BSc (Hons) Computer Science

Jamal

Computer Science is arguably the “bread and butter” course to get into the IT industry, and the one that had the most flexibility in terms of career paths. This is at least what I thought which is why I chose the course in the first place. I wasn't really sure what part of the IT industry I wanted to go into.

I've met a lot of people like this, and it’s safe to say you’ll have a much better idea once you start. By the end of the first year you will probably know.

You will learn programming, database development, as well as practical knowledge on making good quality software in a scheduled manner. A lot of people find programming difficult at first, I really recommend you go through some video tutorials on-line if you're new to programming as it can really make a difference if you know a little beforehand.

There are two courses that logically follow on from each other which I think are the hardest courses in all of first year across the department of Computing and Information Systems. The first is “Communication Systems”, which isn't too hard, but there is a lot of work, every week you will have a supervised lab session and 9/10 you won’t finish the work due the following week and will be doing extra work in the lab with your groups. You learn about how information is sent between computers, and lots of other cool stuff like shell scripting etc.

There’s also a bit of maths, and people usually try to avoid this maths by taking courses like Business Information Systems/Technology. These are good courses in their own right, but I think it’s a shame as going through these courses properly will make a huge difference to your understanding of computers.

The second course is called “Computer Systems Architecture” which demystifies the inner workings of a CPU practically from the basics. You use breadboards to make circuits which can be used as memory or to add numbers and then you learn the basic electronics of a computer. Then you have to code in assembly language, which is a fair deal harder than Java, if you complete this course with a high grade, I genuinely think you have great career prospects.

By second year you will be more proficient in programming and you’ll be able to work on cooler projects. This year I made a London-Underground style journey planner for Prague, Czech Republic, A network-based Ping-Pong game using C++, A shopping web app in ASP.NET etc. The more time you give it the more you can create.

So the last thing I will say is, I've fooled you if I've made the course seem ridiculously hard, but it is fairly harder than some other IT courses, but it’s definitely worth it for what you get out of it. If you’re not half bad at maths and like computers, Computer Science is the way to go.