That was a piece of advice I wish I had when I was in high school. It wasn't until halfway though college that I understood the difference. It was abundantly obvious that the vast majority of CS students should have been in a "Software Engineering" program, too.
Perhaps you are right, but I am thankful for my CS background despite being a SWE myself.
Understand that I am also close to the intelligence level of crayon-eating compared to most on this site. I felt like my unspectacular public state university level CS degree wouldn't even hold a candle to some of the people's education in this very thread like the one commenter who studied at MIT.
However, I still believe what I learned was extremely valuable. In fact, I am sadden by my level of understanding and I wish I knew more CS. Just because I do not apply pure CS every single day does not mean that my decisions are not influenced by what I learned. At worst, my knowledge has never been a hindrance.I refuse to believe that knowledge can ever be useless. Not applicable != useless.
Genuine question though, what would a software engineering program provide that a computer science student would struggle to understand?
One reason I also wish I'd gone along an SE track is that it would likely have given me a lot more experience actually doing what I do for work. Using version control, working with others in a group setting, actually making software.
aye, this. in my experience hard part isn't doing the actual coding bits, it's ironing out the Requirements, stuffing them into JIRA, building the Interface document to cover what we're coding, writing documentation, and making sure the new guy doesn't break the version control.
Coding the specification isn't hard once we have them. A lot of that is outsourced in my org, esp. fluff related to a few areas like UX. But the hard part is getting there, and the engineering processes and mentality to do so.
Sadly something I only recently allowed myself to understand is that I really don't have passion for networking, I absolutely love coding and creating new integrations, interfaces and backend, I did a lot of it to patch holes in the company i worked for and streamline my own and others work.
I'm a remote contractor for that same company now still doing the networking and some dev work for them but really want to get out and find a company that I can focus more on the DevOps side.
I’m not certain, but I think most SE programs are largely CS programs
Turns out I love writing code and don't care much for computer science. I've been a software engineer (NOT a computer scientist) ever since.
Thank you to Mek, Stephen, and Matt for taking a chance on me.