Where to go now....

[Pino]

Ok I am currently a 17 year old student studying Computing Maths Physics And PE, i love computing and all aspects of programming,

Pretty decent with VB,
Basic Java
Learning PHP
Beggginer c#

Plus the usuall basic html/javascript etc

Now the question is do i go on to University to study a computer science course (or whatever its called) or do i leave college in just under 2 years and get a job (or apprentiship) i defo want to go into some form of computing, (software development, systems analyst etc)

any got any experiances or suggestions there all welcome :)

[Electroman]

I would definitly recommend going to Uni, what you study is another matter but what i've learnt at Uni is far more than I did at A-Level and more focused to the real world development if you get what i mean. For example before uni I din't have a clue about any of this class diagrams and things like that, thee are almost essentail if you want to be a software engineer. I'm not doing the standard Computer Science degree but I see people who are and it doesn't look fun, you get loads of boring topics but thats just the way I see them, you could enjoy them. For example in my course I did Intro. to Relational Databases, this I found very boring but in the end I learnt a lot from it so i think it was worth it in the end. Computer science just seems to have a lot of those modules that when your doing them they are hell but afterwards its been worth it.

[dglienna]

I liked the Comp Sci coures. It was the other ones that were a drag...

[Pino]

arr ok thanks for the input guys anyone else got any thoughts?

[Electroman]

Posted by dglienna
I liked the Comp Sci coures. It was the other ones that were a drag... How about ISA? I'm pretty sure thats what all the other people did and really didn't like? As I said though not everyone doesn't like those kind of things, I reckon its great if you can find a course where your gonna learn stuff thats important and at the same time enjoy it :).

[Pino]

what course you doing electroman? was it c++ for games or something like that?

[Electroman]

Computer Games Software Engineering

They are teaching C++, all the other Computing Degrees teach you Java mainly and maybe a little C++ later on. We also miss out some of the OOP/OOD modules that the rest do. We are doing OOD at the moment but we didn't in the first year and won't in the last. The other Computing degrees get OOD/OOP every year.

[Pino]

see that where i'm not sure if i want to go into games or just general apps....

[Electroman]

Well we are supposed to be able to go into general apps if we wanted because its still a computing degree but personally I don't think it would be as easy. Mainly because things like OOP are really used by general apps whereas the Games Industy doesn't use it that much so therefore we haven't been taught it as much as the rest.

[dglienna]

Enlist, and retire in 20 years.