Software Engineering vs Computer Science Degree
If you're thinking about getting a college degree so you can become a software engineer or get some other job in the tech industry then this video is for you first i'll share the differences between getting a software engineering degree and a computer science degree then i'll talk about how choosing one over the other will affect your .
Long-term career and i'll even share something with you that if you're leaning towards software engineering that is important for you to know so let's get started first off there are thousands of universities and each of these schools have slightly different programs and the programs can also vary from country to country so in this video .
I'm going to focus on more of the common aspects of the software engineering and computer science degrees i'm also focusing more on a four-year degree not an associates or a master's though a lot of things that i'm going to talk about in this video would actually apply to those other options a cs or computer science degree is the degree that is .
Most often associated with software engineering in this degree you're going to be learning a lot about math you're going to learn everything up to calculus and linear algebra differential equations you'll learn a ton about how computers work computer architecture assembly language and how the code that you write in higher level languages is .
Compiled down into something that a computer can use you'll also be learning about operating systems as well as networks which is how all of these complex systems communicate with each other as part of a computer science program you're going to be taking a couple of classes on computer programming where you're going to learn .
The core principles behind how to write good code and you're also going to learn about data structures which is basically different ways that we store data so that it's easy to access and easy to use for example in objects arrays or linked lists often as software engineers we have to deal with a ton of data in a ton of different data structures and .
Depending on how we interact with this data it can be either fast or it can be really really slow so you'll be learning about algorithms which are efficient ways to access and interact with data common patterns to make your code much better then there's putting all this together into something useful an application you're going to have to .
Learn how to take all that data and put it into database to store it and how to retrieve it maybe directly or across the network from a user interface you'll also learn how to design those user interfaces so that they're user friendly and intuitive which means you're going to be working across a bunch of different platforms and you're going to .
Be doing this for like web development it could be for mobile and it could be for native applications and as a computer scientist you're going to be getting a healthy dose of the theoretical and academic approaches to learning how to solve computer related problems with software engineering the first couple years are going to be very .
Similar to computer science and you will start off with learning a lot of math but you won't be diving as deep into the math you will be learning a lot of the same core fundamentals of programming but you'll also be heavily focused on developing programming skills specific to getting a job as a software engineer which means you're going to need to .
Understand the fundamentals like the data structures the algorithms and how to write efficient applications but instead of deep diving into math you're gonna be learning a lot more about the software development life cycle you're gonna be learning more about planning applications gathering requirements preparing design specifications you'll .
Probably spend more time learning different strategies for writing software such as waterfall agile kanban scrum or other similar methodologies you'll need to learn about design patterns and quality assurance and soft skills how to work as a team and you'll probably even explore some of the different aspects of ethics in .
Programming so how do these choices affect your career as a computer science graduate you're going to be learning a lot of theoretical and academic stuff which means you're going to come out more as a generalist but with a lot larger breadth of understanding you're going to figure out your career path on the job .
But you're going to come out of school with a lot more options available to you a bunch of more different career paths that you can take because of being that generalist whereas with software engineering you're going to be focusing a lot more heavily on developing the actual skills of being a programmer which is useful if you're going to be .
Doing a programming job because you'll be better prepared for that right out of the gate on graduation however there are going to be some of those gaps in the theoretical so you might be precluded from some other jobs that would be available to a computer scientist that said both of these degrees are going to be advantageous in .
Helping you get a job when you're getting started especially compared to people who go the self-taught route or the boot camp route over time as you get more experience the differences between these degrees will become less important and experience will become more important but there's an asterisk here because the reality is that computer .
Science degree will carry more weight than a software engineering degree it seems kind of illogical but a computer science degree is the de facto degree for becoming a software engineer one of the reasons for this is that some hiring managers and hr folks just aren't that familiar with a software engineering .
Degree and so you're going to have to explain it to them whereas with the computer science degree that's going to be a degree that is immediately recognizable to them for the most part this isn't going to be a problem once you explain your program that said if you choose to go down the software engineering route it may hurt you with .
Some hiring managers for example a hiring manager i know described software engineering graduates as akin to college dropouts because they didn't have the math skills or chops to be able to successfully complete a computer science program and instead chose to take a shortcut this seems odd since a software engineering degree is going to focus on .
Preparing a graduate to do a programming job but the reality is there are people out there who have very strong condescending attitudes towards anyone who does not have a computer science degree right or wrong you're not going to change their mind so there's no point in worrying about it you just have to be prepared .
That if you do encounter someone like that there is a good chance that you are going to miss out on a job due to their bias but the good news is there are far more companies out there who aren't going to care about this then there are sticklers for having a cs degree in the long term your experience is what is going to matter most so be sure to .
Choose your job correctly and i think you're going to really like this video up here so you should click on that and watch that one next thanks for watching and i'll see you in the next one lates