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From: jk@utastro.UUCP (John Krist)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Help! CS Ba student held captive in large university!
Message-ID: <475@utastro.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 6-Mar-86 22:25:58 EST
Article-I.D.: utastro.475
Posted: Thu Mar  6 22:25:58 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 09:25:40 EST
Organization: U. Texas, Astronomy, Austin, TX
Lines: 45
Keywords: Pascal terrorizes campus - Fortran compiler shot


       All this talk about the value of CS degrees, the worth of certain
    programming languages and all has got me more than a little nervous,
    for I am a CS student at a big university which thrives on Pascal and
    offers only a BA degree.  What am I to do?!?!?!?

       If some of you can do some analysation of what is to come, I would
    appreciate the feedback.

       First of all, I do work about 19 hours a week here in the astronomy
    at the University of Texas at Austin doing all that grimy programming
    in Fortran, so I know that the real world doesn't live on top-down
    design or semicolons at the end of program lines.

       CS students at UT take (are subjected to take?) the following :

          o  Two semesters of Pascal with "Computer Science Concepts"
          o  1 sem. of assembly language
          o  1 sem. of data structures
          o  1 sem. analysis of programs
          o  1 sem. computer architecture
          o  1 sem. of operating systems
          o  4 sem. of other upper-division CS courses (graphics, numerical
                    methods, etc.)
          o  2 sem. of calculus plus 1 sem. linear algebra or 1 sem. of
                    a third calculus course
          o  1 sem. symbolic logic
          o  1 sem. digital systems
          o  1 sem. linguistics
          o  4 sem. of a foreign language
          o  2 sem. English
          o  plus your usual government, electives, etc.

    Am I doomed even before I get out?  Will my experience in the astronomy
    department save me or will the stigma of a (gasp!) BA degree in
    (gasp!) CS from a (gasp!) gigantic state university write me off?

    Also, I'd like to go right up to a Ph.D., if I could make it, and do
    something in graphics or image processing.  Is this a pipe dream?  Is
    it worth it?

    Help!

    Signed,
      Confused (also know as John Krist  - jk@utastro.UUCP)