• Question: What do I need to learn to become a computer-scientist?

    Asked by sebadam to Mike, Pip, Tianfu, Tim, Tom on 3 Jul 2012.
    • Photo: Tim Stephens

      Tim Stephens answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      You need to develop a logical understanding of problem solving.
      We have software engineers at my work (in fact, I sit right next to them). The most important thing is to understand how to solve problems, you can learn whatever programming language when you need it.
      Do you program computers right now? If you want to do that as a career, you should give it a go – it can be great fun!

    • Photo: Tom Lister

      Tom Lister answered on 3 Jul 2012:

      As with any career, you need to be able to enjoy it enough to want to do it 5 days a week. If you can manage that, then you will learn all you need to know.

      Qualifications wise, I think maths is probably important. Physics is good for graphics things, because you need to think in 3D space. And enough patience to make sure you don;t make any mistakes, or to spend 6 weeks looking for a single spelling mistake amongst lines and lines of code (or is that just me?)

Comments

  • Photo: sebadam

    sebadam commented on :

    Hello, and. Well. I am trying to teach myself Java programming and I could eventually lead on to different programming languages such as C or something else. And I would love to do it as a career. And thankyou for telling me! 🙂

  • Photo: sebadam

    sebadam commented on :

    Well, about the patience thing. Depends what program your using (I think) Because the program can point out the mistake that you are doing. Such as a program called “Eclipse” tells you what line you went wrong, although if a program goes wrong that you programmed yourself and the program doesn’t say what line, that is actually a tough job. But good to know what subjects I need to learn! Thanks! 🙂

    • Photo: Tom

      Tom commented on :

      In my experience, I can make a mistake like using > instead of <. Although this is programmatically correct, the programme just doesn't do what I expect it to. These can take a long time to find, but if you had a better approach I'm sure you could avoid this!

      Once you are familiar with one programming language, the other languages are very similar. I would probably start with something more basic (like C) to understand the fundamentals of programming structure and then start producing more fancy things with Javascript or whatever. More importantly though, do the bits you enjoy!

      There are a couple of very good websites that I have used to learn HTML and other languages when building a website of my own.

      • Photo: Tim

        Tim commented on :

        I don’t think C is a great language to start out with. It is widely used, but it’s not very beginner friendly in my opinion.

        A language like Python is probably a good place to start (you may have heard of the RaspberryPi computer, but it’ll run on any computer).

        There’s also the http://stackoverflow.com/ website that has crazy amounts of questions and answers from programmers (our devs use it sometimes to find out answers).

        • Photo: sebadam

          sebadam commented on :

          Oh, I’ll have a look at python aswell as C. I have heard of Python but never seen it, like what it uses to program, And thankyou for linking me to the website I will definately have a look at it! 🙂

      • Photo: sebadam

        sebadam commented on :

        Could you please link me to the websites? I would love to have a look at them 🙂 And yeah. I guess I could learn C but I am already quite into Java and I think I would kinda forget some of it even though I’m pretty sure that most of the stuff that’s in Java would also be in C.

    • Photo: Tim

      Tim commented on :

      Professionals use software called a debugger to find out where their software went wrong.
      If your program compiles and runs, but crashes later, the debugger can help you find out where and why the program isn’t working. It also lets you set things called ‘breakpoints’ that pause the program whilst it’s doing stuff so that you can see what values your variables are set to and can make sure that different parts are working properly. I’m sure that a full-featured IDE like eclipse has one available.

      It’s a rewarding career choice – I wish I was better at programming than I am.