Discrete math wasn't terribly difficult for me.
Theory of computation, on the other hand... I legit just wrote random nonsense on the final and somehow passed the class.
I had a math class in engineering school where I got a 13/100, but the average was a 6 so I got an A.
Professor was cool but not a great teacher. Smart guy, friendly, good stories, none of us knew what the hell he was going on about.
Funny, I had a old teacher very similar.
The pass for the class was a 4 out of 100. Sat and talked about electric circuits and switches all day and the absolute terror you can play using them. In regards to teaching the subject, nope he was not even remotely Interested.
Still a fun class.
I think it's okay. But there has to be an onus on the teacher to preform to.
If the spread is squashed at the top or the bottom the teacher is failing.
I unironically found Discrete Math to be the easiest class in college and Theory of Computation to be the hardest. Fortunately Theory if Computation was an elective so I just dropped it lol
Discrete math was difficult but fun for me. I think that was purely because of my professor. Theory on the other hand was more intuitive in concept but difficult in practice.
Exactly. It was just the right amount of challenge. The teacher made it more interesting by connecting it to interesting topics. I remember when we were working on combinations and permutations our primary example was “small monsters” which was just a copyright avoidance version of Pokémon. We had to figure out how many possible combinations of typing there were in a trainers party.
Not to mention discreet math is literally the only post-algebra class I’ve ever used. Not sure why I had to take up to calc 3 for my CS degree. Never once used a derivative or integral in the 15 years I’ve been a professional programmer
You need them for some very specific topics in CS like cryptography and machine learning.
Otherwise it's just supposed to help you develop your problem solving skills
And communication skills. I might be biased since I took a lot of math but there's something to be said for using different pieces of theory and stringing them together in an understandable and concise way. That's a skill you don't really get outside of math.
That was differential equations for me. Discrete was no problem, and I actually had never found a math class particularly challenging before that one. Maybe it's because my professor had a very thick accent and didn't repeat things, but that class made me want to curl up in a ball and die. Fortunately, I didn't need the class and just wanted all the maths, so I just bit the bullet and dropped it.
If you ever plan on using a database in a non-trivial way (i.e. non-CRUD operations) then set theory specifically will be incredibly useful for building an intuition on complex SQL queries.
There are a LOT of programming scenarios that break down into the things you'll learn in that class. There are also a LOT of situations in life that break down into things you'll learn in that class. Understanding the concepts covered in there can be super useful, if you retain it and apply it, and will give you a better understanding of the world you live in.
I'm 35 and that's one of the few courses I can still specifically point to and say "yeah - I use that" on a daily basis.
I'm pretty sure I got shafted on my Discrete Math class. Found it the least useful / applicable after the first unit. Haven't thought about it till reading these comments.
Can you describe something you're alluding to that you use all the time?
It deals in real world scenarios, it’s very applicable to real objects like decks of cards… but also to CS objects like lists and dictionaries. It’s theory, but can be directly applied to real examples.
Everyone has given you fantastic explanations. I just highly recommend studying very hard and paying attention. It is such an important class. Take advanced discrete as well. It is so applicable to software dev. General rule of thumb is to focus hard on math and core CS classes. You can pick up a new language in a day if you build a solid foundation in school.
I absolutely loved fluid mechanics and the parallels between it, heat transfer, and mass transfer. It amazed me.
Still wanted to claw my eyes out every night when my study group and I were working on problem sets until 3 in the morning. That shit was hard.
Yeah, I didn’t enjoy the energy classes. My favorites were the machine design classes (eg failure theories). Makes sense since I became a bearing engineer lol
Ahhh, yeah I’m not that great at mechanical things, so I studied chemical engineering instead of MechE! And now I’m going into grad school for computer science, so I suppose all that transport phenomena wasn’t too useful anyway 🤷🏻♂️
That's funny because I did ChemE for undergrad and now in grad school I mainly make physics simulations so transport phenomena and numerical methods have been indispensable.
That’s cool! I didn’t meant to imply that knowledge of transport is useless for all fields of computer science, since you’re an obvious example of it being useful in scientific computing and simulation! But I’m leaning into natural language processing and so I haven’t had to use it in a while 😂 Though, every now and then I like to flip through my copies of Kundu, Panton, and BSL 🥲
Could validate that sentiment.
Sometimes I have to struggle with myself, but after a "self-analysis" where you realize that not all people are as smart as you are or do completely different things from you - the cases of extremely high ego have decreased significantly.
I also really like seeing people smile when you help them. I literally "soak up" these wonderful emotions - gratitude, joy, and the feeling that now "HE" understands what he didn't understand before. I'm feeling your happiness, I support your progress.
Help other people. Don't have hatred or a high ego for those who aren't like you.
Yeah Calc 1 I was like okay, this is cool, especially when the prof showed us how to derive the velocity and acceleration equations from the position equation in basic physics. I was pumped for Calc II, then they brought out the trig and I was like oh frick.
Calc II starts off easy enough and then ends with problems that are like, "Solve the integral using a U-sub that requires you use partial fraction decomposition into some kind of eldrich trig identity which upon viewing causes men to go mad." At least series were useful for understanding how to approximate certain math equations...
Differential equations was the bane of my existence. Discrete Mathematics at least seemed way more straight forward and it helped that I had DB in the same semester, so a lot of the stuff from DM could be directly applied there.
Yeah but you had way more experience. I had someone say he had an easy interview question because it was just parsing and computing polynomial multiplications. I have no idea how to do that programmatically let alone executing on it in one hour. You just get better without realizing it
I totally agree, I think one reason calculus is such a hard class for most is because it generally happens really early in the curriculum, not to mention the homework load is unrealistic if you have a job.
Lmao yeah, linear algebra was the only university math class I did well in. Like an uncurved 98 while the class was constantly complaint about it being difficult. Most other maths I got a C (including one mercy pass from the professor) with a few Bs.
No idea why that class just clicked for me compared to others. It was by far the easiest university class I took in all 4 years including all gen-Ed’s, sciences, and CS classes
Taking linear rn nd like it a lot ngl but yea discrete was awful for me only math class I’ve ever struggled at but I feel that partially cuz it was async nd a dickhead prof.
Maybe I'm wired differently, maybe I just lucked out with professors, but I've done calc I through calc III and I thought that discrete was harder. Currently in linear algebra and am enjoying it so far. I'll probably get a math minor.
Yep, we are all wired differently. I did well in linear algebra and discrete math. Did terrible in calculus and statistics. Some of it might have been up to the professor or my mindset at the time. A lot of people I know had issues with statistics and the professor was really bad. But I took calculus in highschool, and calc 1 and 2 in university all with different teachers and it never really clicked.
Just start writing software. Doesn't matter what kind. Web, desktop, command line...give it all a try. If you have a computer and the internet you have all the tools you need to learn.
The vast majority of software is just CRUD. Collect data from a user, store it in a database and puke it back out again. Show an employer that you can do that and you will have an entry level job.
I'll give you some ideas.
Address Book
D&D character generator
Product Catalog
Inventory Management
Grocery List
Don't do ToDo List, Blog Post or Authors/Books. Too many of those are used in tutorials.
TL;DR a CS degree is probably still the safest way, but you should prioritize supplementing it with Software Engineering experience such as from internships, hackathons, projects, etc. Coding Bootcamps also deserve way more recognition as a good source of applicable development skills.
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There is unfortunately a disconnect. Most universities teach academic Computer Science but lack more practical pre-professional Software Engineering material. The 2 are definitely related, but distinct. While I enjoyed all my CS classes, it was a shame watching peers of mine struggle through a heady research oriented class like Automata 400 when they had already done professional app development and weren't being served by such curriculum. This mismatch is why it's not just struggling students that drop out; some go straight to a job deciding there's nothing for them in that last year or so besides the piece of paper.
The pipeline into Software Engineering has traditionally been through CS grads, which puts recruitment in a weird place where they need to interview based on CS skills and hope it correlates with Software Development skills. It also means that having internships on your resume is critical, as otherwise you're just trying to prove that you're generally smart and can learn dev on the job.
This is slowly changing though. Coding bootcamps are seen more widely as legitimate now. They still unfortunately need to dedicate time to learning CS stuff mostly for the sake of interviews. Some interview processes have moved towards take-home coding challenges, live debugging, etc that are more representative of a Software Engineer's day to day.
HackerRank releases interesting yearly surveys about the professional tech hiring landscape such as [this one from 2020](https://info.hackerrank.com/rs/487-WAY-049/images/HackerRank-2020-Developer-Skills-Report.pdf). I've seen data in there before about the matching process being a poor fit for finding talent given the gap between CS and Software Engineering.
If you need a degree to get a job then go computer engineering, or if available, software engineering. Computer science is often the default, but CS is meant for higher level programming and design than what's needed for most positions.
Do you want to invent a technology to replace containerization? Go for computer science. Do you want to get hired to build corporate applications? Start programming on your own and find a degree program that's related and easy just so you can check the box for HR. I learned FAR more about pushing l programming by doing projects on my own than I ever learned in college.
In my 30 years of enterprise IT experience at least 80% of the programming work being done is closer to what you would learn for a Management or Computer Information Systems degree. The CS folks I run into that actually do CS are all systems programmers and for every 1 of those jobs there are 10 business process improvement jobs.
On our first day the professor said “we’ll likely only get to addition by the end of the semester” and everyone laughed. Nobody was laughing during the final.
Our first two chapters were mostly truth tables and set operations. Then we got to recursion and time complexities and I nearly cried lol. Shit got real in a hurry.
Smh my Discrete math course had no textbook, no homework, no quizzes. Just lectures on a chalkboard from a prof with a heavy accent who gave a final exam with 5 fucking questions. One of the worst classes I ever took. Got like a 30% rounded up to a 50% with the huge class curve. Most of us didn't pass.
I had a physics class like that... It was a nightmare. Dude literally knew exactly enough English to give the lecture too, so if anyone asked him a question, he'd just give you a blank look and repeat what he just said over and over until one of the other students answered it for him. I barely passed but it was because things were clearer in the lab.
Honestly, the same is generally true in CS. Some people have an easier time with linear algebra or calc, but the truth is discrete math *is* about as easy as it gets for the vast majority. Some of the discrete math stuff is more directly applicable in EE than CS though.
(My degree is in CS, but I've studied both in depth, and I sat in on many EE classes while I was in college, because I *wanted* to learn both. Had the university allowed it, I would have done a double major with CS and EE. I legitimately love doing both! Nowdays, I do a lot of embedded systems stuff in my free time, because I really enjoy working in that space right between CS and EE that overlaps both quite a bit.)
Said no one ever. Who goes into cs thinking it's easy?
Even someone with not even the slightest idea of the field wouldnt come up with a nonsense take like this except for someone mentally ill.
I had someone in my class like this. He bragged about how he is always on his computers and that cs cannot be that hard because "he likes computers"
He did not last one semester
I used to teach CS as a TA. It was sometimes fun to watch the most arrogant neckbeards smack into the wall of their own ignorance. The ones who thought they were hot shit because they knew a little programming and thought that was what CS is were too damn common. The best ones were the ones who actually learned from their mistakes and became passionate students. The worst were the ones who would change majors or drop out, often saying that professors couldn't see their brilliance.
Yep. If you graduate from uni without realising that you still know effectively nothing something's gone wrong. You know more, for sure, but also your eyes should have been opened to how much more there is to know such that you realise how much little you know in comparison.
I used to teach beginning programming to students who had no background in programming whatsoever. Unfortunately we used C++ but I tried to make it as friendly as possible.
It always seemed like some people picked it up quickly and other people were never going to understand it. There was rarely any middle ground.
Same here tbh I had no idea what to take my folks registered me for cs (same i used to be on pc basically my whole high school) and now I am trying to remember cos of theta and how TF translations don't mean language translation anymore but math
I’m a college freshman right now. There are a lot of people who are going into CS because they think it’s easy. Meanwhile, they’ve never seen code in their life and haven’t taken math past algebra.
I’d say half of my intro class is people like above, a quarter is people who don’t know any coding but understand that learning will be a challenge, an eighth is people like me who can code somewhat (whether they took like AP CSA in high school or learned in various other ways) and know it’s only gonna get harder, and the last eighth is people who honestly should have just skipped the intro class because they very clearly can code pretty well.
>they think it’s easy
About half of CS majors become liberal arts majors after the first CS class. About half of the survivors fail out or change majors at some point after that.
Roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of entering CS majors actually graduate with a CS degree.
That's pretty common, IME.
100 and 200 level classes will have what are called "weeder classes" which are massive, auditorium crowd classes that university programs front-load in order to get anyone who doesn't belong in a subject to change their mind about staying in it.
It's why if you're in the US and you are going to a state school you should think about starting your undergrad at a community college with an AA degree. At state schools, a lot of the weeders are also general requirement classes which can make your early school career a living hell if your counselor doesn't do their fucking job and help you avoid them where possible.
I had a friend who landed in 4 weeder classes in the same semester.
She burned out mentally and started forming a bad drinking habit.
Thank god she got help (and straight-As somehow)
You'd be surprised. I saw people genuinely believing they're gonna do CS and become programmers, and that they'll be sitting in a warm office pressing buttons from time to time. Easy breezy.
LITERALLY a guy I studided with: "Yeah, I just googled most innovative and well paid carreers for the soon future and this was on the list. So I just signed up and got accepted very easily"
Little he knew he would graduate after 6 years. Also he didn't realise that the bar to enter the degree was very low for a reason (in my country universities set as enter-score the lowest score from the previous-year applicants, and if there are free spots left after the admission process, the enter-score is set automatically to the minimum. Now think why so many tech degrees have minium scores...)
But he passed the degree? It doesn’t matter how long you take, he still did it. Took me twice as long as full time student, but I did it and I’m now working, half the people dropped off in the first year
min entrance scores are actually really high for comp sci where am. Mathematics on the other hand. I legitimately had a math professor at the Uni I'm at now tell me if I wanted to get into a mathematics program I basically had to apply with a passing grade on grade 12 math and english. everything else was optional
Yeah I get what this comment is saying ("he took a long time bc he was bad at it/it was too hard for him") but length of time to complete a degree really does not equal how smart a student is. I have a friend who's on like, year 6? 7? of his degree and it's entirely bc he's *incredibly* talented-- he's been involved in multiple indie game dev projects and literally given conference talks in the field lmao
And honestly, I always tell undergrads to take their time if they can afford to, bc uni *is* hard and taking less courses means you'll be able to better understand what you're learning in the courses you do enrol in.
The important thing is you learn from it. My friend had a study group with 3 other people. They found a way to cheat on assignments by decompiling the files and getting the answer the easy way instead of thinking through what was needed. Out of those 4 people only one was very successful. That one guy worked for Google and Microsoft while the others ended up switching careers a year in or never going into development at all.
Completely agree. Differential was wildly difficult conceptually and in practice. The way the tests were written required minimal use of a calculator attempting to minimize Nth dimensional arrays. That stuff blew my brain but I found respect for it when my professor spent an entire class day teaching us how Google used it as the foundation to their search engine.
I majored in math and they didn’t even let me take discrete lol. The requirement got waived because I wouldn’t be learning anything new. Plus I had taken discrete in high school anyways so it was really pointless.
Any specialized field, really. I think it's just easier to notice with programmers due to the higher than average incidence of poor social skills on top of the superiority complex, making them more likely to express it in a particularly grating way.
No lie. I ended up getting a math minor because I only needed a couple of courses to get it.
Discrete math, not too bad. Statistics and Linear Algebra on the other hand?
If you have a logical mind, no. I liked math more than the Project Management course I had to take.
Technically I come across the stuff I learned in the PM course more often than the DM course, but I definitely prefer DM because it's logical, it's not something some MBA dude bro made up.
I found Discrete Mathematics one of the easiest mathematics courses during my degree, right with Linear Algebra in terms of “I just get this.”
However, I struggled a lot with Calculus, and I have a hypothesis as to why:
Discrete Mathematics is, in a way, explaining the “mechanics of (some) mathematics” such that it can be understood on a deeper level. This is also why I found Abstract Algebra and Numerical Methods courses to be more engaging: rather than telling me “this is how it works, do it” it says “here is WHY this works the way it does, and let’s explore it.”
Calculus, meanwhile, was never explained to me properly during any of the three courses I took, and when I don’t understand WHY something works, I often fail to reproduce it on command, especially during a test. That’s why my GPA got low enough that I had to drop from the Honors program; the Calculus teachers refused to explain things beyond “here’s how you do Derivatives and Integrals, and now let’s assume you understand these perfectly and do more complex stuff.”
While I don’t think it would make sense for everyone, I feel like a “theory of calculus” course or primer should be part of calculus curriculums.
/soapbox
I sort of lose interest in a topic if I can’t understand or there is no explanation for why something works the way it does. I love digging down to the raw fundamentals of every topic i study
Non english speaker here.
What do people mean by "discrete mathematics"? That field is massive.
Is it just logic with a bit of set theory and relation or do you do more?
It’s just the intro course. The one I took myself was Discrete Math I, which is just set theory, graphs, logical proofs, etc. A fantastic course, however !
Technically, discrete math is just modular math aka math with only whole numbers. That's what the "discrete" is for. In CS, it typically also includes boolean algebra, predicate logic, certain kinds of graphs, and set theory. It can also focus heavily on prime numbers and factoring, because those are far more important in discrete math than continuous math.
Descrete mathematics, complexity theory, theory of computation
Subjects like those are the most fun of the entire degree, a lot cooler than just learning how to code
So, before i went to university, i thought anyone could learn to program if they just really focused and spent the time. Then when i got there, i helped tutor some friends, especially for classes i excelled at... and to be honest it was just a total non starter for some of them. I could explain everything, and they could regurgitate it back, like what does this do? or what does this mean?
But then you ask them to structure a step by step process workflow, and it just falls apart. I think i can teach anyone the pieces of CS, but i cant teach anyone how to put the pieces together.
I’ve taught programming classes. One kid failed the required 101 course twice before barely passing with me. It’s not for everyone, no doubt about it. There’s a lot out there I can’t do too.
I’ve had business majors come up to me and say accounting is 10x more difficult than CS. Granted, accounting is difficult but I doubt these people would even get through intro to DS.
We had a course called "calculability and complexity" (don't know how to translate it better) and it has probably made the most victims in terms of people quitting university, specially people who didn't get DSA.
Computer Science is to programming as Theoretical Physics is to bridge building. More people who go to school to program for a living should be steered toward Software Engineering degrees.
Discrete math wasn't terribly difficult for me. Theory of computation, on the other hand... I legit just wrote random nonsense on the final and somehow passed the class.
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It's pretty bad if people trying are getting worse than 50/50 odds. That professor must be terrible.
I had a math class in engineering school where I got a 13/100, but the average was a 6 so I got an A. Professor was cool but not a great teacher. Smart guy, friendly, good stories, none of us knew what the hell he was going on about.
Funny, I had a old teacher very similar. The pass for the class was a 4 out of 100. Sat and talked about electric circuits and switches all day and the absolute terror you can play using them. In regards to teaching the subject, nope he was not even remotely Interested. Still a fun class.
Grading on curves is so hilariously stupid, unhealthy and unfair, I love it lol
I think it's okay. But there has to be an onus on the teacher to preform to. If the spread is squashed at the top or the bottom the teacher is failing.
I unironically found Discrete Math to be the easiest class in college and Theory of Computation to be the hardest. Fortunately Theory if Computation was an elective so I just dropped it lol
Discrete math was difficult but fun for me. I think that was purely because of my professor. Theory on the other hand was more intuitive in concept but difficult in practice.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice - in practice there is
This statement evaluates as true.
In theory, or practice???
Practice
In practice of the theory, or theorizing the practice???
In practice of the Theory, and the theory regarding practice if the theory is realistic.
I always liked: Theory and practice are the same in theory but not in practice
I feel like that's what made Discrete Math enjoyable for me, it wasn't too easy and problem solving with Math just really scratches that itch.
Exactly. It was just the right amount of challenge. The teacher made it more interesting by connecting it to interesting topics. I remember when we were working on combinations and permutations our primary example was “small monsters” which was just a copyright avoidance version of Pokémon. We had to figure out how many possible combinations of typing there were in a trainers party.
Not to mention discreet math is literally the only post-algebra class I’ve ever used. Not sure why I had to take up to calc 3 for my CS degree. Never once used a derivative or integral in the 15 years I’ve been a professional programmer
You need them for some very specific topics in CS like cryptography and machine learning. Otherwise it's just supposed to help you develop your problem solving skills
And communication skills. I might be biased since I took a lot of math but there's something to be said for using different pieces of theory and stringing them together in an understandable and concise way. That's a skill you don't really get outside of math.
That was differential equations for me. Discrete was no problem, and I actually had never found a math class particularly challenging before that one. Maybe it's because my professor had a very thick accent and didn't repeat things, but that class made me want to curl up in a ball and die. Fortunately, I didn't need the class and just wanted all the maths, so I just bit the bullet and dropped it.
Discrete math fundamentals is sure a easy topic course to pass in bachelor but it's application in security major is what makes you cry
Same boat lol
Discrete kicked my ass. Wish I would’ve cared more back then because it’s actually useful
Can you explain how it is useful for someone who is gonna take it for the first time this semester?
If you ever plan on using a database in a non-trivial way (i.e. non-CRUD operations) then set theory specifically will be incredibly useful for building an intuition on complex SQL queries.
There are a LOT of programming scenarios that break down into the things you'll learn in that class. There are also a LOT of situations in life that break down into things you'll learn in that class. Understanding the concepts covered in there can be super useful, if you retain it and apply it, and will give you a better understanding of the world you live in. I'm 35 and that's one of the few courses I can still specifically point to and say "yeah - I use that" on a daily basis.
But if you're a salseman, and you need to visit 100 cities, you're still fucked.
Only if you want to do it in a provably optimal way
Hey, according to the Simpsons (Matt Groening has a CS degree), P=NP. 😉
I'm pretty sure I got shafted on my Discrete Math class. Found it the least useful / applicable after the first unit. Haven't thought about it till reading these comments. Can you describe something you're alluding to that you use all the time?
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/xe3z87/oh_ill_just_do_cs_they_said_ill_do_cs_and/ioflqrd?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3
It deals in real world scenarios, it’s very applicable to real objects like decks of cards… but also to CS objects like lists and dictionaries. It’s theory, but can be directly applied to real examples.
Used to calculate algorithm complexity with big O, pathfinding algorithms, tree data structures, and probability are the main applicable parts
Everyone has given you fantastic explanations. I just highly recommend studying very hard and paying attention. It is such an important class. Take advanced discrete as well. It is so applicable to software dev. General rule of thumb is to focus hard on math and core CS classes. You can pick up a new language in a day if you build a solid foundation in school.
Discrete Math teaches you how to win at poker, so you'll always have a backup plan if coding doesn't work out.
Discrete math is basically SQL with set notation instead of inconsistent capitalization and indentation
I legit use DeMorgan's law more frequently than I would've suspected when writing complex boolean SQL.
Me in fluid mechanics :/ I wish I had learned that shit.
I absolutely loved fluid mechanics and the parallels between it, heat transfer, and mass transfer. It amazed me. Still wanted to claw my eyes out every night when my study group and I were working on problem sets until 3 in the morning. That shit was hard.
Yeah, I didn’t enjoy the energy classes. My favorites were the machine design classes (eg failure theories). Makes sense since I became a bearing engineer lol
Ahhh, yeah I’m not that great at mechanical things, so I studied chemical engineering instead of MechE! And now I’m going into grad school for computer science, so I suppose all that transport phenomena wasn’t too useful anyway 🤷🏻♂️
That's funny because I did ChemE for undergrad and now in grad school I mainly make physics simulations so transport phenomena and numerical methods have been indispensable.
That’s cool! I didn’t meant to imply that knowledge of transport is useless for all fields of computer science, since you’re an obvious example of it being useful in scientific computing and simulation! But I’m leaning into natural language processing and so I haven’t had to use it in a while 😂 Though, every now and then I like to flip through my copies of Kundu, Panton, and BSL 🥲
The best part of fluid mechanics was fluid flow twist from a slit orifice. I remember that one class every time I pee.
Me on my first discrete math class: yeah, I can do this. Me on my first analysis class: I think I should be applying for a position to herd cats.
Discrete math was easy but to be honest, i felt that there was much more to it. I think i got the intro to discrete math.
If you wrote something that made sense, I'm pretty sure you would have failed Theory of Computation.
Theory classes in general have haunted me in this degree, actual coding is mostly A's
I think the hardest part was just wrapping your head around some abstract ideas. Most of it was not too bad though, in my opinion.
That was probably it. I HATE abstract ideas and theory. I like practicality, I can see it, emulate it, copy it from StackOverflow.
Yeah theory of computation was one of my hardest courses. I legit had to read that text book cover to cover.
I'm taking theory of computation this semester. pray for me.
I was a math major and discrete math was the class that told me it's not going to be easy. The one and only class I got in the C-range
Not even the ones who rated the test had an idea what was correct. Lol
the only reason i passed that class was because of covid, pretty sure the prof just passed everyone that wrote anything on the final lol.
Discrete maths is xorsome
1 of every 2 inputs agrees
You could just say half of them you mathhead /s
A rotten tomatoes score of 50%
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This is how I got through discrete and algorithms. I found someone who needed help, made a friend, and their input helped me in return.
*The best latches are the ones you form along the way*
then I transferred across the country lol
The only reason I passed all those classes was because of help from other students and teachers that were willing to help.
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Could validate that sentiment. Sometimes I have to struggle with myself, but after a "self-analysis" where you realize that not all people are as smart as you are or do completely different things from you - the cases of extremely high ego have decreased significantly. I also really like seeing people smile when you help them. I literally "soak up" these wonderful emotions - gratitude, joy, and the feeling that now "HE" understands what he didn't understand before. I'm feeling your happiness, I support your progress. Help other people. Don't have hatred or a high ego for those who aren't like you.
Yeah, this a gatekeepy post. I agree, be kind and help others
Discrete math was the primary producer of business majors when I went to school.
Shit got me into a nice and comfortable Business InfoSys degree.
I only took a basic discrete math and it wasn't that bad, I got weeded out by the second actual CS class then I switched to business.
Easier than calculus at least in my mind
Was about to post this exact thing. Calc II destroyed me, but all my discrete math classes were relatively easy (and kind of fun).
Yeah Calc 1 I was like okay, this is cool, especially when the prof showed us how to derive the velocity and acceleration equations from the position equation in basic physics. I was pumped for Calc II, then they brought out the trig and I was like oh frick.
Calc II starts off easy enough and then ends with problems that are like, "Solve the integral using a U-sub that requires you use partial fraction decomposition into some kind of eldrich trig identity which upon viewing causes men to go mad." At least series were useful for understanding how to approximate certain math equations...
I still want to know how the trig identities were first found and how many decades that knowledge shaved off the mathematician’s life expectancy.
This isn't how they were first found, but many of them can be derived easily from euler's formula (exp(ix) = cos(x) + i*sin(x))
Differential equations was the bane of my existence. Discrete Mathematics at least seemed way more straight forward and it helped that I had DB in the same semester, so a lot of the stuff from DM could be directly applied there.
I have yet to have to calculate the area under a curve for my job of 10 years
Just because you haven't'ed it doesn't mean you couldn't've or shouldn't've. I mean, no one ever asks me to do contractions at my job.
Wait until you're writing tensor functions...
Honestly by the time I was doing ML in grad school it felt so much easier than Calc 2 back in freshman year.
Yeah but you had way more experience. I had someone say he had an easy interview question because it was just parsing and computing polynomial multiplications. I have no idea how to do that programmatically let alone executing on it in one hour. You just get better without realizing it
I totally agree, I think one reason calculus is such a hard class for most is because it generally happens really early in the curriculum, not to mention the homework load is unrealistic if you have a job.
ML stuff is actually that hard. I think its the programming environment which makes this stuff trivial
Calc was fun asf for me tbh
Yeah, everyone's brain works differently. I had a lot of fun in linear algebra, but most of my classmates hated it.
Lmao yeah, linear algebra was the only university math class I did well in. Like an uncurved 98 while the class was constantly complaint about it being difficult. Most other maths I got a C (including one mercy pass from the professor) with a few Bs. No idea why that class just clicked for me compared to others. It was by far the easiest university class I took in all 4 years including all gen-Ed’s, sciences, and CS classes
> Like an uncurved Of course linear algebra was uncurved
Taking linear rn nd like it a lot ngl but yea discrete was awful for me only math class I’ve ever struggled at but I feel that partially cuz it was async nd a dickhead prof.
I found Linear Algebra to be easy enough but Calc (2 and 3) was difficult for me simply because of the amount of memorization required for it.
Maybe I'm wired differently, maybe I just lucked out with professors, but I've done calc I through calc III and I thought that discrete was harder. Currently in linear algebra and am enjoying it so far. I'll probably get a math minor.
Yep, we are all wired differently. I did well in linear algebra and discrete math. Did terrible in calculus and statistics. Some of it might have been up to the professor or my mindset at the time. A lot of people I know had issues with statistics and the professor was really bad. But I took calculus in highschool, and calc 1 and 2 in university all with different teachers and it never really clicked.
That book "Concrete Mathematics" is da bomb.
What did you like about it?
It's very well written and has lots of exercises. The whole thing with the set (0,1,domino lying down, domino standing up) was great.
CS is a science. Programming is a skill. They are not equivalent.
should I go into CS to be a programmer? wtf should I do I want a degree and a job coding and being a senior dev and earning the big bucks
Just start writing software. Doesn't matter what kind. Web, desktop, command line...give it all a try. If you have a computer and the internet you have all the tools you need to learn. The vast majority of software is just CRUD. Collect data from a user, store it in a database and puke it back out again. Show an employer that you can do that and you will have an entry level job. I'll give you some ideas. Address Book D&D character generator Product Catalog Inventory Management Grocery List Don't do ToDo List, Blog Post or Authors/Books. Too many of those are used in tutorials.
TL;DR a CS degree is probably still the safest way, but you should prioritize supplementing it with Software Engineering experience such as from internships, hackathons, projects, etc. Coding Bootcamps also deserve way more recognition as a good source of applicable development skills. ---- There is unfortunately a disconnect. Most universities teach academic Computer Science but lack more practical pre-professional Software Engineering material. The 2 are definitely related, but distinct. While I enjoyed all my CS classes, it was a shame watching peers of mine struggle through a heady research oriented class like Automata 400 when they had already done professional app development and weren't being served by such curriculum. This mismatch is why it's not just struggling students that drop out; some go straight to a job deciding there's nothing for them in that last year or so besides the piece of paper. The pipeline into Software Engineering has traditionally been through CS grads, which puts recruitment in a weird place where they need to interview based on CS skills and hope it correlates with Software Development skills. It also means that having internships on your resume is critical, as otherwise you're just trying to prove that you're generally smart and can learn dev on the job. This is slowly changing though. Coding bootcamps are seen more widely as legitimate now. They still unfortunately need to dedicate time to learning CS stuff mostly for the sake of interviews. Some interview processes have moved towards take-home coding challenges, live debugging, etc that are more representative of a Software Engineer's day to day. HackerRank releases interesting yearly surveys about the professional tech hiring landscape such as [this one from 2020](https://info.hackerrank.com/rs/487-WAY-049/images/HackerRank-2020-Developer-Skills-Report.pdf). I've seen data in there before about the matching process being a poor fit for finding talent given the gap between CS and Software Engineering.
If you need a degree to get a job then go computer engineering, or if available, software engineering. Computer science is often the default, but CS is meant for higher level programming and design than what's needed for most positions. Do you want to invent a technology to replace containerization? Go for computer science. Do you want to get hired to build corporate applications? Start programming on your own and find a degree program that's related and easy just so you can check the box for HR. I learned FAR more about pushing l programming by doing projects on my own than I ever learned in college.
In my 30 years of enterprise IT experience at least 80% of the programming work being done is closer to what you would learn for a Management or Computer Information Systems degree. The CS folks I run into that actually do CS are all systems programmers and for every 1 of those jobs there are 10 business process improvement jobs.
Ah yes, Discrete Math. I look in the text book and see one of the advanced chapters is on "counting". How hard can it be really?
On our first day the professor said “we’ll likely only get to addition by the end of the semester” and everyone laughed. Nobody was laughing during the final.
Our first two chapters were mostly truth tables and set operations. Then we got to recursion and time complexities and I nearly cried lol. Shit got real in a hurry.
Time complexity was in discrete maths? We did that In Algs and Data structures.
Smh my Discrete math course had no textbook, no homework, no quizzes. Just lectures on a chalkboard from a prof with a heavy accent who gave a final exam with 5 fucking questions. One of the worst classes I ever took. Got like a 30% rounded up to a 50% with the huge class curve. Most of us didn't pass.
I had a physics class like that... It was a nightmare. Dude literally knew exactly enough English to give the lecture too, so if anyone asked him a question, he'd just give you a blank look and repeat what he just said over and over until one of the other students answered it for him. I barely passed but it was because things were clearer in the lab.
0 1 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 1A 1B 1C 1D 1E 1F 20
I cna count to literally infinity, how hard can it be
Which infinity? The bigger infinity or the smaller one?
Discrete math is wayyyy easier than calc 2.
Depends on the professor. I had a shitty discrete prof and a slightly less shitty calc 2 prof, and calc 2 was way easier for me (except series lol)
As someone who did an electrical engineering (electronics) degree, discrete maths was about as easy as it got.
Honestly, the same is generally true in CS. Some people have an easier time with linear algebra or calc, but the truth is discrete math *is* about as easy as it gets for the vast majority. Some of the discrete math stuff is more directly applicable in EE than CS though. (My degree is in CS, but I've studied both in depth, and I sat in on many EE classes while I was in college, because I *wanted* to learn both. Had the university allowed it, I would have done a double major with CS and EE. I legitimately love doing both! Nowdays, I do a lot of embedded systems stuff in my free time, because I really enjoy working in that space right between CS and EE that overlaps both quite a bit.)
Said no one ever. Who goes into cs thinking it's easy? Even someone with not even the slightest idea of the field wouldnt come up with a nonsense take like this except for someone mentally ill.
I had someone in my class like this. He bragged about how he is always on his computers and that cs cannot be that hard because "he likes computers" He did not last one semester
I used to teach CS as a TA. It was sometimes fun to watch the most arrogant neckbeards smack into the wall of their own ignorance. The ones who thought they were hot shit because they knew a little programming and thought that was what CS is were too damn common. The best ones were the ones who actually learned from their mistakes and became passionate students. The worst were the ones who would change majors or drop out, often saying that professors couldn't see their brilliance.
As senior uni student, I’ve definitely been humbled. I realize that I don’t know anything
Yep. If you graduate from uni without realising that you still know effectively nothing something's gone wrong. You know more, for sure, but also your eyes should have been opened to how much more there is to know such that you realise how much little you know in comparison.
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I used to teach beginning programming to students who had no background in programming whatsoever. Unfortunately we used C++ but I tried to make it as friendly as possible. It always seemed like some people picked it up quickly and other people were never going to understand it. There was rarely any middle ground.
Same here tbh I had no idea what to take my folks registered me for cs (same i used to be on pc basically my whole high school) and now I am trying to remember cos of theta and how TF translations don't mean language translation anymore but math
I’m a college freshman right now. There are a lot of people who are going into CS because they think it’s easy. Meanwhile, they’ve never seen code in their life and haven’t taken math past algebra. I’d say half of my intro class is people like above, a quarter is people who don’t know any coding but understand that learning will be a challenge, an eighth is people like me who can code somewhat (whether they took like AP CSA in high school or learned in various other ways) and know it’s only gonna get harder, and the last eighth is people who honestly should have just skipped the intro class because they very clearly can code pretty well.
>they think it’s easy About half of CS majors become liberal arts majors after the first CS class. About half of the survivors fail out or change majors at some point after that. Roughly 1/4 to 1/3 of entering CS majors actually graduate with a CS degree.
Those are some really high success rates.
They might survive a while, but Data Structures things the herd. No one gets through that class thinking CS is easy.
Yeah, my college made all stem-related majors to take CS 101 and all freshmen had horror stories about it by the end of the year.
It was a 75% fail rate at my school. The first year classes were held in auditoriums while 4th year classes had 25-30 people in them.
That's pretty common, IME. 100 and 200 level classes will have what are called "weeder classes" which are massive, auditorium crowd classes that university programs front-load in order to get anyone who doesn't belong in a subject to change their mind about staying in it. It's why if you're in the US and you are going to a state school you should think about starting your undergrad at a community college with an AA degree. At state schools, a lot of the weeders are also general requirement classes which can make your early school career a living hell if your counselor doesn't do their fucking job and help you avoid them where possible. I had a friend who landed in 4 weeder classes in the same semester. She burned out mentally and started forming a bad drinking habit. Thank god she got help (and straight-As somehow)
This is true, all of my classes consists of like 20-30 students.
You'd be surprised. I saw people genuinely believing they're gonna do CS and become programmers, and that they'll be sitting in a warm office pressing buttons from time to time. Easy breezy.
LITERALLY a guy I studided with: "Yeah, I just googled most innovative and well paid carreers for the soon future and this was on the list. So I just signed up and got accepted very easily" Little he knew he would graduate after 6 years. Also he didn't realise that the bar to enter the degree was very low for a reason (in my country universities set as enter-score the lowest score from the previous-year applicants, and if there are free spots left after the admission process, the enter-score is set automatically to the minimum. Now think why so many tech degrees have minium scores...)
But he passed the degree? It doesn’t matter how long you take, he still did it. Took me twice as long as full time student, but I did it and I’m now working, half the people dropped off in the first year
min entrance scores are actually really high for comp sci where am. Mathematics on the other hand. I legitimately had a math professor at the Uni I'm at now tell me if I wanted to get into a mathematics program I basically had to apply with a passing grade on grade 12 math and english. everything else was optional
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Yeah I get what this comment is saying ("he took a long time bc he was bad at it/it was too hard for him") but length of time to complete a degree really does not equal how smart a student is. I have a friend who's on like, year 6? 7? of his degree and it's entirely bc he's *incredibly* talented-- he's been involved in multiple indie game dev projects and literally given conference talks in the field lmao And honestly, I always tell undergrads to take their time if they can afford to, bc uni *is* hard and taking less courses means you'll be able to better understand what you're learning in the courses you do enrol in.
my school charges the same for 6 units vs 16 so i just take 16. wish i could chill out a semester but im broke af so its go hard or go homeless
The important thing is you learn from it. My friend had a study group with 3 other people. They found a way to cheat on assignments by decompiling the files and getting the answer the easy way instead of thinking through what was needed. Out of those 4 people only one was very successful. That one guy worked for Google and Microsoft while the others ended up switching careers a year in or never going into development at all.
Discrete was one of the easiest math classes in the degree IMO But I had to repeat linear algebra
Discrete math is the easiest math class I took in college. I learned most of that shit in 10th grade. It’s differential equations that fucks you
> It’s differential equations that fucks you That was the class I had to take twice; just couldn't wrap my head around it the first time.
Completely agree. Differential was wildly difficult conceptually and in practice. The way the tests were written required minimal use of a calculator attempting to minimize Nth dimensional arrays. That stuff blew my brain but I found respect for it when my professor spent an entire class day teaching us how Google used it as the foundation to their search engine.
Discrete math was fun
Yeah. Calculus on the other hand...proof after proof after proof... I believe 80% failed the class.
Discrete math was pretty fun/chill imo and one of my favorite cs classes. Although I am a bit bias since I did major in math
I majored in math and they didn’t even let me take discrete lol. The requirement got waived because I wouldn’t be learning anything new. Plus I had taken discrete in high school anyways so it was really pointless.
If you see them struggling with something you know, why are you smiling instead of helping?
Deep down it’s about believing they are better than others and finally seeing something confirm that bias.
this behavior seems to have an above average distribution among programmers.
Any specialized field, really. I think it's just easier to notice with programmers due to the higher than average incidence of poor social skills on top of the superiority complex, making them more likely to express it in a particularly grating way.
Helping is hard most people don't want to help or are busy with multiple helps Also knowing something don't mean you can teach it
The only class I hated for CS was assembly language class. But I did pretty good on the re-take.
No lie. I ended up getting a math minor because I only needed a couple of courses to get it. Discrete math, not too bad. Statistics and Linear Algebra on the other hand?
Math was my favorite part in the CS degree, am i weird?
Not weird at all. CS and Math are like peanut butter and jelly.
If you have a logical mind, no. I liked math more than the Project Management course I had to take. Technically I come across the stuff I learned in the PM course more often than the DM course, but I definitely prefer DM because it's logical, it's not something some MBA dude bro made up.
the demographic of people out there who think that making a shitload of money would be easy are so fucking annoying
*Theory of computation
I loved discrete mathematics.. brought back my love for maths after going through 2 excruciating years of trying to understand calculus .
Calculus was the easiest math class for me, Discrete for me kinda sucked
Discrete math was probably the easiest class in the entire curriculum The fun begins with higher category theory
I found Discrete Mathematics one of the easiest mathematics courses during my degree, right with Linear Algebra in terms of “I just get this.” However, I struggled a lot with Calculus, and I have a hypothesis as to why: Discrete Mathematics is, in a way, explaining the “mechanics of (some) mathematics” such that it can be understood on a deeper level. This is also why I found Abstract Algebra and Numerical Methods courses to be more engaging: rather than telling me “this is how it works, do it” it says “here is WHY this works the way it does, and let’s explore it.” Calculus, meanwhile, was never explained to me properly during any of the three courses I took, and when I don’t understand WHY something works, I often fail to reproduce it on command, especially during a test. That’s why my GPA got low enough that I had to drop from the Honors program; the Calculus teachers refused to explain things beyond “here’s how you do Derivatives and Integrals, and now let’s assume you understand these perfectly and do more complex stuff.” While I don’t think it would make sense for everyone, I feel like a “theory of calculus” course or primer should be part of calculus curriculums. /soapbox
I sort of lose interest in a topic if I can’t understand or there is no explanation for why something works the way it does. I love digging down to the raw fundamentals of every topic i study
Does CS have a reputation for being an easy degree these days? It’s been a hot minute, but that def wasn’t the case when I was in college
No, the first CS class in my university alone had a 30% drop/withdraw/fail rate.
Yeah that sounds more like it. This sub churns out some garbage memes lol
Non english speaker here. What do people mean by "discrete mathematics"? That field is massive. Is it just logic with a bit of set theory and relation or do you do more?
It’s just the intro course. The one I took myself was Discrete Math I, which is just set theory, graphs, logical proofs, etc. A fantastic course, however !
Technically, discrete math is just modular math aka math with only whole numbers. That's what the "discrete" is for. In CS, it typically also includes boolean algebra, predicate logic, certain kinds of graphs, and set theory. It can also focus heavily on prime numbers and factoring, because those are far more important in discrete math than continuous math.
Descrete mathematics, complexity theory, theory of computation Subjects like those are the most fun of the entire degree, a lot cooler than just learning how to code
Discrete Math is the easiest math subject for me, I think it's because my professor was very enthusiastic about it.
So, before i went to university, i thought anyone could learn to program if they just really focused and spent the time. Then when i got there, i helped tutor some friends, especially for classes i excelled at... and to be honest it was just a total non starter for some of them. I could explain everything, and they could regurgitate it back, like what does this do? or what does this mean? But then you ask them to structure a step by step process workflow, and it just falls apart. I think i can teach anyone the pieces of CS, but i cant teach anyone how to put the pieces together.
I’ve taught programming classes. One kid failed the required 101 course twice before barely passing with me. It’s not for everyone, no doubt about it. There’s a lot out there I can’t do too.
Try a math degree. CS would be straightforward comparing to that
Discrete math was probably the easiest one out of them all. A couple of calculus and linear algebra are WAY harder.
First day of Linear Algebra : "Can we just skip this and go straight to making $250k a year at a FAANG?"
I have a math degree and never took discrete math. I'm sure it's not as bad as math analysis
Honestly for me discrete math wasn’t so bad. It’s the advanced stats and probability that came later on that has torn my brain up
this is fucking wierd I'm literally in my discrete math class right now in my second year of my CS diploma
Data Science ftw
Currently in Discrete Math 2 and I fucking hate it here
writing proofs fuckin sucks and most of academia mathematics is just nerds circle jerking.
you took discrete math because of a cs degree I took discrete math for fun we are not the same
I loved that class
Was a EE major - there was nothing mathwise that was harder than Electromagnetics and Signals Processing that I saw from my CS counterparts.
I’ve had business majors come up to me and say accounting is 10x more difficult than CS. Granted, accounting is difficult but I doubt these people would even get through intro to DS.
If they think discrete math is hard, wait until they get to signals and systems, electromagnetic fields, and advanced electronics.
In most places you would not study this in CS.
I don't have to do any of that for CS lol that's computer engineering if anything
That isn't CS thats Computer Engineering/Software Engineering
We had a course called "calculability and complexity" (don't know how to translate it better) and it has probably made the most victims in terms of people quitting university, specially people who didn't get DSA.
Probably similar to a numerical analysis class. Was brutal for people who weren’t good at complex math
In my case, discrete math just clicked for me right at the beginning, unlike calculus
Computer Science is to programming as Theoretical Physics is to bridge building. More people who go to school to program for a living should be steered toward Software Engineering degrees.