Re: What courses in university should I take?
Originally Posted by
kamaboko
If math doesn't totally excite you, pass on the CS or CE degree. Every CS dept has a countless array of student bodies strewn all over the place that couldn't cut the math. I'd suggest walking into the college bookstore, head straight to the math section, pick up a calculus book, and if it doesn't give you goosebumps for all the right reasons, look into another major.
Eh, I don't know about that; math is definitely important, but except in a few areas, calculus is probably irrelevant; I would think it's courses like symbolic logic (which may be math and/or philosophy), discrete math, set theory that are probably the most important. Linear Algebra is another good one (although you will probably find it boring as hell). Any pure mathematical course is probably somewhat helpful (in making you think the right way), but don't despair if you aren't good at a few of them. If you can take a course in Numerical Analysis (the art of efficient number crunching on a computer) or Algorithms, jump at it.
Now, my guess would be that you would have to take calculus, but being excited about it isn't a prerequisite to passing it. If you can't pass calculus, then I would rethink a career in programming, but not if it just doesn't particularly appeal to you. As long as you keep out of scientific programming and 3D graphics there aren't many areas where you'll have to use it (off the top of my head, can't think of any at all).
And I don't think not being excited about calculus would be good evidence that you won't like programming. A lot of programmers are also math lovers, but there are definitely programmers who are not all that excited about calculus. As a final note, most math textbooks are very boring and very dense and reading it one time through might not give you a grasp of everything and will likely not be fun. So whether you like reading a textbook is probably not all that good of an indicator of whether you will like calculus.
Of course, if you *do* like math, then that is all the better!
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