Got accepted into Comp Science and Game Development!

Awesome duder! I too just got accepted into a CS program! Wishing you luck!

Nice job duder! I'm going into my second year at WVU for CS in about 2 weeks. So far not much programming stuff but I did learn basic java last semester. I can't wait to get into more in-depth stuff. I'm hoping to end up in a game development career, but regular old software development wouldn't be too bad either.

I hate to say this..But I REALLY don't recommend CS at a University unless you have a good idea of what it's all about.

I mean this in the kindest way possible. Most people find it tedious, boring, and mind-numbing. It's very difficult, time consuming, and not fun (unless you love math and staring at complex math problems for hours).

So my advice? If you know what you are getting into and like that shit go for it. If you don't? Do some self study and experimentation.

Otherwise you are wasting your money and your time. I know what it's like to get accepted into a great University. But that shit is all temporary. You need to be thinking about what you want and enjoy that will make you money. College shouldn't be about experimenting with classes. You should know what you want to do before you go in. Otherwise you are paying 10's of thousands of dollars (years and years of work) to learn what you like.

Good luck.

Congrats! I'm up at Waterloo, Ontario myself in CompSci in third year.

Just some words of advice for starting out, the first year or so will be a lot of basic stuff and may become dry but just power through it because it may not seem super important or relevant now but once you get higher up everything starts to come together nicely.

Also don't try to stick to one language, its always good to experiment, even if your never going to go really deep into the language it is always good to get a taste to see what is out there and suits your coding needs. I don't know what UOIT starts off with but and UW we start learning with a functional programming language which is an entirely different beast from your imperative languages such as java and C++. As for the math courses, I find wolfram alpha to be a lifesaver and websites such as stackoverflow.com are great for coding help.

@CH3BURASHKA said:

@Lunar_Aura said:

Happy birthday and give higher education some serious cost/value analysis before committing. Good luck!

Fucking amen.

This. Way too many young people (myself included) throw there money at college going into loans and debt without realizing the value of money. Once you are out of college working a job you will start to wonder if the schooling was worth it all along when all the money you make goes to paying off loans.@korkesh said:

Congrats! I'm up at Waterloo, Ontario myself in CompSci in third year.

Just some words of advice for starting out, the first year or so will be a lot of basic stuff and may become dry but just power through it because it may not seem super important or relevant now but once you get higher up everything starts to come together nicely.

Also don't try to stick to one language, its always good to experiment, even if your never going to go really deep into the language it is always good to get a taste to see what is out there and suits your coding needs. I don't know what UOIT starts off with but and UW we start learning with a functional programming language which is an entirely different beast from your imperative languages such as java and C++. As for the math courses, I find wolfram alpha to be a lifesaver and websites such as stackoverflow.com are great for coding help.

You went to UW-Madison? If so, I did too

@linkforever1: University of Waterloo :P

I mentioned at the top, guess I should have clarified, didn't know there was another UW out there, should of guessed tho

@linkforever1: I'm not sure what your course was like, but there shouldn't be a terrible burden of high level maths on most courses (especially core competence modules). I speak as someone who has done both Mathematics & Statistics and CompSci/SoftEng undergrad courses (in the UK), CompSci is a lot more Engineering (applied maths, sound logic, technical design, some foundation stuff which should clearly be tied to application by your lecturers if you're getting lost and ask for help understanding it) than theoretical as it was taught at my University (I was on the SoftEng course but had the same mandatory classes as the CompSci group, there was only a touch of added mandatory engineering modules on my course compared to theirs). Much of the foundation takes a technical mind (P-NP, Turing Complete, to name a couple) but not high level maths.

Outside of core modules then you can go somewhat deep into the maths (several branches of AI can go into a really maths heavy teaching focus that does feel like you're doing undergrad maths and there are other areas too) but I also found that the courses I was on provided a lot of support for those who weren't University level mathematicians. Things like knowing trig and being able to follow the application for 3D computer vision and 3D rendering techniques is all stuff anyone with a decent foundation should be able to follow. I guess if you weren't inclined to maths before you started and didn't spend your allocated time (or were completely unprepared for self-study tat is typical of higher education - on a 100 hour course we would have 60 hours of that dedicated to self-study work, which you can just skip or not go over anything you don't understand or not read further into the material outlined in the lectures; but the point of Uni is to do something you want to know more about, you should have some passion for learning in the field you pick) then it might not be great.

If you like Science and Engineering and applying that stuff to the digital domain then CompSci is a hoot. Ok, the gender split in your lectures will be terrible* but you should already have a clear idea if you like to solve problems and can work with computers at this point in your life.

* same with maths, we need to get more parents to encourage and nurture their young girls to take up this sort of stuff, less Meccano & coding on PCs focussed as toys just for the boys to learn. It's laughable to think that 90% of the gifted in this field happen to be male so obviously we're loosing a lot of talent (which is never exposed) to other fields by potential world class female applicants not getting the right support during the first 18 years of their life before coming to Uni and getting the final push.

@linkforever1: I have a full ride scholarship that will only last the 4 years after I graduated high school so I kinda had to pick something and go for it. I had been thinking about it for a couple years already and so far I'm enjoying it, but that's only a year in so you never know.. Hopefully I will still be enjoying it by year 4.

I recently finished my run in Computer Science and my advice is to do your homework. Other than that, I would say if you have free time by yourself just study the math work until you get it.

Also congrats. I'm a little jealous you found what you want to do. I may have finished school but I'm in a little rut for what I actually want to do with my life.

Hope you have a bright future :)

@Shivoa: At the university that I went to (UW-Madison) many of the courses in the CS major are in high level math (class that come after highest calculus). Sure there is a ton of other information to learn too...but math is a core principal of programming.

On a technical level all programming is logic based problem solving by using a predetermined set of tools (the language). And I don't know about you but I think that definition is synonymous with math to me.

Don't get me wrong some people love this stuff...All I'm claiming is that I don't think it's for most people. I wouldn't recommend it to just about anyone. I found out myself how much I despised it after a year...

Congrats and good luck! I'm working towards a cs major with a future goal of getting into game design as well.

@korkesh said:

@linkforever1: University of Waterloo :P

I mentioned at the top, guess I should have clarified, didn't know there was another UW out there, should of guessed tho

Yeah...I need to pay more attention. After working for 9 hours and then running sometimes my brain jumps over obvious details :p

@MentalDisruption: Thanks and good luck to you too mate!

Thanks everyone else!

@linkforever1: I'd guess I separate logic (which is a provable system but also mixes in with subjects all the way to philosophy) and reasoning (the sciences / engineering) from the more arduous nature of mathematical proofs building on the specific axioms and pyramid of proofs that mathematics uses for daily work. It's all the same idea (no bullshit, tools for making sure you can say definitively no bullshit was used) but CompSci is making stuff and making sure it is built correctly using a known physical system that (baring quantum tunnelling) is exact and predictable and the chain of abstraction constructed on top of those transistors (at the base level, although for practical programming you never really need to look below the level of registers etc in a CPU).