BA in Comp Sci degree questions

[theophilus]

Hey guys!
So I have been doing various types of web development work off and on for a few years now at a preliminary level. The more I progress, the more I see further benefit in advancing and refining my programming skills and techniques (most recently, I've been seeing it as it comes to best practices in development (code structure/design, better grasp of object orientation, etc.); for those of you who know the field well, I've been using mostly procedural PHP and referencing w3schools.com a lot more than I should ))

So that leads to the question at hand:
If I was to pursue something like TESC's comp sci degree (or Excelsior or Charter Oak. w/e), how effective are the courses in training best programming practices, structures, and other practical things that will be of use to me?
is that kind of stuff covered, or what would one expect in this area?
To anyone who has been in my position before, how does a Comp Sci degree prepare you for designing/building web software c.f. desktop/server software (I'm seeing a lot of C++ in the requirements for the classes, which isn't bad, but the internet runs on PHP, Python, MySQL, Javascript, HTML5, CSS3, and the like. I understand many of the principles transfer, but how has your experience been of that transfer?)
And perhaps of great importance, are the courses up to date? I have a bit of a fear of signing up for something like this and being handed a textbook for HTML 3 or Windows 95 or something like that . Because of the quick moving pace of so much in the digital world, I would like to have some knowledge as to the level of practicality and usability that I'll receive from this kinda thing. A lot of me is a big fan of the "just let the internet or a book train you" style of learning (which has been my experience thus far), but I think there are a lot of ways to get gaps in ones education in this manner (as I feel I'm experiencing to a certain degree, now).

So I guess the question becomes, is it worth it to pursue a degree like this, or should I just try to refine my skills with internet searches, books, and StackExchange QA answers?

thanks for the help!
Josh

[UptonSinclair]

Unless you have a bunch of credits you hope to transfer, you might want to check out Fort Hays State University. They have a degree focused on web development and they are very affordable. I haven't taken any of their classes, so I am just going off of what little I know of their program. Alternatively, you might use many their courses to build your own computer science degree at TESC. Fort Hays is liberal about their acceptance of exam credits, but nowhere near as liberal as the big three. One bonus is their BS in web development only requires college algebra and not Calculus like TESC.

[benjenkinsv95]

As far as best programming practices go, TESC has a required data structures course(which I am currently taking), which kind of veers off from actual data structures in the beginning of the course to talk about Software Engineering. I assume this is to make sure any student who goes through a TESC degree is taught best practices for working in the real world. If you take the right courses you will learn about agile development and the SDLC which is useful knowledge when working at company's. They get tacked on as many job requirements and I hear them talked about around the office every so often.

They do have a data structures course as I have previously mentioned. These courses should be taught inside a language that has access to memory through pointers, that is why you probably see C++ requirements. This is to make sure that you know how to build a data structure to meet your needs. This can come in handy if you ever need to do any crazy optimizations. Which you might! If you are planning on web development, remember that crappy phones will be where a decent amount of your customers are viewing your sites from, so a phone with limited memory and a slow processor can force you into crazy optimizations...

There are a lot of practical courses and concepts taught at TESC. Sadly there are a decent amount that I feel are not taught at TESC, so while i'm taking courses with them, I have also been going through a bucket list of courses that most good programmers take in more traditional courses. My bucket list consists of: "Compiler Construction, Programming Languages ,Switching Theory and Automata, Abstract Algebra, Linear Algebra, Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Programming Paradigms"

I would suggest taking a "Programming Languages" course(yes, this is a course title. No, I'm not telling you to just go run off and learn random languages, which is fun to do), Switching Theory and Automata(this can make you look like the office badass when you start showing off your mastery of Regex and text processing), and Programming Paradigms a course that will teach you the five main styles of programming(that's right, there are other things out there besides OOP). I would suggest looking for those courses online, they are great classes to take which TESC misses and these skills could help you no matter where you go as a programmer.

As far as seeing a lot of C++ requirements, TESC is trying to teach you how to be a programmer. Each language has it's upsides and it's downsides. I personally used to work in web languages all the time and have a decent amount of experience with PHP, Python, Javascript, HTML 5 and CSS3. That being said, PHP and Javascript are terrible languages that were poorly hacked together. They are kind of the office joke. I would still choose PHP over Perl any day. Also, I love the power of Javascript, JQuery and AJAX. But the languages were very poorly hacked together... That is probably one of the main reasons that you do not see schools forcing you to use those languages. Also, C++, C, Lisp, and assembly language are all good languages to know. They will really help build your knowledge of programming at a deeper level, which you will be able to apply to the designs of your web programs.

I do not know how much web knowledge you currently have, but I would suggest using a mixture between Learn to code | Codecademy Online Tutorials and thenewboston.org to learn the basic web languages. They really helped me back in the day.

My data structures course is extremely up to date. It kind of surprised me honestly. Also my C++ course is up to date as the book is over C++11 which came out just three years ago. I can't speak for the C course or Discrete Math course that I am taking, as C they both do not really change that much.

You can learn quite a bit online, but you have the same mentality I had back in the day. The "I need to learn PHP, Python, Javascript, HTML 5 and CSS3 if I want to be a good web developer". While that is true, there is so much more to programming that you will miss out on if you are just focusing on learning how to build websites. I definitely suggest learning the core material of a computer science degree. I think it would help you a lot.

But in all honesty, you don't need to be a good programmer to be a web developer. So if you don't really want to know how your programs work at a deeper level, you can make a job living at the top level of the abstraction. Where you will never have to really understand how your data structures, sockets, variables, or objects work at a deep level. You can get a job and be a succesful developer with the philosophy of "I typed the syntax right, so my code will do this" and never have to even understand the beautiful way that floats and doubles are being stored and how you could convert them to an Integer. But I would suggest learning the topics that most programmers know from a good computer science program, they will make you appreciate your program so much more and help make you code with better respect to how your processor will handle it.

I would also suggest against UptonSinclairs theory that a degree that only needs college algebra is a bonus. Math will be one of your best tools when programming. If you don't teach yourself a decent amount of math, you could end up as a code monkey, while your colleague tackles audio processing, visual processing, crazy optimizations inside a virtual world being hosted on your website, etc... You could really screw yourself out of the more fun and interesting jobs if you treat math as an enemy instead of a tool. Just my observation of the programmers at work.

I can't really tell you if the degree is worth it. I think it is, but I am also supplementing it with other courses that are a tad bit tougher, and our goals are different. I do not plan to end up inside a web development field, I plan to be a software developer, programmer analyst, or video game developer. In the end this degree will be a good amount of knowledge and a piece of paper to help me get through Human Resource departments when applying for jobs in the future. Getting a good job without a degree will not be the easiest task, even for programming. Most jobs seem to require the degree so it might be a good choice to get a computer science degree to just get an interview.

I hope this helped answer some of your questions.

[NumberSix]

I was in a similar situation. I decided to get a Bachelors in Liberal Arts and then go for a Masters in IT. I’m studying for my Masters now. I’m getting the degree for my resume, and hope to go back later to fill in gaps on my own. I view getting a CS degree and learning to be a good programmer as two different things. If you take classes full time the workload will be heavy and it is like “drinking from a fire hose”. Your courses will really just cover basics of any topic and each topic takes years to master. If you take web development classes you will find that you know more than is covered in class. I use them for my easy As.

The reason you see requirements for C++ is that the programs will start with C++ in the intro course, so that is what they expect students to know. Also, it is a language the faculty knows. The program I’m in uses Java, but I’ve been able to avoid it so far.