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"Computer Science."

Well, I went for my college interview today and I cannot do A A/S Level Computing with my other choices. Apparently this is the only thing I can do with computers.

Whats it like, is it really hard.. or not..?

1/3 is programming apparently.

Anyway, could somebody just tell me what it involves and how hard it is :o)

Thanks

-GasMask

Ok, well I'm going to take it and if its pants. I'll drop it :o)

Practical's worth a third of your marks in A Level.

it depends on how much you know about the comps, i wanted to do A level in this too but i was a lil errrr dumb LOL the thing i didn't like about it is the lack of practical stuff which is more useful than threoy which is most of the A level sadly.

go do an MCSE instead mate if you can.

Yeah, I know. I went to an open day recently and there were only a few computers in use, so the guide decided to log on and show off some of the software used - but he didn't know that a workshop session was just about to start, and pretty soon the room was filled with students! We left soon after, of course.

It's much more common practice not to actually turn up to lectures you will be examined on :)

But yes, if you were so inlined, you could turn up to whichever lectures you wanted. This won't always be the case for workshops though. Anyone registered on the course will get precedence over you, so if the group is fully subscribed and everybody turns up, you'll be booted off the computer you were using.

Can you attend lectures that you won;t be examined on? For example, in the third year most only take five or six modules and the project, but say you wanted to gain some background or whatever - could you still attend the lectures for that module?

I'm in my third year of a Computer Science degree course at Exeter Uni.

A few things to make clear from the offset:

1) Computer Science A-level is useless. Really. I didn't do it myself, but every univsersity I applied to and department I spoke to when I was applying said so, though in a more tactful way.

2) A-level maths is important. Very important. Just about every uni will require at least a B grade in A-level maths. It shows you have the right type of mind to cope with the course. Also, further maths will come in very handy. A lot of the topics covered in further maths (e.g. logic, matrices) will almost certainly be in any computer science degree course.

Once you're on the the course, the structure depends very much on which university you go to. Some, like exeter, are very much focused on software and programming, with little or no modules on hardware or networking.

(Hence I learn most of what I know about hardware from Turbonutter and Reaper)

Other courses, like Southampton, will feature much more heavily on circuits and hardware, to the point that you'll do a lot of electronic engineering there.

Generally, computer science is a three year course:

The first year is an introduction year, and very little background knowledge whatsoever is assumed. This means that your first year will be spent learning the basic principles of programming and software design, as well as logic, multimedia, operating systems, and possibly social anmd professional issues.

The second year builds on the first year, and sometimes allows some amount of specialisation. Mostly you'll be doing more serious programming, (multithreading, networking, GUI's, etc) group software projects, more maths, graphics, databases, AI, that sort of thing.

You third year basically allows you to specialise. Which areas (generally you'll need to choose at least two) you'll be able to specialise in will depend on the university you're at. Exeter tends to specialise in artifical intelligence and databases, with a few modules on other topics like information retrieval and animation.

The options I'm taking are:

Compilers and Interpreters
Artificial Intelligence
Connectionism
Computational Linguistics
Information Access
Individual project

So I've focused mostly on programming and AI, but this will vary from course to course.

Hope this all helps, give me a shout if you have any more questions.

Ok, well, I'd doing this at college but hey :o)

I'll dig up this topic if help is needed, and you best get yourself in here!

I'm doing a computer science degree at uni.

If you want info or help etc post here or email me.

DJ, seperate college.

Yes, I found out today that Computing is actually Computer Science at college level. Which is what I wanted to take anyway.

So thanks for the help all.