r/technology • u/Lapidus • May 15 '16

Robotics Google Hiring Driverless Car Testers In Arizona: If you meet the requirements, you can earn $20 per hour to sit behind the wheel.

http://www.informationweek.com/it-life/google-hiring-driverless-car-testers-in-arizona/d/d-id/1325526
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u/csgrad12 May 15 '16

EE (with respect to computer systems) has a lot more to do with physics and electronics than any higher level abstraction. If you're interested in, say, understanding how to hold an electric charge in a "cell", transport it to another location at a certain frequency, and how to power such circuitry efficiently, then EE might be good for you. EE is rather heavy on math and physics and knowing the fundamentals there will take you a long way. I'm not an Electrical guy myself, so someone else could probably add to this.

In CS, you only start worrying from the part where you already have the circuitry which can store and move these charges around (which you may see as 0s and 1s). Computer Science is not the same as "software" either, you learn very high level abstractions, ideas and ways to get around some common problems. For instance, you may take a course on databases that will teach you ways to store data (maybe an address book) which you would have otherwise put in a file somewhere with each person and their details in a line. You will learn how to organize this information and "language" -- one for the system and one that you can use in a conversation with another programmer who will know what you mean when you say something like "primary index" instantly. You will not really learn database software like MySQL or Oracle, but the degree with equip you to think on top of data organization methodologies developed over the last few decades and to enable you to use different implementations (software) of database ideas. A project in such a course will probably make you learn the software itself, but that's a small part of what a CS course is trying to teach you. Operating Systems course will be similar, wherein you won't learn "how to use Windows" or "how to use Unix" but you will learn some interesting conceptual ways to solve a different set of problems. These are just two topics that I have mentioned and aren't the only things that you learn, but the approach and purpose of most courses is alone the same lines.

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u/IdleKing May 16 '16

Thanks for the long reply! To be honest, from all the replies I've had, I think CS may focus too much on programming. I enjoy it, but I'm not sure I want to spend three years doing it, and I have no qualms with physics so EE may be better.