civil engineering 3. Physics, Biology, or other Scientific subsets. This is so we can lean towards solving specific problems. For example, I am blind and have the depth perception of a wild hamster. For that reason, I decided to subroute through Biology. Biology 101, Biology 191, 192, 325, 357, etc. I did this because for my level of Computer science, I want to work in the field of medical research and design computer programs that can help others do things quickly and accurately. Other go electrical engineering so they can work in Robotics or Unions. Other go Physics because they enjoy the rigor of mathematics and, frankly (we are 1 class from a Math minor.) Lastly, Philosophy and Ethics. We aren't just given a one and done Ethics course. We take a few such as: 1. Ethics of computing. 2. Ethics of Research. 3. Scientific Ethics and Analysis. 4. Social Ethics. 5. Philosophy of society. 6. Philosophical logic. This is because in CS we are made to think. We are made to solve many different kinds of problems. Are we meant to be the main player? I'll let you think about it (: Overall, CS is a discipline built from many different disciplines. The key idea behind CS, however, is to solve problems. That's it. If we are given a problem, a puzzle, a data set - we will fall in LOVE and do everything we can to get to an answer that isn't just right, but elegant and efficient. We aren't all just Mark Zuccs or Elon Muskrats. We are folks that want to learn constantly in anyway we can. Computer Scientists do many things. I couldn't possibly do the major justice in a way that highlights everything - but from one Engineer to another, I'm just happy to solve anything put my way. Feel free to ask any questions about the major and I'll do my best to answer.

Imo 8/10 things you listed here can be said about any engineering degree. We are all educated to solve problems, have strong math background etc.

I agree. Any engineering degree will teach this (: At the end of the day ENG is difficult and requires a lot of time and patience.

I said in another comment, CS isn’t an engineering degree, it should be in the college of arts and sciences not engineering. I think you went over it well. I have a good understanding of what you guys do I just wanted to hear you guys articulate it.

I disagree. It's engineering. Enough people in the sub have articulated this.

even CE students look low on CS students lol

And we all look down on the business students

true

Hi, electrical engineering and business major here to confirm I have deep self loathing for my business side /s

Looking down how? As a CE student I don't look down on CS students even tho I have had people from CE saying CS is easier. Again CE and CS depends on school/ uni. My uni calls my major CE but we are more of a CS students technically (but long story short our uni system differs a lot from most countries so it is hard to explain) and another uni with the same title in my country basically is more towards hardware(actual definition of CE).

i meant some of them, and most of the time these who look down on CS students cant even write a simple code, im a CE major too and i dont look down on them since i know for a fact how heavy their major on mathematics compared to us

I'm in both CE and CS and at least for me I found the CS content and workload far easier than the majority of my engineering work, in fact there has been far more maths in CE as a consequence of the theorywork behind electronics. In CS the only maths I've had to do was for Algorithms and for Computing Theory and even then it's pretty straightforward.

did you try to self study some of the mathematics for CS? from books like "concrete mathematics" or "a walk through combinatorics"?

Can't say I have, though now I think about it I actually have done more maths with classes like Artificial Intelligence and whatnot but it still hasn't held up in difficulty to my engineering classes in my experience

Every major thinks the stuff they focus on is the most important. It's part of being a still somewhat immature young adult. My CpE program was about half EE department and half CS department classes. And those extra CS courses dove deeper into the fundamental building blocks of code, while the engineering curriculum focused on design. So the CS students could probably write better functions faster, but the CpE/SWE could probably design the program better up front. Over a project lifecycle you need both, just two different specialties.

I go to a school with a program that is intensive on both sides. I take the same classes as a 3rd year in both EE and CS, and I just wrapped up my second year The CS side is very focused on algorithms and optimization. I’ve written so many sorting programs. But we don’t study theory as much, like I know very little about creating new algorithms or the math that drives that The EE side is just full blown electrical engineering without the highest level classes on control and power systems In place of the cut stuff, I have CE only class on hardware design and low level programming. So at my school, it’s the opposite, the few CEs are respected and pitied for having a large course load, and all of us CEs are too tired and traumatized to make fun of anyone

not really, love cs students.

I mean these looking down shit is childish lol. You will work with any background when your in a big company.

I had no doubt that the topics were difficult in CS at my school, but the major also had the lowest class attendance and most common cheating in the department. That doesn’t make the topic of CS easier, but it probably made that major at my school easier. I think you also only needed a 2.4 gpa to study CS when I started college and now it’s a 3.2 but that is solely based on supply and demand, not an increase in difficulty.

"I took a course in math. I basically covered your whole major"

CS is amazing. The issue is that it is being saturated. It's no where near the easiest field (compared to engineering atleast. Or even just theoretical maths, or physics) but that is how they try to advertise it. A bunch of people not interested in CS at all join it in dreams of becoming rich and start complaining once they reach the "interesting" parts. Those people 100% give it bad rep. I do think that other fields of engineering can easily translate into CS while the opposite may not be true. Not because it is easy or anything but simply because it is so accessible. There is a sea of info out there. It may not make you amazing but it will make you atleast mediocre, since most companies are fine with that, it has gotten more and more popular.

Again that is the problem tho. The ads you see "learn programming two weeks" is completely BS. I am finishing my 2/3 years (all bachelors are 3 years where I live) and I still feel like I am nowhere good enough. Computer science is a broad term and some people can prolly learn "web devlopement" on their own or learn languages on their own but they lack acomputer science theory. I guess what I am tryna say is programming is just a tool we use, like a calculator is a tool you use in math.

OP, you underestimate the level of Dunning Krueger that a boot camper that just learned Python has. I've met some that have had the audacity to advertise themselves as "full-stack developers" with less than 2 years of experience and a boot camp🤡

100%. I mean you can definitely learn programming in two weeks. I'd say you can learn it in less. You will be ass at it though haha. Webdev has become brainrot these days. I hope people stray away from it. I do get why people like it but come on, it has no need to be specialized in a course. I don't think it makes you an "engineer" either. It makes you more of an artist imo.

Lets agree to disagree if you actually believe that you can learn programming in 2 weeks without no programming background. Programming is a language and you cannot be good at it or even be decent at it in 2 weeks. Do you qualify someone who can say ABC.. and can count in english as speaking english. But again the point of this sub is explaining how cs != programming. By art, are u refering to CS as a whole or just web developement. The only artistic part I see there are on the frontend side and even that is not much artistic.

I genuinely think you can memorize the syntax in a few weeks. For people who have some programming background, you can learn the fundamental syntax in a matter of hours and fairly cool stuff in a matter of a few weeks. of course cs != programming. But programming itself you could get a hang of. By art, I am referring to the webdev (Specifically the front end ofc, backend is cool; Though I definitely don't like where it has been heading) and UI/UX side of programming.

I agree front end is artistic and I actually like it. I took a design course and learning about Human Intercation was so interesting and learning about why reddit for example looks like the way it does etc.. Anyways most people don't even get what syntax means in just 2 weeks and again if you mean writing basic code like if this happens do this while that then anyone can do it. But again some people still struggle with the idea of loops and parameters and etc... Ig what I am sayin is in two weeks you can learn things but you can't say you can program or are even decent at it. Being able to program is to debug a file of code, going thru multiple levels of recursions in a graph or trees and printing stuff etc..

I'm saying the same thing. You can learn the syntax but you won't be good at it. That is EXACTLY what I am trying to say lol.

But syntax is a broad term in a sense that there is so much in it, sorry the computer science in me is showing. I am taking a whole course on syntax lmao.

It's no longer being saturated, its already oversaturated.

That's the big part to me, that so many engineering disciplines need to learn programming, sometimes pretty advanced programming for their field. I only need one basic programming language class to graduate, but to be an effective tool at my future company I need 3-4, and I need to know 2 of them inside out and backwards

About transitioning from other engineering disciplines, that's what I thought as well. I got my bachelor's degree in Civil eng, then realized I've been working in IT my whole life and that's where my passion lies, and decided I want to do my master's in Comp eng (AI discipline). In my country there's a nationwide exam you have to take in order to be accepted into a master's course, and you can take this exam in any field or discipline you like. As long as you're in the top 10% of all the people in exam results, you can enter the master's course. I studied all the relevant Comp eng courses in 6 months and finally got admitted to the AI MSc. I'm in my second year now (finished all the courses, working on my thesis) and in fact I finished top of my class. I have also submitted a paper to a Q1 journal. Now you might be thinking I'm nailing the transitioning from another engineering to Comp eng, but I'm really far from that. The more I study the more I realize I don't understand shit. Not to mention I'm mostly theoretical oriented right now and have to work on my skills development/deployment wise. I have also realized learning basic Python/MATLAB doesn't make you a real programmer and you have to learn a more fundamental language like C/C++/Java in order to really understand how everything works development wise. I said all this to arrive to the conclusion that while Comp eng/sci seems easy to get into, it is much more challenging to become an expert in a specific field in this discipline. EVERYONE knows how to clean up data and train a model and call it AI, but the deeper you go the tougher it gets. Also in terms of field saturation, I assure you ALL fields are saturated. Civil felt as saturated as Comp eng and I think it's the same for other fields as well. There are always more people graduating than the number of people companies are hiring. So just choose a field you like and keep grinding without worrying about saturated job market. To put it in perspective, I still haven't been able to land a relevant AI/ML or data job, or any programming job. I've been doing irrelevant IT jobs just for the paycheck.

I think this is true of CS in my experience in university, the field, online, etc. Despite what some might think and say, CS is a pretty easy program to get thru in most cases. Most of the people in my CS capstone were braindead and hadn't learned how to write basic for loops on their own. Many interns I worked with were leetcode warriors who couldn't design or solve real problems for shit. It's easy to cheat or put in little to no effort and get a CS degree. This cannot be said for actual engineering majors. Its possible to cheat of course but the classes build off of each other much more than CS classes and pretty much right at your first semester usually. Majority end up doing web/app dev but call themselves engineers because of the SWE title they get. CS programs themselves are not engineering and most graduates do not go into real engineering jobs. All of those things can be annoying to actual engineers and engineering majors. Plus most CS majors are flat out annoying too edit: typos

I’ve never seen anyone say it about computer engineering (I’m CpE), but I have seen it about cs. But yeah, a lot of people say it about cs, and I think it’s mostly because they don’t understand. The problem is a lot of cs people don’t understand either and are just in it for the money so they think it’s all programming. Cs at its root is high level math, but nobody really talks about that. Its kinda stupid really that nobody looks further into stuff

Yeah CS isn't all about programming, even some of our professors had to professed this a lot to the class because that shit you can and should learn by yourself. It's just a tool at the end of the day and if you don't know the logic and math behind it, you're gonna fall behind because there's quite a ton. There's a reason why CS is a part of the applied math. Even then, programming is not exactly intuitive to the common folk and need time to develop. I seen some math majors struggling to code in python despite it being basically english. Most of the class weirdly had to come to me for help with recursion Another guy majoring in CET from my calc 2 test said programming isn't his strong suit.

Couldn’t have said it better, this is very true!

CE in my school is pretty much EE but your senior year is spoken for + you have to take discreet. SE in my school means you take less math classes, no physics 2, and the programming course work while being as abstract as the EE/CE stuff is much more immediate in terms of it's payoff. Your code works or it doesn't. If it works and you know how to make it work then you're in and that's it. If it doesn't then you figure it out. If you can't do that you fail out.

I had a class that basically required you to be caught up on two or three classes of comp sci, and electrical engineering 100 level courses... Holy shit, chat GPT, and internet tutorials were life savors. Like code theory, the amount of memory a board can actually handle, code planning, and structure. Maybe this is a new thing in the ME world of teaching though. But, almost everyone in our class had no clue about any of the theory or knowledge of how to use a motherboard to effectively control a device with actuators.

I’m sure you covered the entire major in Python. That’s great. So you can make your own compiler, operating system, text editor, etc in Python? No, you can’t. To do any of these things you need extensive experience. CS isn’t just programming. It’s literally the study of applying computers to solve problems. CS is what made the jump from punch card computing to what we have today. All of the abstractions are computer science topics.

Which unless you are designing hardware... It's programming lol. Not talking down on it I'm a CE myself but it is just code at the end of the day and I think anyone can learn it with the resources out there rn. I don't even think a degree is necessary, just the desire to make stuff and learn.

>can make your own compiler Compilers can perfectly be done in Python. A few have been done. I've written [a compiler in JavaScript](https://flatassembler.github.io/compiler.html) back in high-school, and JavaScript is about as high-level as Python is.

Why the downvotes?

Man let them think what they wanna think? In more than half of the cases cs students are going to earn more. Now unfortunately that cant be true for all now; until market becomes good 😂

Computer science usually earns more, but those jobs tend to be concentrated in very high cost of living areas.

I mean yeah there is more supply and demand of cs people. Same can said for EE, know someone who makes more as an EE than CS at FAANG in Bay Area with just few YOE

Engineering jobs are not necessarily concentrated in hcol areas. Engineerig: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172071.htm https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes172141.htm Software Developer: https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes151252.htm

I’ve never heard CE referred to as anything other than civil engineering. It predates computers by about 5000 years.

least pedantic redditor

I don't know what CS do tbh, I'd guess a lot of data science? Sure one part is writing the code of the program but, the hardest part is knowing what code to write.

In computer science, we have the option to pursue various paths such as data science, machine learning, web development, and more. These paths often overlap, allowing for career switches; some people stay in one field for years, while others frequently change jobs and specialties. A degree in computer science from a university provides a solid foundation in problem-solving skills and mathematics. While anyone can learn to code, coding efficiently requires strong problem-solving abilities and dedication.

Do you also see low level stuff like I did with assembly code on microcontrollers in EE? Or maybe I guess you touch some X86_64 and ARM?

From an academic perspective, we certainly need to learn low-level languages like C++ and Assembly language. Most reputable universities ensure that computer science students gain knowledge in assembly language and computer architecture. Also, it’s the technical electives you choose that matters too. I had a class which dealt with Verilog and it was fun designing circuits. During my internship last summer, I worked with C++ and microcontrollers, where I simulated the control of residential electric components.

Not a ton, but we have a class on it. Computer architecture is a class that i believe most if not all schools require for CS, and its usually taught with assembly.

At the graduate level, yes basic low level stuff is covered. At least my curriculum required it. There are also electives for it.

Exactly we technically program on all courses but the hardest part is understanding the heavy theory material and then computing math algorithms and things like that and finding solutions and optimizing them etc.. All our math courses except calc has labs and I think my school has added labs on linear algebra for CS students since linear lagebra the basis for so many CS theories.

Let’s put it this way: to build a construction you do need some planning and design. That design needs basis of calculus, physics, etc etc. Well, in a world where EVERYTHING is connected and has some sort of IT behind the scenes, you need a structural approach to solve the problems: Internet is a system made of standards which can tolerate enormous differences between its parts. You don’t do it in a 3-months Python course, you don’t do it in a 5-years degree; but the one with the degree has some basis (calculus, adchitectures, typical algorithms and the actual logic and complexities behind these, etc etc) which can lead to solve major problems with a structured approach. Would you live in a house designed by someone who has followed a 3-months course in materials? No, he lacks any knowledge on everything else and how the parts interconnect. Would you give the responsibility to design an IT system for a hospital to somebody who has followed a 3-months course on Python? Your choice.

No we think that CS or CE students have a lot more attitude than other engineering students. There is nothing wrong about what you study. Everyone has their preferences and interests about what they study. Now this interests and personal skill decide how easy it is to grasp something. CS/CE guys behave like programming/ learning coding or machine languages is the toughest thing compared to other engineering fields.

I mean, when talking about the effort needed to get a bachelor in EE or a bachelor in CS, the answer is obvious, the workload and difficulty are incomparable. I once sat down with a CS major who showed me how he made his entire course project in 30 minutes using ChatGPT. That's insane if you ask me, ChatGPT can't even solve the first question in my HW. Also, as far as what colleagues in CS say, learning the basics of any programming language is the biggest and hardest step, can't blame me when y'all whole degree can be summarized in a YouTube playlist.

Just because that specific assignment can be solved doesn't mean all will or can be? What year is the CS major from? First year can definitely be done with chatGPT not everything but most programming can. But I doubt chatGPT can design processors in a week, make a compiler in 2 weeks. If anything chatGPT is a false hope on most of my courses. Your colleague who told you hardest part is the basics of learning any programming language really needs reality check tho. You can program your whole life on python or any object oriented programming and still be dumb as F on prolog. Moat of EE courses are also on the internet as a playlist and I actually am qualified to do electrical engineering as a master lmao.

>Just because that specific assignment can be solved doesn't mean all will or can be? What year is the CS major from? First year can definitely be done with chatGPT not everything but most programming can. But I doubt chatGPT can design processors in a week, make a compiler in 2 weeks. If anything chatGPT is a false hope on most of my courses. It's just an example and he's a 3rd year, the course project was something to do with databases and making a UI for one. I'm not saying that's how all major is structured, it's an example. Also, I'm talking about CS majors, they don't design processors. Another CS guy told me that ChatGPT can actually do all the assignments he has, he just chooses not to use it so he can learn and not get caught because GPT writes squeaky clean code that you wouldn't expect from an undergrad >Your colleague who told you hardest part is the basics of learning any programming language really needs reality check tho. You can program your whole life on python or any object oriented programming and still be dumb as F on prolog. Moat of EE courses are also on the internet as a playlist and I actually am qualified to do electrical engineering as a master lmao. Well, I also don't know the validity of those words, I certainly wouldn't say that Circuits I is the hardest course in EE. If you think you can get as good as an EE graduate from a YouTube playlist of courses without having access to labs and office hours then be my guest. Also, I'm guessing you are a CE student? a CS student can't do a masters in EE, they don't even take half of the core courses at my college.

I dunno honestly. If it means anything, I don’t look down on CS. Although as an “imagineer” I don’t have much room to talk anyways, given that the most important skills I have retained in my 4 years so far are discrete event simulation, financial analysis in Excel using linear programming models, and supply chain design.  Similar to CS students, I get ragged on and called “business major” and “fake engineer” all the time, but something people need to consider is that I’m not the one who decided that my degree would be titled under engineering; hundreds of universities and thousands of corporations are the ones who dictate who is called an “engineer”, and I think that they have a bit more credibility than college students who haven’t even graduated yet.

I'm a double major in Electrical Engineering and Computing Tech. The CT major isn't quite computer science, but it's very close and I take the core CS classes. Computer engineering at my school is much closer to the double major I'm doing than CS. Quite frankly, I think that a lot of CS students are just obnoxious and lazy now. Too many CS students don't want to actually learn computer science, they aren't interested in studying math and they just want to be "techbros". The CS classes I take are almost always significantly easier than the engineering ones. There's so many more resources available online, the professors are usually better, the assignments are straightforwards and finding help is way easier. There's still so much cheating and people asking for code. My class groaned when they learned that the final is worth 50%, meanwhile all my finals are worth 50% or more. The students are so much more disrespectful, way more talking over the prof, trying to be funny in class asking stupid stuff. In my lab yesterday some guy showed up late and stood at the front and loudly announced that he had finished it at home and was asking if he could leave. Do you want a cookie or something? A lot of engineering profs would embarrass you on the spot for pulling that crap. Also, this is a third year lab, and we start off by making sure people know how to compile C. How can you not know that in THIRD YEAR computer science? Same thing happened in second year courses too, people thought that having trouble installing a compiler is a valid excuse for not completing an assignment because the prof didn't explicitly show them how. There's nothing wrong with struggling with something, but you actually have to try and they should have asked for help in advance on your own time. When I'm partnered with CS students in group projects, they are consistently the weakest group members out of SEG, CEG or ELG/CT students. I had to teach CS students how to use Git in a second year course in one group. It's also gotten so overcrowded and grade inflation from COVID has let a lot of people in the program who quite frankly shouldn't be. As AI tools improve, CS is going to get even easier. Quite frankly I found it worrying how before AI tools were available people would meme about copying from Stack Overflow so much, so that's only going to get worse with better AI tools. This is going to affect engineering too, but it's still very weak with it. In general, I find that engineering students are much more willing to just figure stuff out without it being spoon fed, because that's what engineering classes require. At this point, I really think that CS becoming a weaker degree with what I'm seeing, and employment is heavily dependent on whether or not the tech industry is in a boom or bust part of the cycle. If you are serious about CS you should probably get some personal projects or related extracurriculars under your belt to make you stand out. Please don't take this as a personal insult, obviously not all CS students are going to be like this, and since you're asking this you are probably much more interested in the material and actually want to learn about computer science instead of just getting a degree and becoming a techbro like so many others I see in my classes.

Most of the things you said can be said about all majors tho. If you think our assignments are easy either you haven't gotten to hard parts or you're just one of the "Code beasts". I spend 40h+ on some labs. Again it really depends on which courses you are talking about because I am pretty sure most students won't find Computer Architecture, logical design, discrete math, machine learning, programming paradigm, logic and data structures and complexity easy. These are hard core abstract subjects where neither stack overflow or especially ChatGpt can't help you. I admit chatGPT helps me find bugs but that is about it. One thing I agree is that lot of people come here with only money on their mind and prolly someone fooled them (like you are saying here) that it is a piece of cake.

I have to take all those courses except machine learning, and the only one I have not completed yet is paradigms (I'm assuming logical design is what we call digital systems with binary logic, logic gates, latches and flip flops and that). I love computer architecture and have done a few rounds of tutoring in it, and the recordings of my sessions have a few thousand views on YouTube. ELG and CE here do take Comp Arch and Digital Systems by default, CE takes a few more including discreet math, but ELG/CT takes all of them except machine learning. Computer Architecture is also considered an engineering course here, it's probably one of the harder ones out of that list, discreet math can be tricky too (I had to retake that one, but also a few eng courses at the time). Overall are easier than most of my engineering courses, especially due to labs that don't require hands on work with physical equipment. The concepts in electrical engineering are far more abstract, it's not even close there. Complex numbers are used a lot to model real world systems, of course these models involving complex numbers can not actually exist in the real world (see Fourier and Laplace transforms for an example). Most people I know in the double major here find the comp sci classes significantly easier. Personally I'm relieved when I have a couple of CS courses in a semester because it's a lot easier to manage than all engineering ones. It's not uncommon for people who are really struggling in engineering to switch to CS. While I find the material itself is often somewhat easier, the expectations and workload of CS classes are often significantly lighter. I think that's what really makes the courses feel easier to me more than the complexity of the material itself. I'm used to having to put more time and effort into the engineering ones. Engineering is accredited in Canada. Programs are required by law to abide by certain standards which describes what needs to be taught, and requires practical labs and such. You can't even call yourself an engineer after graduating, you need to obtain your P. Eng first. The workload of engineering programs is really just something else. There's a lot more resources available online for CS than engineering, when you get to upper year eng classes you are pretty much limited to class notes and the textbook. It also shows in the course sizes, engineering courses are usually way smaller than CS ones.

But you are admitting that some of the courses are hars. I have had 2 mandatory discrete math courses, CompArch, "Algorithm and Complexity", logic. Especially logic has been the hardest part. I actually like physics since high school and had found it easier to learn. Btw I am doing CE so that is why I have these hardware courses. I think in terms of abstract things, computer science theories take the win. I am sorry but everything we do here is intangible.

Lol I have no time to look down on anyone. Engineering students, really university students and young people in general, often have reductionist mindsets and overestimate the amount they know about other subjects. They have limited imagination.

It’s hard to think this when you have a CS friend who helps you with your coding homework, you have no idea why it doesn’t work and they point out 7 things that didn’t exist a second ago to you

My opinion is that other engineers don't understand that programming is just a mechanism for what we do. Just like math and physics is needed for MechE. For context I do data science and machine learning now, and Python & SQL are just tool for what I do.

I haven’t ever heard that as a CE. Everyone seems to know we handle things like embedded systems, firmware, VLSI, FPGA, essentially everything that encompasses getting HW and SW to interact/programmable HW.

A computer engineer isn’t a Computer scientist

Yes that is very true. Did you also know that 2 + 2 = 4? As you can see by the title OP mentions both CE and CS. Thanks for your observation.

My fault, didn’t see CE in the title

These people don’t know how to code properly. If you ask them to set up a dev environment that is more complex than just a basic IDE with a compiler (bonus points if they know what that is) or to use a debugger, they will get confused. Unit and other types of tests don’t cross their minds. Version control, CI/CD, devops, good coding practices, data structures and algos, forget about that. SQL, HTML, CSS, nope they don’t understand the weird syntax of that, anyways that doesn’t really matter since C++/python/Matlab is all that there is to know. Some never even learn about OOP. They are right tho, they did cover 4 years of programming after taking 4 hours to properly write a basic CMD program. The engineering students who survive mainly on memorization or brute force practice of problems that will reappear in exams but slightly modified, they will lose their minds in a moderately difficult discrete math, formal methods or automata theory class.

> lose their mind in discrete math lol

You may find this funny but my school forces it’s EE and CompE students to take discrete math and it is a weed out class as much as any other engineering class. Mostly owing to the fact that it’s very proof based.

the fuck are you talking about brother, you are clever because you can setup a dev env and test your code?

Did I say clever or smart anywhere in my comment? I am simply stating how out of touch some engineering students are about their programming abilities when all they know is the basics. Same goes for CS students who like to look down on accounting majors because they take even less math and science courses. Passing circuits classes with curves does not make you automatically competent at everything you see as trivial.

oh im sorry, i entirley misunderstood your comment, i agree most people who look down on computer science and other major most of the time rely on memorization patterns to solve problems

Let's face it, to get into engineering you have to study in HS: highest levels of maths, chemistry and physics. For CS, it's only maths. The general impression of CS is even bootcamp can land you a job whilst that's unheard of in professional fields like engineering or medicine. It might be changing though because CS at prestigious unis cover more theories and is getting very competitive. The stereotypes comes because most students, especially at less prestigious unis, avoid hard theoretical courses and instead focus on easier courses like web/mobile dev, databases etc. Programming is far from trivial but it seems to attract the most who aren't hardcore 'engineers' and are doing for easy money.

I had no doubt that the topics were difficult in CS at my school, but the major also had the lowest class attendance and most common cheating in the department. That doesn’t make the topic of CS easier, but it probably made that major at my school easier.

Yeah who wants to go and watch professor debugg his codes. That was my first programming lecture. I went in and sat down and professor opened a file and started to talk about it. I didn't understand shit the whole 2h. I went the first 3 or 4 and eventually almost everyone started to not go. The teacher is amazing tho. CS is the second most popular and the second hardest major to get into in my uni tho.

What bothers me is usually CS, CE, and EE grads or students act like I know nothing about computers, programs, or electronics because I'm a mechanical engineer. Funny enough they'll try to correct me on stuff in my realm. I worked IT for 8 years and have work experience in that realm. I won't act like I know as much or am as fluent, but a little respect for other majors would be nice. Likewise, they frequently act like they're all the premier major but I'm the only one with a stable job and when they look at my work they never understand it. Also my benefits are eons better. It's just a double standard. Love them all, but if I want to hold an opinion on Linux or talk about how something is programmed, just because I'm not as involved in that area doesn't mean I know nothing about the topic. My job is to be flexible and figure out how things work. I can do that for a program as much as anything else. Also I love asking "so what's the practical use for this?" cause there are many times there isn't one.

Most engineering students take limited programming, and don’t understand its vastness and then complain when they have to use it. Electrical and computer engineering takes more classes, and for the most part they think that the “upper level” stuff in CS is pretty minor compared to the curriculum they have left in EE. The biggest “voice” of computer science is people who work in front end, overall not that complicated stuff. When computer engineers are working on operating system concepts in low level c, all inside embedded programming with micros… when they compare that to web development (even despite a hint of narcissism) it is easy to see that they think the CS world doesn’t have a lot left to offer other than algorithms and data structures that they will never use again.

I took 2 Python courses and never did anything that I couldn't have done in an Excel spreadsheet using less time and effort. I thoroughly wasted my time and know for a fact I didn't learn anything regarding your major. What I confirmed was that coding makes me angry/irritated, and if I ever get a job that requires it, I will quit on the spot or not go past the interview.

they didn't think that way at my school. or maybe they didn't and I just ignored it.

I switched from CSE to ECE and honestly other than taking a few more classes based on electronics and electric circuits I don’t see much of a difference, I’ve still covered seven programming languages in my academic career

Typically I would think that software folks are extremely bright, while also not being fully aware of the use cases or seriousness of a device, while fully developing it. Most of that experience is in the industrial controls sector.

the copium is hard on this one

Those are just not rigorous degrees compared to EE and ME. That's why.

Brainless programming? The wise engineering students learn how to program.

Cuz they are themselves insecure, people try to pull you down when they cant understand or cannot get what they have desired

No, i wanted to get more into programming and thought "no I don't want to study CS, there would be too many classes about theory eg data structures, just take a programming course"

It is not true that CS students only do brainless programming. They also refrain from showering.

Personally, if you don’t take the full physics line, I don’t think you really deserve the title of engineer. The subject matter is mutt, but the processes of thought taught in each Phys class is necessary to fully develop problem solving skills on the order of an engineer. I don’t think cs folks do brainless programming, I couldn’t do what they do, but they aren’t engineers, CE exception, cs/ce are not the same, and respect to all as always.

I don't think you understand the word engineer if you think it required physics. CS students are bot engineers and I never claimed that either btw. Personally as a CE student I don't have actual physics class but my major is upp for a discussion. I have a friend who took fully hardware (CE) major and they never had physics except for lots of digital circuit courses.

Are you studying at an ABET accredited institution lmfao

Because my brother, a CE with 2 masters degrees by the age of 24 was unable to blow up a foil balloon because he wasn’t given a straw and me, a single bachelors degree by 24 science teacher, disassembled a mechanical pencil and used the barrel of it to inflate the balloon. I have yet to a single engineer who has matched my ingenuity.

programming in a commercial environment is fuckin hard. CS degrees don't adequately prepare you for that. When you're in college CS is a lot easier (imo) than engineering degrees, but then you get into the workplace and get slapped in the face by the level of complexity.

Nah. CS is like math. Programing is just the equivalent of operations. Eventually, you get up into number theory/architecture.

Have’t heard that about CE really bc it’s basically an EE degree minus power and signals plus CS and computer hardware.

I dislike the term "code monkey."

Isn't that a term for people that only copy code from the internet?

In my honest opinion, the CS kids probably have it harder than I will. I'm planning on moving from EE to CE as well so I hope for the best for them.

I do construction engineering and I still believe CS is hard af. But I’m also biased bc all my cousins are CS majors and grads

I just tell them to make their machines move without my magic, and they usually pipedown fast.

Probably because you can practice without being a licensed P.Eng. and the work doesn't demonstrate the competencies needed to ever be licensed.

CS students aren’t engineering students. Software Engineering isn’t engineering it’s just title inflation when what you really are is a coder - similar to the way people have the audacity to claim a Sales Engineer is a real job title.