I think it would be foolish to assume that this will not happen. There is no logistical reason that Americans should have a permanent foothold on this position.

Fair enough, I'm looking forward to it. Better software at cheaper production cost...great for users.
I don't care if the browser I use is made in China or India as long as it's awesome. Same for my ERP system or the latest bleeding edge game.

I definitely agree with that.

I haven't read the entire thread, but a misconception on the first two pages about CS seems to be that its all about learning how to code and how to be a programmer and I just wanted to state that programming is to CS as using a calculator is to Math. I'm a Junior CS major (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and I can tell that your toughest (and most informative) classes will be theory classes that use no actual programming at all.

Having said that, I do believe that being a Computer Engineering major is, for the most part, harder than CS major. I have several friends in CE and many CS/CE classes are cross listed so I am able take classes with them, so Im able to compare the two fields, even if its only a little bit. There is an exception in my school's curriculum, though. There is a class I'm taking right now, CS 473, which is apparently the single, hardest class in both fields according to pretty much every single CS/CE major ive talked to.

That class does seem to have a lot crammed into it! When I was at uni the topics in it were spread over 3-4 different classes (eg: intro to algorithms, mathematical optimization, graph theory, theory of computation, etc). That was the mid-late 90's though so I guess they have to cram it with more to cover other/newer stuff now...

Juk

The amount of material isn't really that terrible. You do have to learn a huge number of concepts, but those concepts are ultimately easy to comprehend.

The hard part is the homeworks and exams. 90% of the questions on either will be to construct an algorithm, which almost always turn out to be complex and unintuitive, though elegant. You can memorize all the concepts, all the algorithms, and all the proofs presented in class, but if you're terrible at having epiphanies, the homeworks and exams will kill you.

Of course, I cant complain too much considering much of CS is about constructing algorithms anyway. This class is great practice.

What do you guys think of a major like this:

http://www.njit.edu/features/scenean...alsciences.php

http://www.njit.edu/academics/pdf/ne...alsciences.pdf

Thanks in advance. And thanks for all the input already, everyone's posts are really helping me narrow down what I specifically want to do.

Better to have a general and well understood major IMO.

'New' degrees will just confuse employers unless you really want to go into something very specific.

I have to agree. It does sound like they will make it more than just computer science with a concentration on high performance optimizations, but unless you know that is exactly what you want, start more general and focus later.

Also, huge fail by picking a name that still abbreviates to CS.

What about doing a double major in Applied Mathematics and Computer Science? My school offers a pretty nice program in this, and I figure this way I can study math (which I enjoy more than computer programming, personally), but have the CS degree and knowledge for the job market.

Do you think this will open more doors for me? Or will employers frown on this b/c they want someone who focused solely on CS and are afraid that I may not be the best programmer since I spent a lot of time in math courses. But on the other end of things: I personally would really like to get a job where I apply both math and CS (which I thought that Computational Science degree would be), and would love to like work for NASA or at the LHC or design programs/software/even hardware for observatories and "stuff like that"

Sounds very good. Math > everything so always add it if you can. It's really valuable on the job market (at least in Germany). Pure mathematicians are hired left and right in pretty much all fields.

I think you will want to kill yourself with all the hard work that is going to come with that program.

But if you mean how useful it will be, then the answer is "extremely."

I've oddly found that in my programming work I haven't had to use any math more complicated than trigonometry, and even that only really came about doing some complicated stuff with camera positioning.

I'm admittedly in a pretty obscure field (motion capture / biomechanics) which requires fairly advanced math (quintic splines, direct linear transformation), so I have an appreciation for it. It probably would have been easier had I learned any of this at university.

I also do a fair amount of statistics-based "math" like regression analyses and grouped variance to find equivalencies between different populations, which I'm not sure is "math" but is logic-based all the same.

this is very similar to what I did (Pure Maths and CS). I don't have any experience actually getting a job with it (played poker for a few years and doing a MSc now) but it seems like it qualifies me for virtually every position that wants entry-level mathematicians or programmers, which definitely increases the possibilities open to me.

The workload wasn't huge, maybe more than a single major CS degree but definitely less than people I know who did engineering.

Based on what you say it sounds good like a good choice for you.

I just want to thank everyone for their contributions to this thread. I am a horrendously indecisive person and this discussion has really helped me narrow down and figure out what it is that I want to study in school, and also gave me a good perspective on the career climate in CS and CS related fields.

Good post.