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[Bumber]

By the way i'm still a junior college. Has anyone ever finished a BA or BS for computer science? How much reading do you do in an average week? My friend is a major in international relations and he says that he's reading ~100 pages a day in the beginning week. He's in a tier 1 college currently. I imagine for computer science the work load is that much larger but if I could get some estimates it could help me plan for the future.

I've got about 1 year left, and it really depends on your classes and instructors. Several of my classes don't really require the listed textbook. The instructors rely mostly on lectures with powerpoint and don't even touch the book (the homework is custom-made instead of problems in the book.) The programming classes rely on Google more than anything. You'll spend more time trying to figure out your own code than reading. The ones that do rely on the books are theory classes like Computer Ethics and Algorithm Design.

I would say this is due to the constantly-changing nature of the field. It's already hard to find a good book on 64-bit Assembly programming, and processors that support the new AVX-512 instructions are planned to come out this year. Meanwhile, the theory classes don't change too much. Dijkstra's algorithm will always be Dijkstra's algorithm.

Oh, and be aware:
Computer Science majors have more unit requirements than other majors, at least at my university. What's worse, the CS courses aren't really offered over the Summer. You probably won't be graduating in 4 years unless you're lucky (or your university is different and doesn't require a bunch of liberal arts classes on top of the CS major.)

[gimlet]

For the programming courses and math you read a lot fewer pages.  But they are generally MUCH more information dense than the narrative type reading for other courses.  And you will have to put in serious time actually coding or solving practice problems to really understand the material - don't fall behind on this!

[Thief^]

I did a BSc specifically in Computer Games Programming, which has a lot of overlap with computer science (except I didn't get to write a compiler []). There were few textbooks, mostly on non-programming topics like maths. Can confirm needing slides/notes/lectures/assignments though.

Also, most of the algorithms you'll learn you shouldn't use in practical code after you leave uni. You should either use a library function (e.g. std::sort vs any kind of custom sorting algorithm, 99.9% of the time either you'll be sorting too small of a dataset for speed to measurably matter or std::sort will be faster) or just a different algorithm entirely because what you've been taught is hilariously outdated (e.g. any kind of predictive or adaptive or hierarchical pathfinder vs Dijkstra's algorithm)

[Dutrius]

I did a BSc specifically in Computer Games Programming

Where did you do your course? Because I'm starting that course in a couple of weeks.

[Thief^]

University of Teesside, England

[Dutrius]

Ah, I'm starting at Derby university.

[Thief^]

It's been nearly a decade since I did my course (O.o), I think Teesside was the only one to offer a remotely sane games course at the time (and even then, it was quite new). How's Derby's?

EDIT: Most importantly, what language is it taught in?

[Dutrius]

We get access to Unreal Engine 3 licenses, and both C# and Java are being taught.

[Thief^]

I've just looked the course up on their website. The page has Unreal Engine 4 and Unity logos, so I would hope you get to use UE4, not just UE3.

UE4 is used by a lot of AAA games studios, although is becoming more popular with indie developers as well. UE doesn't use C# or Java, so either you'll learn UE3's UnrealScript (don't, it's not an employable skill), kismet (UE3) / blueprint (UE4) (visual languages for designers, not really programmers) or C++ (please learn C++!).

Unity is more popular with independent and mobile developers, and is also quite widely used. Unity uses C# or its own UnityScript. C# is far more useful to learn out of the two, because you can use it elsewhere as well.

Java isn't used by either of those, but it is used a bit in mobile development. It's not used too much, because most big mobile games use a premade engine (e.g. Unity), none of which use Java. Also Minecraft is Java (well the original PC version, none of the ports are, including the Windows 10 version, they're all C++).

EDIT: All is not lost though, my course taught me perl, C (before going on to C++ later) and renderware, none of which have been particularly useful to me, and I still ended up in the industry

[Dutrius]

Last time I asked if they would be would be switching to UW4, they said no. That was about six moths ago, however.

Also, Unity does support Java.

[Thief^]

Last time I asked if they would be would be switching to UW4, they said no.

[Dutrius]

The reason they gave me was that it had just came out and was pretty buggy. They've had six moths to fix most of the problems.

[Thief^]

Clever moths

[3man75]

Clever moths

Indeed.

I've run into a wierd type of problem. The type where I feel my solution should work but just isn't.

This is the request I have:

Write a statement that assigns numNickels + numDimes to numCoins. Ex: 5 nickels and 6 dimes results in 11 coins.

Followed by the code:

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

int main() {
   int numCoins   = 0;
   int numNickels = 0;
   int numDimes   = 0;

   numNickels = 5;
   numDimes = 6;
cout << numCoins = numNickels+numDimes;
   /* Your solution goes here  */

   cout << "There are  " << numCoins << " coins" << endl;

   return 0;
}

Most of the above is already provided. My only line has been "cout << numcouns = numNickels+numDimes;". At one point I ran a 'correct' responce but only got 50% of the question right. I forgot what I did though and this question has me tearing at my hair...well not really but I don't know how to deal with it. To be honest I don't even know what exactly to google to solve this problem (See kids google dosen't always work. STUDY!). I'm currently in c**.com at the tutorial sections looking for something related to this. Key thing is that I can only use certain lined provided and thus cannot create a new variable (which would be my goto solution). Any ideas fellow bay watchers?

EDIT: Just solved it as soon as I posted it.

My solution was to use a new line to make numCoins=numNickels+numDimes. I thought I coudn't do that but apparently I can 

Still if there is another way to do it please shower me with your golden knowledge. Or books. Either is fine.

[i2amroy]

Just an FYI, but we do have a general programming threat in general discussion that would probably be better at addressing problems than a life advice thread would. (Though it's not necessarily a "do my homework for me" thread, so we'll probably point you in the direction of resources before we give you a straight answer).