I’d like to start my path in the tech field because I’ve seen it’s a lot more rewarding financially and also the teams seem to be friendlier than the non tech ones where they basically eat you alive in corporate.
I’m leaned more towards AI advancements but I’m not so sure which career will help me more in that case. I’m open to suggestions
In: Engineering
Computer scientists spend their days thinking about imaginary computers that *could* exist, and using mathematics and theory to figure out what those computers, *if* they existed, can and can’t do. Their research today informs how tomorrow’s computers will be designed.
Software engineers are the ones that are tasked with taking computers that we already have right now and making them do things. Their concern is primarily delivering a usable product that solves real world problems, rather than dabbling in the hypothetical.
There’s a lot of overlap. A software engineer would benefit from having formal CS training, as it would help them write better, more performant software. And computer scientists almost certainly know how to write programs that help them solve problems. The main distinction is in the focus: computer science is research, software engineering is building a product.
In college, I wanted to be a software engineer. I wanted to make things, not research things. But my university didn’t offer that curriculum; they only had a computer science curriculum. Clueless, I took it. It taught me most of what I needed to know to write software. But I missed out on a lot of the business-y, organizational parts of software engineering. The parts that involve the human element of writing code for a company for pay. I did eventually make it out into the profession I wanted, but I had to pick up many of those skills on the job.
If you are at a similar crossroads to where I was at, my advice to you would be this: Obviously pick the course that best matches what you want to do, but if you’re not sure, CS is probably the *least wrong*. You’ll easier be able to pivot out of a CS path into a SE path than the other way.
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