Disclaimer: I am a software engineer, and this information will be useful to prospective college students. I believe a debate about engineering vs science is not necessary here and will not be of use to prospective students.

CS degree: Is a branch (some would say spinoff) of Mathematics, mixing discrete mathematics, algorithms, computability ("new" 20th century topic), and practical programming (also "new" topic). Some would say Computer Science is not a true science. My physics professor would say, "Mathematics and Computer Science had a divorce and Computer Science got all the children."

Software engineering: A career path that applies computer science in the design and implementation of software systems. A software engineer is typically aware of different processes for software development and knows how to work in a team.

Important:

Why do I call software engineering a career path? For two reasons. One, you will find very few accredited Software Engineering *Bachelor's* programs. You will find many accredited Software Engineering *Master's* programs.

Two, to become a software engineer, you typically graduate with a Computer Science degree and then join a company that is doing software product development. This likely accounts for a vast percentage of today's young "software engineers", like me. Note this may change as time goes on.

To become a computer scientist, you can say you graduated with a CS degree. However, a true CS "job" would likely be in a research setting where you apply the full breadth of theoretical knowledge which is more often than not, not required for a software engineering job. You might be working at a research center with supercomputers, where your job is to do basic or applied research. Hence something like Physics vs Applied Physics is similar to Computer Science vs Software Engineering.

I don't think I can stay in software much longer.

            "...something to be desired. I do work in a pretty edge case kind of field though (geospatial analytics), that has a good bit more math than your average business dev work."

          "While this is probably true for some people, especially above average people who have only worked at small companies where they are the best developer with no real competition I think there's a second problem that can make good people appear like that:"

            "If rock stars programmers work with genuine peers, the diva part of them will be suppressed. It is hard to feel superior when working with people against whom you are just average. Some of them can still lack in social skills(*), but you can often minimize the damages that could cause. Of course as a company you still need to be able to afford top talent and have a project that challenges or otherwise interest them."

Above average. Below average. Senior developer. Junior developer. Rockstar programmer. Cowboy programmer. What do ANY of you know about "average"? What constitutes below average, and what constitutes above average? It's complete and utter subjective nonsense.

Do you want to go by lines of code written? Do you want to go by number of licenses sold? Do you want to go by pay? Do you want to go by your GPA in college (though I'm sure some of these "rockstar programmers" are not computer scientists or even college graduates).

You have no metrics, no basis. So stop using the word average. Software has become egomaniacal and elitist.

The measure of worth for a developer has become so utterly blurred and has been replaced with elitism, egos and exclusivism.

As I go on through my career in software, should it last that long, I will measure my worth by number of successful projects. You all can use whatever you like- pay, lines of code, size of teams, IQ...I don't care.

For this reason I'm looking to get out of software. I've only just begun my career but I already want out. The whole mindset is different in hardware. Because in hardware, it has to work. If it doesn't work, people are at risk. In software, you get angry calls. The mindset is different with hardware engineers and embedded developers- they don't think about rockstars or cowboys...They work together to make things work.

Hi poster

There is a lot of excellent first-hand information here about which country has which amenities or pluses, but note that most people in this community (educated, well-off) will likely discuss their country with biased, irrational optimism (ex- don't worry about US debt, it will never be a problem!).

There is a startling correlation between economic freedom and quality of life. I would look at this list of countries:

http://www.heritage.org/index/default

and pick whichever one is easiest for you to re-locate to (or in general), and preferably whichever country has INCREASING economic freedom.

For your convenience, the top 5 are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.

The above poster is correct.

Please do not listen to anyone here telling you that you do not need *any* knowledge of mathematics to be a programmer. Critically, you should have knowledge of a branch of mathematics known as discrete math. Discrete math includes everything from probability theory to advanced algorithms. Knowledge of algorithms is extremely important. If you do not know anything about algorithms, chances are you will have a hard time advancing your career. You can always learn on the job, but it is a subject you should start learning immediately if that is the path you want to go down.

The misunderstanding here is the question: Do I need a Computer Science degree to become a Software Engineer?

The answer is no, but- it helps a lot.

Additionally, if you plan on doing graphics and/or physics engine work as a game designer, you need more than discrete math and you should also be versed in multivariable calculus and linear algebra. The theory of computer graphics (cameras, rotations, and all that) is grounded in those branches.

You also implicitly ask a question: which degree is better for me, being interested in OGRE and Unity3D? And I'd say the answer is Computer Science. There are excellent game design programs but if you're interested in engines you are better off with a computer science degree. Many schools have clubs where you could contribute to those projects with other students on your own time.

President Obama is a crony, just like George Bush. He is idolized by the left for his charisma and as a result of his ability to move people with populist rhetoric. But he is a crony too. His cabinet is full of ex-JP Morgan and ex-Goldman Sachs employees and his regulatory efforts have padded big businesses. His bailouts of the banks fattened the bonuses of Wall Street. To say he is not a crony is to ignore facts, which is a tendency of the American public as a whole.

Note that I have not endorsed his contender, because he is terrible as well. But people- open your eyes. Government is corrupt too. Men are not angels!

We do have a poverty problem. But neither Republican nor Democrat policies will fix it. Democrats think that giving poor people free money will fix poverty. Republicans think that giving rich people free money will fix poverty. How about giving nobody free money? Redistribution of wealth upwards does not work, and redistribution of wealth downwards does not work. If anything, the government should give entrepreneurs free money. So long as we live in a country where the government siphons enormous sums of money from productive people, we will have poverty. And so long as the people think that bigger government can fix systemic, structural issues in an economy, our future will look bleaker and bleaker.

I recommend reading and listening to Thomas Sowell, who debunks these issues with impressive clarity. One of my favorite points of his regards foodstamps and starvation in general. He talks about his youth and how he had to work to feed himself, or he would literally starve. It's not exactly the same today.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/273368/political-poverty-thomas-sowell

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/279037/hunger-hoax-thomas-sowell

"We have now reached the point where the great majority of the people living below the official poverty level have such things as air conditioning, microwave ovens, either videocassette recorders or DVD players, and either cars or trucks.

Why are such people called “poor”? Because they meet the arbitrary criteria established by Washington bureaucrats. Depending on what criteria are used, you can have as much official poverty as you want, regardless of whether it bears any relationship to reality." -Thomas Sowell

So true. At least someone here uses their brain instead of their feelings. This is how anti-trust forces operate. They are subjective and unscientific. Almost all of the above posters besides this one have responded with their "feelings" on the matter. Google is evil, so this is OK. How about another approach- Google can do whatever Google wants with their search engine website. It's *their* website. "Google intentionally abusing their position"...they EARNED that position by making a search engine that the whole world uses. They're not doing anything illegal by promoting their own services...that is the point. What makes anyone think that the EU, with their witch-hunts and subjective nonsense- as if a tribe of politicians know how best to 'make the competition better?' Has anyone forgotten that Bing has (been accused of) USING GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS? That's Google's competitor...the one that Google is...taking advantage of. I see the irony, does anyone else?

1.295 billion dollar endowment (http://www.nacubo.org/Documents/research/2011_NCSE_Public_Tables_Endowment_Market_Values_Final_January_17_2012.pdf) and 1.7 million dollars is too much money for a lucrative academic major that produces some of the highest paid graduates in the country (average BLS statistics will tell you that). This is obviously politically motivated.

Looking at job postings for some big companies (few defense contractors, couple semiconductor companies), they're hiring a lot of software engineers. I keep thinking of the Mythical Man Month and how it is quite possible these companies think that throwing more programmers at a particular job will fix their problem faster. But this might not be true; there may legitimately be more software projects cropping up. It's tough when you are a graduating CE/ CS (dual) student and you want to do hardware, but your whole resume is software (because your school needed you on software) and your job out of school is software (because all these big companies need you on software). It's good for comp sci kids because the jobs are irrefutably out there. Computer engineers have an issue where they might be trying to specialize in hardware but employers see "computer" and think software. This is also happening to CS students; I know a PHD student who is extremely good at low-level (chip level) and assembly work, and does high level programming as more of a side thing. Anyways, a good bachelors CS program will have a ton of (practical?) programming. Most CS classes at my school have programming assignments. Not all classes use practical languages (heard of Oz?), but they all require large amounts of coding. The "theory" part is discrete mathematics, algorithms , and programming language theory. Don't think for a second a CS degree isn't "practical". Of all the science degrees, it will probably open the most doors.

This is a tough cookie. On one end, we have bad textbooks being produced in heated competition. In parallel we have the most ineffective bureaucratic educational system in the known world, with the highest per capita spending and the poorest results on k12 students among first world nations. Yet on the other end, we have American higher education, with most of the top universities in the world located in the United States and a large influx of foreign students. It's costly, but it is high quality- a demonstration of capitalism perhaps. Be careful in making sweeping generalizations about higher education in the US- k12 is suffering, but higher education is very impressive. At first glance, it may seem like capitalism is to blame since the producers are making bad textbooks. But remember where the pressure is coming from- the federal government. NCLB definitely didn't help the situation...

This is an excellent point that is widely ignored today. There is almost fanatical appreciation of Agile and rebuking of waterfall, based on "code metrics" and organizational culture that are internal to the development process and are largely subjective ("software quality" alone is so ridiculously convoluted at this point). The only metric that should be used to determine success is how well the product sold. I'm interested in finding studies that conclude positive or negative correlation between the various software design approaches and net income or units sold.

To original poster, I read the articles on: http://sciencedaily.com/ (all sciences- this is by far my favorite) http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing (computer science) http://mathoverflow.net/ (though this one is usually way above my head) http://extremetech.com/ (engineering) I also have Scientific American subscription, and although it occasionally has very interesting physics articles (the accuracy of which I couldn't tell you), I think there are better magazines.