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Quick question,

I'm a senior in high school and I'm thinking, at this point, I want to program video games after college. I already have experience with programming because I go to a vocational school for computer programming. I have two potential majors I could take in college, Computer Science or Game Development. Even though game dev is wayyy more up my alley, I've heard that people that take game dev in college have a harder time getting a job in the industry than the people that take computer science.

Is this true?

What actual courses would you be doing as a game dev major vs as a computer science major? If they're more relevant to what you want to do, you should do that.

The courses for game dev seem much better suited to what I want to do, but I'm just wondering if companies would rather hire a computer science major than someone that took game dev.

Why choose?  Dual major!   :ninja:

cs degree and make games in your free time to build up a nice portfolio

thats what im doing anyway

+1 for Computer Science degree. If you really enjoy making games you can do it in your free time and the better understanding of programming will make it a smoother process.

You should link to the curriculum or something so people have a better idea of what's in the game dev degree. Chances are, job-wise, you'd be better off getting a CS degree. I'd extend the "do games outside of school" to "you probably won't actually learn much in either degree, everything you learn will have to be self taught. The degree is just a fancy piece of paper used as the bare minimum requirement to get a job and as a way to increase your pay by ~10k a year."

yar that is the sad truth. I haven't learned a whole lot from school.

which is why we need to return to the days of apprenticeships and reinsert learning into the workplace rather than leave it to these separate entities.

you should major in gender studies

I agree, 90% of my learning involved working with other coders on games who taught me. That and self-teaching.

I'm really just doing school for the paper and anything I can exploit from the program (co-op positions)

I spent a year at one of those rip-off tech schools, a year at a "traditional" university, and now I'm wrapping up week two at DigiPen. I'd be willing to discuss the pros and cons of all of your options further, if you'd like.

 :coffee:

I'm double-majoring in robotics engineering and a game development thing. If the program at your prospective school is anything like the one here, stay away from the games major. You'll learn a lot of it faster and better by studying computer science, anyway.

Is the uni education (especially the CS) so bad in the US? I thought that here in Czech Republic it would also be just a paper needed to get a job but I actually learned quite a lot of useful stuff in the first year (especially about how HW works - circuits -> logic gates -> automatons -> CPUs, or how OSes work - filesystems, scheduling, caching)...

no, game design programs are just really young and they have no idea how to teach it

Well, having attended two schools for CS, I'll say that the quality varies greatly depending on the school.

Some schools treat Computer Science as "the science of computers" and some treat it as "software engineering".  Personally, I'm of the camp that computer science as "the science of computers" is the way it should be done.  Software engineering is something that should be learned by doing, but learning the science portion is much better suited to the classroom portion.

I'd say learn computer science.  If you decide you don't want to make games, you'll have a degree that could get you a job in a different industry.  With the game degree, you'd be rather fucked.

I choose neither!

Art and film degree for the win!

He said game development though, not design - I'm imagining stuff like 3D graphics, AI, real-time network programming, relevant math-stuff, etc. rather than a wanky useless design major.

My degree was a pretty even mix of useful games-related programming/engineering stuff and fucking useless UI design, web-design, etc. courses, and I wouldn't recommend something like that. If it's actually focused on actually, y'know - developing stuff, I can't see how that would be a drawback to do it over a CS major.

In my career as a programmer (non game), I've had one coworker that had a game programming degree.  He's the only person I've worked with that is currently unemployed.  The way I see it, the game programming degree is going to limit you to game programming jobs.  Where as computer science doesn't limit you.

Dont worry about what its going to teach you, it wont matter.  Chances are you'll have to learn whatever skills you need on the job.

Far more important than your degree is your resume.  If you go in for your first job and the only thing on your resume is your degree, you wont be getting a job. There are tons of graduates, you wont stand out.  You need an internship, I pet project worth noting, open source work, stuff you can put on your resume.

The guy I mentioned was doing QA when we worked together, his game programming degree didn't give anyone enough confidence to let him write code.

w/e i meant that

I'd say about 30% of my game development courses were actually useful. The other ones were useful because they required no work so I could pour the extra time into developing games on the side. The real value of school is paying to have 4 years where you're socially allowed to not have a job and sit on your computer all day. Take advantage of it and you will reap what you sew. Expect any school to teach you everything you need and you're just setting yourself up for disappointment.

If you're just thinking about it from a corporate perspective, then yes the CS major is more valuable. But then, why would you want to think about it from the perspective of a horrible monster like a corporation?

Well, it sounds like Computer Science is the smarter choice. Maybe sacrificing some enjoyment will be better for the long-term picture.  ::)


That really sucks because I've had a co-op in an IT and I hated it.



That's pretty cool because DigiPen was one of the schools I was considering. What is it like?

In general, I think the most valuable thing about my "education" vs things I learned myself.... all the things I learned that I wasn't interested in learning, which.. later in my career.. seeemed to pop up.   Graduating college.. I had this notion that I hated databases they were dumb, and I didn't want to work with them.  My last job I worked with a database system will nearly a billion rows of data, big aix oracle boxes.  Job before that.. postgres, sqlserver and oracle.  (first job had no db stuff).  Current job.. most sql server.  Plug I dabble in some mysql for my own projects, relatively simple though.. high score table and such.

So.. dont take classes for things you want to learn, you'll learn that yourself anyway.  take classes you dont want to learn.

My superior did game development in college, and he's now highly paid and well in demand. Game developers are either:
1. Really hardworking people who take on the most difficult form of programming.
2. Really lazy people who just want to play games all day.

Maybe not true, but that's what the degree says.

I did electrical + telecommunications engineering. I got in with barely an interview, because science and engineering people have a very high performance record in the software industry. A psychologist who takes a software job gets this "oh, this guy can't get a good job" look. A lawyer or biochemist who takes a software job gets an "oh wow" look.

It really doesn't matter what you take. If you're here, chances are you've got a lot of practical software dev experience under your belt and are automatically worth as much as a guy who did a degree + a year's experience.

Just take something as difficult as you can manage, preferably a little relevant.

Of course, this assumes that a proper computing person will be reviewing your application. HR can be fucking stupid and will shortlist people based on how many programming languages you put on your cover letter.

CS major is probably better both from the perspective of actually learning useful things and the perspective of being able to get a job after college, or at least that was my reasoning when choosing this route. I don't think the university I go to (UMD College Park) even offers any game dev courses anyway, however there is a "Digital Cultures and Creativity" program that teaches you about Facebook and "creative digital expression" (and also gives you a free iPad and better dorm so I should have enrolled in it instead.)

So far, DigiPen is pretty awesome. However, I think that some would say the list of pros is of equal length as the list of cons. This of course, depends on what type of person you are. The school is very difficult. I already have four to six classes worth of homework most nights and we're already forming teams that will be working on full-year game projects. I have class mon-fri, five of my eight classes are computer science related, and I'm loving all of it. The down side comes from the massive work load and possibly the social level of some of the people that you will have to work with. Again, this varies from person to person.

People who are more social end up hanging at the University of Washington which is about twelve minutes away.

I certainly hope that the quality varies from college to college. I had originally applied to my university in the hopes of being a computer science major, since my university is so full of itself with classical and jazz despite the growing electronic music scene, but quickly dropped out of that major because of the faculty in that department being unwilling to help me out. Half of the full-time faculty literally couldn't even speak English!

Something to think about:
  . CS degrees are more respected
  . they've been around longer
  . Game Design degrees haven't had as much time to mature

You can learn a lot about game design on your own, buying books, coming here, making games, reading blogs. But University can teach you how to learn. CS degrees have had more practice doing that.

I did CS at UIUC. It's an excellent program. I wasn't taught programming, mostly theoretical stuff, which I think is the way to go. Programming is dreadful to learn through lectures or whatever, just dive in. That's what we were forced to do. We were given a task, sample output, and which programming language to use.

Game design is best learned making games, and you don't a formal education to do that.

If you already know how to make your way around making games, then just go with programming and find out what the game degree people are learning and take a look for yourself. If you don't know your way around making games, I would still suggest choosing programming and researching game design on your own time and building a resume.

I just spent 3 months doing QA to build up my resume with about a dozen other people that just graduated with game degrees.  The only difference between them and me is that I can get a $25-30/hr programming job with my degrees to buy game assets and they will be struggling to pay rent.

Don't go to school, teach yourself at home. Self-taught players in either field will always be preferred over those who have a degree. A degree indicates that you are taking the half-hearted approach because many people are entirely capable of teaching themselves how to be competent in those fields. Don't forget that by earning a degree you will be saturated with debt for at least a decade. Basically going to school is retarded. Unfortunately the previous generation spouted off rhetoric about how you "have to get an education!" which is complete bullshit, and you probably aren't going to read any of this because you are just an unmotivated white trash sucker who spent his entire life playing video games, fuck I don't care do whatever you want.

neither a cs degree or a game dev degree will make you a better game developer or a better programmer, however, a cs degree will at least allow you to get a job as a programmer in case you can't survive as an indie, so i'd say go with the cs degree, if you have to do a degree at all

for the record i majored in biochemistry, so take my advice with a grain of salt. my brother is majoring in cs though and from what i gather from his work they aren't actually teaching him anything useful. he's about to graduate this year, with a four-year degree in cs, and still hasn't programmed a single full-length program (i means something of more than 10,000 lines of code), so i kind of worry that he's not actually being taught programming

You don't learn how to program in computer science. In computer science they teach you how to build a computer out of rocks and other pointless shit. I'm entirely serious.

This is completely fucking true.

Knowing how a simple parser works helps when you are trying to learn a new programming language. Also knowing the principles of linear/quadratic growth helps during code optimization. This is stuff a proper CS degree will teach you, and it will make you a better programmer in the long run.

I am not sure what a Game Development program will teach you, so I can't really comment on it. Just be aware the people who make the decision to hire you may have no idea how hard game development is.

You will end up with a prestigious job in the industry texturing the soles of a shoe in an EA sports game.

Based on a true story (not mine).

yeah i believe game dev classes tend to be more 'practical' but they tend to teach you stuff that you need to get a job in the industry, rather than stuff you need to make games as an indie. eva once told me that most game companies have a single guy just to model the guns in a fps game. he's the "gun guy". blizzard, in starcraft 2, even had a guy just to do the water, he was the "water guy". that's literally all he did, worked for 3 years on making the water look nice

honestly the absolute best degree if you want to go into indie game development would be to major in either marketing or business, or both (with an emphasis on guerrilla marketing and small business). those are the skills indies need the most

For what it's worth, I felt my time in University getting my CS degree was really valuable. There are so many little things you pick up along the way that you *don't* learn on the job, and it's a great opportunity to spend time learning to meet deadlines, to communicate better, and to be an altogether more rounded developer.

When it helped me land a job at a studio, I also felt like it gave me a leg up compared to some of the existing employees who had never been through some of these courses. When you can show somebody how to make their closest_point_on_spline() function 100x faster by using the Newton's Method you learned in your 4th year at college, people give you a bit more respect :)

I wouldn't trade that time for anything.

If you want to get a degree get a CS degree. It is the same as a Game Dev degree except that you don't come across like the idiot who decided to major in game dev rather than a real major. Maybe that's elitism or something but even if you think so it's still true. If you somehow don't get that dream job of being served coffee at valve while making half life 5000 one pixel at a time then you can fall back on an actual job with your CS degree.

Heh. That was pretty much my line of thinking when I went to school for programming. I imagined myself saying I have a BS in game dev, rolled my eyes and signed up for CST.

Honestly I'm just doing it so I can work abroad. If I wanted to live in north america all my life I probably wouldn't have bothered.

Whoa, that's a bit extreme now. I mean, I agree that CS degrees are BS, but they do teach you skills. If you haven't improved at all, then you've been ripped off.

And while most programming degrees don't really get as far as teaching OOP (properly), they do teach you things like how to set up your compiler or force you to learn how pointers work.

I'm a significantly better programmer because of formal education; it taught me how to break down difficult tasks, how to abstract out things, how to design a system to be easily debugged, how to isolate and test systems, proper project management, handling those horrible pointers, version control, work flow, optimization (and what isn't worth sacrificing for 'optimization'), multithreading, etc. And that was only a small part of a comp sci course. I would never have learned those things outside of uni.

Game design courses are useful too, if done right. For the most part, they're taught by people who don't actually design games, but those who want to analyze games. Without the proper tools. A good design course teaches you game theory, how people's pleasure part of the brain works, mechanisms for balance.


Of course, I do agree that there are better ways for breaking into the games industry. Electrical engineering is probably as good as a CS degree.. you do actual serious shit programming like image processing, robotics, AI, operating systems, security (and how people break them). I've seen people in EE outdo CS programmers.

Mathematics degrees are awesome. Toady One of Dwarf Fortress did math and it shows in how he designs the mechanics of DF. Math is a lot like philosophy, except that you break reality down into things that can be explained in formulas. Perfect for games. (well, a true mathematician would disagree in that there's just so much more depth to it than that, but if that's all you take out of it, you'll learn more than you need to know)

Other engineering degrees are good too. If you listen to Will Wright's lectures, he approaches everything from an engineering perspective, breaking everything down into mechanics. Chris Crawford did physics.

IMO, business degrees are even more overrated than CS degrees. My father did a MBA and degree in economics, wasn't worth it. You can pick up everything in business faster than you pick up C++.

well i guess i was assuming that he already knew how to program. i agree that if you don't know basic programming things a cs degree will teach you some of those basics. but you could also pick up those basics from self-training and a $30 book, or even free tutorials online, you don't need to spend $100,000 on a college education and go into heavy debt for perhaps the rest of your life to learn how to program

University education costs 100k USD and it sucks compared to the euro universities? LOL :D

I personally prefer not to make any decision if I can't decide between one choice or another. Indecisiveness usually is a clue that I haven't sorted out my own direction yet to know which choice would benefit me in the way I desire it to. I hate how most people pressure others into picking a line of work, or whatever. It's not right to shepherd others for the sake of it because where you lead them may end up hurting them. Higher education is abused by everyone that wants to throw money at stuff to solve their own personal issues. If you know for certain that you want the stuff that a college provides then it makes sense to invest in it, but most just do it because everyone tells them they should. Where will this lead?!?!

it depends on the university, but generally it costs between 10,000 and 30,000 a year in the US. even more for ivy league schools like princeton and harvard. if you go to community college it's cheaper though. i went to rutgers, where it cost me 22k per year (that included dorm and food plan), *back in the 90s*. i can't imagine how much more expensive it is now

I dont see where he mentioned american university.

From what I gather, european computer science education is just as bad as american.

You don't even need to buy ebooks or other shit like that, you can just pirate huge packs of game development ebooks. And since studios will give preference to self-taught programmers, the best education is essentially free.

Basically what we are arguing over is money versus effort. You could spill out a hundred grand on loans to get a piece of paper that says you have certification, or you could spill your guts out, teach yourself how to do things, and have your own examples and portfolio to show for it. That will almost guarantee you a programming job, especially if you have released a game to the public.

Money can't buy everything.

zalzane: I don't think so... I'm currently studying the Czech Technical University, Faculty of Information Technology and it's great. We're learning some very useful stuff from all the aspects of computer technology and then some specialized stuff depending on what you choose as your specialization. I only pay the dorm, living costs and transport (much lower than in US, though the average income is also lower) + we get accommodation scholarship (depending on the distance from your home) + bonus money if you have good grades. But from the next year on we will probably have to pay tuition fees but this is still changing. It's one of the hot politics topics.

i'm not saying whether this is true or not, but you realize that you can't actually know whether your education was good or not until you have to use it, right? while you're learning something everything seems useful. but in 10 years, when you actually are working and thinking about what you learned in college and whether it was useful or not, *then* you'll be in a position to know whether your education was good or not. you can't know that now, because every student believes their education is great because that's what their teachers tell them

Other than in some impractical epistemological sense, I think you're wrong about that.

It's been about 8 years since I graduated from my CS degree (Warwick University). I already knew how to program, from teaching myself. A lot of what I learnt on my course has definitely been useful to me (working as a game developer) and I could tell at the time that it would be useful and gave a better foundation for understanding computation/computers and how they could be used.

Pursuing a college degree will likely prove beneficial in understanding some theoretical concepts. The more one puts into it, the more one will get out of it. Hopefully one puts in enough to graduate and feel like one has earned much more than just a piece of paper officiating one's satisfactory completion of the required units to earn some degree.

When attending college work with students who look to improve themselves. Work with instructors who want to help you succeed. Not often will you find experienced professionals whose primary interest is seeing you be successful in your pursuits and who are paid to be available to you. So really try to take advantage of the resources that the university provides, including their networked computer labs, ACM Digital Library and human resources.

Universities provide opportunities for one to work with researchers, classmates and to receive an education that may be difficult or impossible to attain otherwise. Some people may feel that the University was a waste of their time, and indeed if they don't leverage their opportunities and commit themselves to development it can be a poor use of time and money.

In attending an university one will undoubtedly encounter students who are there just for the piece of paper, because they don't know what else to do, or less motivated students. Keep an eye out for students who are going some where, work on projects both in and out of class with them. Work on developing your resume. Some of my fellow classmates worked together for a total of some 400 hours on an Android App, they made some 20,000+ sales at $2-4 a piece. Not bad for a couple of students first attempt to get something on their resume. They later presented on their project, sharing with us their challenges and successes, providing other students and instructors an opportunity to ask them questions.

Universities also provide great opportunities for interdisciplinary research. Social networking with others is incredibly valuable, who you know is invaluable for being hired.

If you want to develop video games I highly suggest doing just that. Make them. Start now. Do it often. Always look to improve and learn more about developing video games.

If you attend a university, take what you learn and apply it to your own projects. Definitely practice, practice, practice.

One's ability to program takes time to develop. One can't realistically expect to have piano lessons once a week and become a decent pianist. One needs to practice; The more, the better. Same with programming; a couple courses won't make one a proficient programmer. Some university professors echo this in recommending students spend many hours a week programming outside of class assignments. Practice what you learn in class, experiment. Wrestle with the ideas; immediately implement concepts you learned in class in out-of-class projects. Make use of what you learn. Make class material useful when you learn it, don't wait around and hope it proves useful someday in the future.

Classes and degree's don't auto-magically make one great at some skill; it takes a lot of self-discipline, sacrifice and practice to develop valuable skills.

I'm not too sure what the Game Development major involves; though I'd imagine it would have some overlap with the pursuit of a Computer Science degree. When I look through job postings, either for game development jobs or other tech related jobs, a degree in computer science seems to be most in demand. A Game Development degree may be acceptable for some positions instead of a degree in Computer Science. A degree may help make one more eligible for a job position, but it is one's resume, past related work experience, who one knows, related skills, ability to work well with others and knowledge relevant to the job position that will likely win one favorable job positions.

As other seem to have already said: developing valuable skills takes a lot of work and paying for a degree isn't going to change that. As some of my professors say: college isn't for everybody. A degree in Computer Science may help make more of the job market available to you, both for game development or other tech related jobs, than a degree in Game Development would. However I'd imagine a pursuing a degree in Game Development will provide you with many like minded students, classes would be designed towards helping you towards your particular interest, and Game Development instructors would be particularly valuable to you.

With either degree I think you could be successful in game development, provided you work hard, work smart and always be improving. Seems that a degree in Computer Science is sort of the standard for many tech related jobs, other than for Hardware side related jobs requiring degree's in Electrical Engineering. I don't know how profitable a degree in Game Development is in the job market at this time. Pursuing a degree in Game Development will likely provide you many valuable resources, classes, and people that you could greatly benefit you and your pursuit of game development.

PS. I don't feel like I practice much or work a lot with others. I could have made a lot better use of my time and money. My responsibility, and really my duty, is to do my best.

Best of luck to you and your endeavors.

I don't agree. Ofc most people will end up like some business system programmers and most of the stuff they learned will be useless but that's not the point.

If I wanted to program some embedded device, I would not have any problem with that. I could even design the CPU now. After this semester I would probably even be able to program a compiler or design my own programming language and implement it.

In the first year, I really learned how to use debugger properly and find leaks using valgrind, and not by someone telling me how to do it but by myself because if I didn't, I wouldn't pass the programming lessons. We will also have a few lessons about proper object modelling, software engineering, database management etc. And there will also be some team software projects going on the next semester and the one after it which is going to be an invaluable lesson. And I'm not even talking about all the maths and data structures and algos we will learn (or have learnt).


Edit: and I forgot to say that I'm only talking about the bachelor's degree here which is nothing. In the master's degree there are of course lots of other useful things.

if you study video game i will brutalise you with a long sword and yodel until my heart stops

  remarkably lucid

I'm getting that feeling too. I'm left wondering exactly what might be so different about electrical engineers over computer scientists, since my particular school doesn't really have much distinction between the two of 'em - at least on an "everything before senior year" level, where things finally get a bit different with courses centered around technology rather than mere theory. Everything before than point is more or less the same, as both departments offer courses on digital circuit design and such.

I've heard it said that the engineers are actually barred from taking a lot of computer science courses because they are considered the "easier" derivatives of the same courses they have to take. While I'm all for good discipline at one's craft, usually if a class can convey the same concepts in a less stressful way, that would strike me as the better deal on a time-management level. (Then again, this is coming from someone with a lot of nonschool projects to dedicate to.)

At the same time, maybe this is a choice upon the discipline of computer science itself? Before I migrated over to computer science, I was in a media production and film program. The media production students strike me as having a work ethic that would be much more suited to making games, especially on an art asset and organization level. They lack the programming technique, but they had the drive. Meanwhile, the computer science groups I've been a part of certainly had the programming technique, but projects rarely ever made it off the ground. Perhaps the electrical engineers have that edge over computer scientists where they are actually encouraged to go out and build stuff, rather than just doing some math and a few little example programs?

i will have you removed from 24 hour fitness, by force if necessary, if you choose to study video game. further, if you attend full sail i will menace your family pets with mean stares and menacing bicep curls.

i live 15 minutes from full sail

learn programming microchips and electrotechnics, from there you can do a lot of cool jobs including Nasa or evil mastermind.
And you will know programming from the insides out

You can also become a brain surgeon and an astronaut too! :crazy:
Want to build a time-machine? No problem!

Lon's post brings up some incredibly good points that have been glossed over a bit (thank you Lon!!). Yes, the university is mostly about getting a piece of paper. Yes, the classes themselves might sometimes be a waste of time. But the opportunity to network, meet potential future partners, and get specialized help from experienced teachers is maybe more than half the value of the education overall.

My bachelor's is in International Relations so erm.. may give me a different perspective and focus, but not so practical with the actual developing. I've been doing self-taught quite a lot but it's hard keeping that up with a full-time job (another secret bonus of school: TIME). Now I'm considering doing another bachelors in CS for all of the reasons listed above-- time + focus, expert help + advice, meeting other passionate learners. Getting out into the real world a little bit probably helps you be a better student, I've got a lot more humility and patience now than when I was 18 (and a LOT more fear of winding up with a job I don't love). Also I'm not even thinking of a Game Design/Dev major because yeah, there just aren't enough good professors... maybe a few good programs but they're expensive, hard to get into, and still not a guaranteed fit.

Practically speaking- has anyone heard anything about UBC's Computer Science program?
They have a 20-month "second degree" track which can be had for about $50k... looks quite interesting and Vancouver is a decent "indie" city from what I understand

I lived in Vancouver for 29 years. Actually I'm in Kyoto Japan now from a job I got through the UBC Japan CO-OP program which has a strong tie to the CS department.

The UBC CS degree is ok. I go to BCIT for CST (2 year programming program) and we have a ton of UBC grads taking CST at BCIT after they got their CS degree because they can't actually program. They are really good at the computer science aspect though. Typical BCIT students can make a program but have a terrible grasp on how a computer works.

So if you go to UBC for CS make sure you spend plenty of extra time programming so you don't get stuck in the world of theoretical.


Also I completely agree about the networking aspect. I got a lot of cool jobs and met cool people through the school.

As for the indie scene in Vancouver. I used to be pretty involved. Spent a lot of time at the initial full indie meetups but since then they have been infested with students in various game programs coming there to portfolio bomb the place. Also it's a little too business-y for me.

There's good people out there to work on projets with and have discussions but in my case I met none of them through game related functions.

My opinion as someone with a B.S degree in Comp. Sci:  if all that you get out of a university education is a piece of paper and maybe some "basic programming skills" and personal networking - then you're totally doing it wrong.

My education taught me things I would have never explored on my own. It made me a better communicator, a better programmer, a better planner, a better mathematician, a better writer,  and a better finisher, for starters. All of these things are critical for succeeding at games. It gave me opportunities to collaborate with world-class computer scientists, gave me opportunities to go to conferences and expand my horizons, and gave me lots of opportunities to work with other students on projects that would eventually further my career in games.

Once I got into the game industry (thanks in large part to this degree and the things it helped me produce) my knowledge and experience helped me excel at my job, often beyond people who had been in the industry for years. I can say now, 8 years after graduating that yes, it was definitely worth it, and I would do it again given the choice.

Keep in mind tree things though:
1. You'll get it out of it largely what you put into it.
2. Not every school is equal. Do your research, and find your way into a good one.
3. Despite all this - there will still be lots of holes in your knowledge if you do a traditional CS course. It's a good foundation, but it's going to be up to you to fill in the rest.

If anyone tells you that all you'll get out of a University CS education is a piece of paper and some "basic programming skills", you should  probably question whether they actually went through one of these programs, which one, and how much effort they put in. And then weigh their advice accordingly.

In a serious computer science course programming is considered a primitive task. What you learn is exploring the properties and concepts dealing with logical storing and shifting bits.

A school teaching you how to make computers out of rocks must be awesome, never heard of it.

"logic storing and shifting bits"

 :concerned:

i shift my bits a lot these days which has contributed to my decline, as a poster

Your balls are made up of bits, if you know what I mean.

Your best teachers will be Technical and Totoreals subforums here, in all likelihood, as well as open-source projects.

Yeah, I actually did programming electives because they were the easy choice. Learn quantum physics in 2 weeks or do virtual memory management in 3 weeks? Control a generator's speed or write a network simulator? Yeah, I'll take the programming stuff; it's easier and won't kill me.

There is a difference in that they don't teach you things like high level programming, OOP, databases, how to build your own compiler/programming language.

Engineering doesn't always involve building things either. In fact, it's actually worse than CS. An engineering lecturer can actually get away with not knowing how to do anything but theory... the whole "If you can't do, teach." If the uni doesn't teach implementation in CS, chances are it's not going to teach implementation in Engineering either.

That's why I say always go for the hardest university you could get into.

Media's actually good too. My sister did Mass Communications, now she's working with business development because it requires a personal discipline/work ethic that you don't get from more theoretical degrees. Mass Communications teaches you absolutely nothing, it's just a course in doing things.