Everything You Need to Know as a Computer Science Student

what's up guys for us here in the recent video I asked y'all to ask me computer science questions considering I haven't made a computer science related video in quite some time and the fact that I know many of you all just started your computer science degree a couple months ago and you're closing in on finishing of that semester so what I've done is I've gone through that video through all of the comments I also made a community post went through all the comments and I've selected quite a few questions that we're going to go over in this video now let's get started this is something that you're into computer science software engineering consider subscribing and like this video if you do end up liking it what would you say is the best or most useful major in computer science I want to be a software engineer but am unsure whether to major for that or computer science just in case what is a universal major so my understanding of this question kind of changed throughout this whole entire comment let's start off with first what would you say is the best or most useful major in computer science with that my mind goes straight to emphasis so you're asking what is the best emphasis within computer science because computer science is the degree and then you can have an emphasis like what I did in for a second that I didn't even remember it was in machine learning and app development there's also areas like cyber security networking web app development or something along those lines it depends on what your exact college the curriculum it is and what it offers now that is completely personal preference yeah I know it's not a decisive answer but I can't really answer for you it's like me saying hey you know what the most fun thing in the world is it's getting in a truck and doing donuts in a cornfield well you may not like that too much it's just objective it's my own opinion I'm not saying that is this one thing to do in the world but it's a lot of fun I can't make that decision for you what you need to figure out is maybe you can go through a few different classes or talk to people who have done that emphasis or her doing that particular work in their job really reach out to people on LinkedIn or talk to your advisor your professors just to get a better understanding of whatever the emphasis is your best bet is to just try each one that way you can realize what you actually like and let me say this if you're just going to look at okay well this person gets paid an eighty thousand dollars a year this one gets paid ninety thousand dollars a year I'm gonna go with the $90,000 a year one don't look at it that way because if you genuine like one path but you decided to go the other one because you think you can make more money you probably be making more money down the line going down the path you actually like the next part of this question is about software engineer and unsure if you should major in that or computer science so I'm assuming you're going to a college that offers like a software engineering degree which I don't think many honestly offer a software engineering degree or a computer science degree and you follow that up with what is a universal major I let's say the universal major is computer science because you can have a computer science degree and go the sulfur engineering route there also various other routes I made a video a couple years ago about career paths in computer science and recommend taking a look at that one but when it comes to software engineering in a way you're pigeon holing yourself now I don't know how accurate that statement is because you know if you you can figure out how to engineer software develop software there's gonna be a lot of different employers that are going to grab you up just because they know you can do that and you could probably do this but computer science it gives you a basic understanding it's more broad than just focusing on one emphasis like software engineering what part-time jobs should I be working while in school as they see a student as fast as you can work towards getting a job that is applicable to what you want to do in life if you're getting your computer science degree because you want to be a software developer then try to work towards getting a software development internship can't get a software development internship just get whatever computer science related internship that you can at least work towards that other than that just pick a job that will make a good amount of money so you can offset any of these causes you may accrue while you're going to college and also when it comes to these internships as a computer science major you should be getting paid next question what book do you recommend to have a better scope of computer science which include the paths and stuff like that thanks for your content I don't know what book there is that says okay here the computer science path I mentioned earlier that I have made a video about that but the main books that I've used in terms of computer science here's some right here now these are actually more programming books but that is a lot of what you're doing computer science basically a lot of my books were what my class is required for the books not every class that required a book did I buy a book because a lot of this of the times you didn't really need the book but for those that are needed they really helped out a lot so what I'm saying is the books that I use for computer science where the books that my teachers told me to buy and this comes from the video they surveyed 90,000 developers that was probably the smoothest sponsor plug I have ever seen and that was in regard to my Skillshare sponsor plug from that video and I would like to also think that this is a smooth way of integrating Skillshare as a sponsor in this video the first thing I like to talk about skills here is that they're offering you two months of Skillshare premium for free when using the link in the top of the description skill share is an online learning platform for creators like you and I software developers web developers and video creators they have tens of thousands of courses in the realm of Technology logo design Web Design freelancing business marketing photography videography and the list just goes on and on hello I'm Chris Hillman I'm from Berlin Germany I work for Microsoft at the moment I've been a web developer for 20 years and right now I'm getting into the whole AI machine learning space to see how computers can help us even more I recently designed a logo for a company that I'm going to be launching at the beginning of 2020 and this guy right here credibly entertaining a little Skillshare students enthusiasts and hungry minds my name is Aaron James drafyn I'm 40 years old I'm a graphic designer here in Portland Oregon he really kept me engaged and I really enjoyed taking his course what sources would help a computer science student supplement their learning the best anything on Java would be nice I think doubling down on your coursework would be best to supplement your computer science-y a supplement that may be the right way to go about the term supplementing but I think that'll be better for you because if you're able to focus in on what you're learning in class and really really understand it it'll help you for the next class and if you can do that for the next class then you will really really understand that one and you'll take that information to the next class so if you could really double down on what you're doing in school unlike me who decided to do an internship and full-time coursework and YouTube channel and iOS development I really spell spread myself thin if I kid if I could really focus myself on computer science in my classes at hand I think I'd be a better programmer today as computer science undergrad when applying to internships which information should I include in my CV and cover letter and how should I structure them I've talked plenty of times about how to go about getting a job as a software engineer I think that will heavily apply to how to get a job as a computer science student but instead of focusing on your past experiences at work talk about the skills that you have gained in school talk about the classes you have taken in school and highlight those highlight to what you have done in school because because that is what will apply over to your internships they understand that your student that you don't have all the you know three years experience as a software developer considering you're coming in as an intern so highlight to what you have done in school the projects that you have worked on the classes that you have taken the skills that you have gained and make sure that you always suit your resume to the job list the internship listing at hand what projects have you done to gain internships what projects do you recommend freshmen to take on in order to have a chance at internship the main projects that I listed on my resume when I was applying to different computer science internships were all done in class I had built upon a hangman application I did this like dust simulator thing in C++ if I recall correctly all that was done in my computer science courses as a freshman maybe you haven't experienced all of those projects I think that working of small simple applications will help you and your self-esteem because you try to take on a huge application you may get 20% of the way done and you're like this this is kind of a little bit a little bit too difficult for me to finish so I'd rather have that application that is small but complete than big and incomplete and I think that if you work on one that you actually like and enjoy it'll help come across when you're explaining that to someone in an interview you'll be more proud of that and you actually get it done would you recommend a student to do before entering their first year as a CS major I've made a video on this as well preparing as a computer science student not sure what I even talked about in the video because it's been like a year or two but talk to your advisor there's gonna be a computer science advisor that wants you to come to the school that's kind of part of their job is to get people into the computer science program they will bring up some resources to you that'll lay out the four or five year path typically for a year and it'll say alright this is what you got to take in semester one this is what you got to take in semester to be able to see a whole entire diagram of what you need to take before what prerequisites co-requisites things of that nature you get better understanding of what that curriculum is going to be like what that program is going to be like and then do a little bit of research on your own if you know that you're going to be taking these five classes in your first semester I'm not sure how many of those for you are going to be computer science classes however read the description of those five classes and start doing research if you want to hop into the programming side of things because you haven't done anything yet maybe you have maybe you haven't go ahead and look what programming language that they start you off with for my school's Java well actually I took a semester at a different school and that was Java for ODU I believe it was C++ and then they migrated us into Java so if I were to just do a four year stint at ODU the school that I went to I would have focused on C++ because that is what they're going to teach us and you want to make sure you dial in on one programming language and get really good at that and it would be easy to spread your skills along to other programming languages hey I'm planning on starting my CS degree fall 2020 somebody a year from now what do you think it's most important to prepare for or get good at in summer algorithms math maybe calculus or learning a programming language probably Python since we learned a tiny bit about about it in this year of high school and thank you for your videos super helpful loved watching them appreciate that personally I did know preparation when it came to my computer science career in college however if you do want to get a head start yes algorithms math you will be looking at a calculus you will be taking two to three calculus courses you will be taking linear algebra statistics so when it comes to math that is what you want to focus on and when it comes to the programming language look at whatever curriculum college that you're applying to that whatever language that they offer and focus on that don't don't worry about what the high school taught you in my personal opinion don't worry about what they taught you what language they focused on focus on the language in which you're about to learn don't focus on what you've done in the past focus on what you're about to do in the future can I still become a software engineer with a computer engineering degree because right now I feel like I'm not studying for my dream job computer engineering is definitely different than software engineering typically when it comes to when someone's referring to computer engineer they're referring to hardware someone's talking about software engineer they're talking about software so what you really want to be is a sulfur engineer then I would recommend majoring in computer science or solve virgin earing if that is a major at whatever college you may go to Computer Engineering is is my understanding that you do take a handful of programming courses so you could potentially become a software engineer if you want to be a software engineer next question how does the professional developer team work and what should students look forward to in terms of habits for the pro environment well when I was in college computer science we actually had a software engineering course which actually laid out fairly well of what you were to expect in like a professional environment as a software engineer software developer whatever you want to call yourself I've laid this out in videos past like how to go about completing a software engineering task and a day in the life of a software engineer which brings me back around full circle to the fact that a lot of these questions asked many that I'm not going to be going over in this video I've already made a video about even a lot of these question that I'm going over I've made a video about but I want to give you a brief understanding and I'll direct you to a more detailed video that I've created in the past like like a day in the life of a software engineer because that is actually what it's like as a Danna like that's what it's like to work in a pro team but to give you a brief overview typically you'll do stand-up sometime in the morning this is where you talk about what you did yesterday what you plan to do today and you have any impediments anything that you need to work out with somebody or or any problems you're facing to that that'll that'll prohibit you from moving forward and whatever task you're working on typically you're going to be using a project management software like JIRA and you're gonna be working in Sprint's you have meetings with your team you have meetings with a client which could very well be the end user so you need to get feedback of what they want and what they're expecting and then give your own twists on it because you can't just let the end user you can't just let them and determine everything you need to compromise or else you're gonna have an application looking a little bit like this you don't want an application looking a little bit like that you want it to look neat you want it to be clean you want it to work well and allow them to have all the functionality that they have but in a way that makes sense that is your job the engineer and something really to look forward to for computer science students when you're about to hop into that software development the professional environment and that is the fact that you're going to be working with people that are a lot smarter than those you have been working with in school if you've done a lot of team work you may have had some some good people or maybe some bad people some good experiences maybe some bad experiences with teamwork within your computer science degree but when it comes to the professional environment there are a lot of very smart people where you're able to bounce ideas off of and talk to when you when you come into a problem and you're gonna be learning a lot more a lot quicker because you're going to be doing it a lot more and you're gonna have all of these resources at your disposal like the people around you how would you rate competitive programming where would you like to go coding projects or a coding competition me personally never done competitive programming sure I've hopped on hacker rank and and the like and done some of those little-little contests not really contest some of those little problems that they have offered on there but never go into a competitive coding competition I like to just sit back in the comfort of my own office and code up my projects everyone has heard of the advice to code everyday or to practice code regularly how does one develop this plan to consistently do so despite of difficulties that one may stumble upon the way you basically said the answer in your question that is discipline how does one develop the discipline to consistently well it's basically with whatever else you do in life how does one develop the discipline to go to the gym everyday how does one develop the discipline to read every day how does one develop the discipline to get up at 4:00 a.m. and go work or run or do whatever you need to do that day and it's just a habit consistency there are gonna be difficulties but you need to have the discipline in order to get the job done and I firmly stand behind that fact of code regularly code every day you want to get better because just like anything else in life if you're like a big UFC fan if you're gonna be fighting every single day not like taking blows to the head but practicing and training you're gonna get a lot better than the person who does that once a week same thing goes with anything else in life that you do hey I just applied to colleges CS major what background in coding do I need to know before and what should I have mastered so I'm not lost I have experience coding well if you have experience coding you have more experience in the realm of computer science than I ever did entering my computer science degree so what do you need to know before nothing but knowing more will definitely help I've given an advice earlier in this video look at the curriculum try to brush up on what they learn you can may find you may be able to find some of the classes curriculum the specific classes that you're going to be taking computer science online and you're gonna actually study some of that work you're just not able to access the homework or the assignments or the coding projects but you can see a lot of what they study online start studying [Music] you

Channel: ForrestKnight

Views: 146,765

Rating: 4.9576101 out of 5

Keywords: software, developer, engineer, computer science, computer science student, computer science major, cs, comp sci, cs questions, cs student, cs major, computer science questions, computer science degree, computer science jobs, software development, computer engineering, cs internship, cs interview

Id: aDfqRbGk_Yk

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019