What college courses?

[nikki]

Hey guys!

What college courses do you think you have found most useful or would've wanted to take if you had the time? Specifically, which ones do you think would help the most with graphics and such? I'm a freshman right now, and I find that it would probably be most helpful to take the more 'theoretical' courses, ones that you need more discpline, academic rigour and a 'traditional' syllabus to learn to the deepest level, rather than ones whose topics you could self-learn (i.e., say 'computational geometry' vs. 'how to program in Python' or such (completely hypothetical example - an entire course on how to program in Python would indeed be rather silly)). As such I was wondering about making sure to take some more theory-involving math courses, ones that may include a lot of proofs and such, and also considering the more theoretical computer science courses such as ones about the theory of algorithms or cryptography. Do you think that even if such material would not directly pertain to one's future specific line of work, one would benifit from the skills gained by thinking about such problems?

At the same time I also find myself interested in the hardware, the physical abstractions that such software abstractions run on in the real world, how you would build layer upon layer of abstraction starting just from our model of electricity and magnetism to create a computing machine. This was mainly after I self studied some electricity stuff in high school and tried making silly things with the Arduino. It seems as if there are too many cool things to check out to fit in four years of college, which is why I wonder about what the best things to check out would be.

Of course, different colleges would have different names for similar courses, or even different courses entirely. All I seek is just a general idea of the topics that you think would benefit one more if they were studied in an academic context as opposed to a self-study one. And also, different people would have found the same things useful to different levels based on what they went on to do after college, which I guess would make it more interesting to read your comments.

[cybereality]

I always wished I had taken (or rather finished) Computer Science. I ended up going to school for art, which is great since I can basically make a game all by myself (which is what I wanted). But now in terms of work prospects I find the lack of an engineering degree holds me back. Although I have considerable work experience, a lot of places still want to see a degree (in CS, Math, etc.). I'm still fairly young though, and could go back to school I guess but who has the time or money? But if I could easily go back to school, then definitely comp sci. It just opens a lot of doors if you want to pursue software development in any field.

[Kojack]

As such I was wondering about making sure to take some more theory-involving math courses,

You can never know too much maths.
It's useful to all fields of computing.

[iblues1976]

I always believe that it would had been on my best interest to have done 2 majors. I did CS. I should had CS. While, my master is in CS and currently doing a PhD in CS, I have to agree the more math you know, the better.

Once I'm done with my PhD, I think I'm going to try to add some more math. There is never enough math to have...

If you like computer graphics, I think a double major in CS and Math is the most beneficial. In my opinion.