I majored in computer science and am quite happy with the choice, but I do wish I’d had CS as a minor so I could have just picked and chosen all the interesting courses and ignored the must-have-for-degree undergrad crud, and majored in something that would have made it easier for me to not call myself a programmer while still actually mostly doing programming. I suspect people are a lot happier hiring a person in their forties who calls themself an actuarian, a control engineer or a geophysicist than just a programmer.
Though we’re still globally in a pretty big cultural flux about figuring out just how all the programming is supposed to fit in the job and career market space, so my intuitions might apply more to people already older than me and prove to be pretty much outdated for someone just starting university. So, just yay computer science as a minor, whatever you choose as a major, I guess.
My experience is that academic CS credentials matter little for getting hired, compared to other fields. Many people with CS degrees can’t actually program, so hiring looks at previous work experience, portfolios of open-source projects and the ability to write a trivial program that looks like it could work in an interview. The degree might still be needed to get to the interview, but if you want to be some kind of data analyst, the hirers should be quite happy with a math major degree.
Most of the useful stuff you probably have a hard time learning on your own a university degree can make you learn is math or the mathier side of CS. Software development remains something of a. craft, which you learn more by doing software development than by studying theory.
I majored in computer science and am quite happy with the choice, but I do wish I’d had CS as a minor so I could have just picked and chosen all the interesting courses and ignored the must-have-for-degree undergrad crud, and majored in something that would have made it easier for me to not call myself a programmer while still actually mostly doing programming. I suspect people are a lot happier hiring a person in their forties who calls themself an actuarian, a control engineer or a geophysicist than just a programmer.
Though we’re still globally in a pretty big cultural flux about figuring out just how all the programming is supposed to fit in the job and career market space, so my intuitions might apply more to people already older than me and prove to be pretty much outdated for someone just starting university. So, just yay computer science as a minor, whatever you choose as a major, I guess.
I am currently fascinated with Data Science as it combines algorithms with robust statistical tools and I’m quite interested in both.
Do you think a Maths with Statistical focus degree with CS as a minor would be enough CS to be hired into such a career?
My experience is that academic CS credentials matter little for getting hired, compared to other fields. Many people with CS degrees can’t actually program, so hiring looks at previous work experience, portfolios of open-source projects and the ability to write a trivial program that looks like it could work in an interview. The degree might still be needed to get to the interview, but if you want to be some kind of data analyst, the hirers should be quite happy with a math major degree.
Most of the useful stuff you probably have a hard time learning on your own a university degree can make you learn is math or the mathier side of CS. Software development remains something of a. craft, which you learn more by doing software development than by studying theory.