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UNSW ComputerScience/SoftwareEngineering (1 Viewer)

StrangeBacon

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I am having difficulty in deciding whether to put software engineering or computer science in UNSW as my top preference. Any helpful insight into both courses would be great. Also as a career i would hope to do something in research or similar stuff that are non-consumer based
 

SpiralFlex

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There is more flexibility choosing your subjects than SEng
 

StrangeBacon

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As in i have minimal interest for jobs which involving building software for the wider public, rather i would prefer to do research stuff
 

MrBrightside

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Do comp sci then.
This. Comp Sci is the most flexible course to learn whatever you want really.

SENG is Comp Sci, but the flexibility of electives are cut down to focus more on business application development, and you have workshops centered around this for several years, depending on the uni you go to. SENG is also a mandatory additional year and requires 60 day work exp to graduate.

I replied here earlier this morning. Check it out. http://community.boredofstudies.org...ogy-computing-degrees-2015-a.html#post6724917 Thanks.
 

MrBrightside

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Also, read this if you want some reassurance. http://forums.xkcd.com/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=11699



In a sense, it seems like SENGs usually get roles as an IT graduate entering a Development environment would. (But obviously an IT background will have no/significantly less focus on Comp Sci material (depending on how much technical an IT degree goes into - there's a lot of overlap, but it's murky waters when you talk about 'IT' degrees, it's why a lot of big tech companies usually just state BSc. Comp Sci, SEng or related degree required), whereas SENG attempts to cover a lot of ground on Comp Sci content before branching out into implementing actual software solutions (whether that be consumer based or 'Research' as you say - a degree wouldn't be focused to one particular line of software, they're taught from a broader view than that, but Comp Sci will give you greater flexibility to specialise in a certain field of computing, should you choose not to like just purely SENG), whereas with Comp Sci, you can just always choose and focus to learn the theory behind different aspects of computing, i.e. Algorithms behind hardware (more Comp Eng area), databases, networking, programming without attending implementation/project workshops for several years.

(As a part of my IT degree, we had two subjects (Software Engineering Practice (SEP) and Systems Development Project (SDP)) focused around delivering scalable prototypes of working websites, SDP was done in groups of 10 students per tutorial (though, I've heard it has been dropped to 6 students per group, because of the big cluster fuck that comes with managing 10 students in a group) for a semester, and had no lectures, just 1-2 hour tuts for week, SEP had lectures and tutorials and was in groups of 4-5 students. The subjects were very similar, except SDP followed an agile approach, whereas SEP followed waterfall, and not everyone had to code, i.e. you had Project Managers (which cold also help out with front-end code), ~3-4 Developers, Business Analysts to define the scope and user stories (which our one did poorly and put the blame on me/us-the Testers). It was marked pretty ghey, in the end the students assigned marks to themselves according to an allocated bunch of marks (i.e. 700/1000) which you have to sort out amongst your 10 team members in SDP. It's pretty horrid, a bloodbath, because how do you measure how much work someone has done? The Project Manager pretty much gave himself 100 and people going on exchange actually put that argument forward for more marks and they got like 98s and 94s. It was stupid, and you couldn't really argue it with the Subject Coordinator because that would mean the whole team has to come back together and reallocate marks, which will just be really awkward, especially if you're in the same room together.
 
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