Software Engineering vs. Computer Science

[Apoorv Agrawal]

Engineers, 

"Software Engineering vs. Computer Science" is a difference that may not be very clear at start, albeit one that I've been feeling and diverging on. There's a couple of questions that come to mind and I thought I could ask your opinion on this - 

Background - Software Engineering covers the domains of web-apps, mobile-apps dev. Computer Science is more Algorithms, Data Structures, AI/Machine Learning kinda stuff.

Case at Point

1. Following Nicholas' recent post it occurs to me that both the options that he sought were in the Software Engineering domain. Is that a trend in Singapore? Are those seen as the sexy/fun things?

2. I'm curious to know the distribution of NUSHackers - if given a choice to classify themselves in either one of the buckets (choosing both allowed) which of those buckets would you pick.

[Angad Singh]

Pure algorithms and Computer Science, however I like it and want to spend my time with, will not enable me to write great software that is bug free. There are just too many dependencies in the real world and if you place a pure algorithms guy where I am right now (building a consumer facing Mobile app : Skype), he will never be able to understand the wide number of cases that he needs to take care of for his algorithm to work.

On the other hand, a Software Engineer with a back-pack of good frameworks, good SE skills, meticulousness in writing bug-free code that works well in all real-world cases can probably ship a product to users that works. 

So : Algorithms is a subset of Software Engineering. That being said, I put myself in the SE bucket. 

Angad

[James Yong]

I'm definitely not in the algo bucket. I cut out hard algo problems -- and outsource them to the algo people :>

Best Regards,
James

"Brick walls are there to keep out those who do not want it badly enough." - Dr Randy Pausch

[Koh Wen Loong Nicholas]

Algos may not be sexy, but I can see their importance. In fact I think they're the way forward - stuff like tripit and pocket that take the load off the consumer will make all the difference in the future, I feel.

It just so happens that I started with very front facing coding cause I am pretty design-oriented. And because the first PC magazine I remembering reading was about web design.

So... Where do you hire an algo guy? Hahahaha...

Regards,
Nicholas

Sent from my Windows Phone

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From: James Yong
Sent: 19/05/2012 07:36
To: nusha...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [NUSHackers] Software Engineering vs. Computer Science

[Bach Le]

Being a game developer means putting one foot in the software engineer bucket, another in the Computer Science one and dive the head in the art bucket. IMO, game development is an art disguised itself as science and engineering.

It's the joy of writing truly efficient code, pushing the hardware limit, knowing how linear search can beat binary search. But it's also the joy of making machines seem more human: imprecise, irrational, undeterministic.

[Apoorv Agrawal]

Great thoughts. Thanks for your input. 

Bach, thanks for your input of game development - sounds exciting. 

James playing it smart, eh! I think the learning curve in the sphere of algorithms is steeper and barriers to entry are higher. 

Angad, Nicholas - http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120528-how-algorithms-shape-our-world 

Nicholas -  there's no shortage of positions that need pure algorithm engineers (and the BBC article is a classic case in point). 

Angad - IMO, in the sphere of computer science - algorithms start becoming important for scaling up an enterprise for business. for instance, we probably need little/no background on algorithms to start a website (like fb) - but to scale it we might need efficient algorithms and data-management.