Nubius said:
"Why not something in computers?" because honestly computers annoy the shit out of me I like to fiddle with mine as a hobby, but overall they piss me off.
Blasphemy! That's a significantly different path from computers man
.. I guess you want to make movies.. Who knows. Maybe you could end up in Lucas Arts
..
Qiranworms said:
Hmm...interesting. I'm actually considering Waterloo (among other places) for engineering at the moment.
Could you elaborate on the 'hype' bit? And why you now wish you were out of engineering? AND, what career you would have persued with pure maths? My apologies if this is taking too much time, I just need to start hearing all of these opinions and evaluating my options.
No problem.
Well, the "hype" bit involved essentially (back then anyways) the [Waterloo Computer Engineering program] being "THE" program in Canada to get into. So, without even doing much research, I just jumped into it - even though math was my favourite area. Now don't get me wrong, I did learn a lot of things. But, I found that it was all over the place, without a sufficiently theoretical foundation.
A lot of Engineering concepts are based on math - but, we don't really learn that foundation in detail IMO. Plus, why would a person go into Computer Engineering? If "h/w" is your answer, then you should check it out. Same goes for wireless networks and signal processing.
If "s/w" is your answer, then you should probably look somewhere else. And definitely make sure you stay away from "Software Engineering". I don't know what the heck that program is about
.. I say this, b/c just down the road, the Mathematics department offers a "Computer Science" program.
Now, "Computer Science" itself is an interesting program. If you go into that program, you will program during the morning, day, and night. Sometimes, you won't even sleep. b/c they really make you program like dogs. Is it worth it? Not IMO. I went to Computer ENgineering, and I didn't do much programming "in school". Yet, I consider myself to be a pretty good programmer - which was confirmed by the companies that I've worked for during co-op. However, that being said, if you like s/w, then I'd pick "Computer Science" over Computer Engineering anyday. The hype doesn't mean anything to me anymore. But, I do know the facts.
So where does that leave us? I like math, and I like s/w. I also like h/w, wireless networks, and signal processing - but not as much as s/w and math (as I've discovered over the years).
btw, what I mean by h/w is not assembling computer parts or troubleshooting. I mean chip design, circuit design, semi-conductors, photonics, etc. etc.
If I had to do it again, what would "I" do? I'd go into the math department. Get a degree in statistics (applicable to many real world problems including finance, signal processing, etc.) and do a minor in Computer Science with a emphasis on DSP and such. With a degree in statistics, you could "learn" youself any material on Signal Processing if you need to.
But, everything I've said is from hindsight. But, back when in OAC (grade 13) I didn't know any of this stuff
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