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  1. #1
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    Question Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    Hi,

    I’m still young and very ambitious; I have taken the decision in my life that I want to study computer science and maths. I’m currently finishing off BTEC IT expecting to receive D*D*D and an A in A Level maths and possibly an A in AS further maths. I’m considering in taking a degree in computer science, except that after finishing the degree (thinking of the future now) I want to do a career in CPU architectural design or become a quantitative analyst etc… however these are obviously jobs that need you to have extensive past experience. But getting to where you want is not always the answer in life. I just want to hear from people with real world experience and explain how they climbed the pole.

  2. #2
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    Re: Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    I want to do a career in CPU architectural design
    For this, I would be considering a Computer Engineering degree. Note that not all degrees with the same title cover the same topics/areas in the same detail. For my Computer Science degree we did a lot of studies of programming languages, compilers and operating systems but only a 1 semester course on Algorithms. At another University, they hardly touched upon compilers/operating systems but covered algorithms in great detail together with discrete mathematics. Make sure that the degree course for which you finally choose covers the areas you want.
    All advice is offered in good faith only. All my code is tested (unless stated explicitly otherwise) with the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio (using the supported features of the latest standard) and is offered as examples only - not as production quality. I cannot offer advice regarding any other c/c++ compiler/IDE or incompatibilities with VS. You are ultimately responsible for the effects of your programs and the integrity of the machines they run on. Anything I post, code snippets, advice, etc is licensed as Public Domain https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ and can be used without reference or acknowledgement. Also note that I only provide advice and guidance via the forums - and not via private messages!

    C++23 Compiler: Microsoft VS2022 (17.6.5)

  3. #3
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    Re: Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    Thanks for the advice, was the option you chose for yourself the right one?

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    Re: Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    Yes. I chose the particular degree course because of their emphasis on programming languages (pascal fortran 77, algol 68, cobol, c, lisp - including a lot of work on data structures) and system programming (compilers, operating systems etc). My final project was the design and implementation of an operating system for a DEC mini-computer for a specific purpose (used in the teaching of undergrads assembler system programming). Following graduation I did a lot of work with implementing various operating systems onto different hardware platforms (before the days of the universal PC and Windows OS!). Along the way I did some application programming but gravitated more to writing libraries and utilities for others to use. I also undertook some teaching of program languages (pascal, c and then c++). Perhaps the most important thing I learnt from my Computer Science degree was how to learn and understand what I learnt! I self-taught Motorola M68000 assembly language, Windows programming etc. Computing changes quite rapidly and some of what I was taught back then is now obsolete (magnetic core memory, magnetic drums etc - look them up on the Internet and be amazed - 32KB (kilo bytes) was considered a lot!) so being able to keep up-to-date with advances is crucial.
    All advice is offered in good faith only. All my code is tested (unless stated explicitly otherwise) with the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio (using the supported features of the latest standard) and is offered as examples only - not as production quality. I cannot offer advice regarding any other c/c++ compiler/IDE or incompatibilities with VS. You are ultimately responsible for the effects of your programs and the integrity of the machines they run on. Anything I post, code snippets, advice, etc is licensed as Public Domain https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ and can be used without reference or acknowledgement. Also note that I only provide advice and guidance via the forums - and not via private messages!

    C++23 Compiler: Microsoft VS2022 (17.6.5)

  5. #5
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    Thumbs up Re: Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    Quote Originally Posted by 2kaud View Post
    Yes. I also undertook some teaching of program languages (pascal, c and then c++). Perhaps the most important thing I learnt from my Computer Science degree was how to learn and understand what I learnt!.
    Interesting statement, I presume understanding what you have learnt is far better than just remembering what needs to be learnt, as when you come to the working world and a "client" asks for a system to simplify a process you will be able to apply the knowledge you have understood.

  6. #6
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    Re: Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    Quote Originally Posted by gaar321 View Post
    Interesting statement, I presume understanding what you have learnt is far better than just remembering what needs to be learnt, as when you come to the working world and a "client" asks for a system to simplify a process you will be able to apply the knowledge you have understood.
    That's right! When I did IT consultancy I often came across systems/situations in which I was not that familiar but I could apply my overall understanding to enable me to get to grips fairly quickly with them.

    It's like debugging a program. If you understand the principles of debugging a program, the actual debugger you are using doesn't matter that much as it's just a case of looking up how to undertake certain tasks in the debugger you happen to be using at the time. If, however, you just know a certain set of keystrokes for a particular debugger without really understanding what is happening, then using a different debugger is that much harder.
    Last edited by 2kaud; May 29th, 2013 at 05:49 PM.
    All advice is offered in good faith only. All my code is tested (unless stated explicitly otherwise) with the latest version of Microsoft Visual Studio (using the supported features of the latest standard) and is offered as examples only - not as production quality. I cannot offer advice regarding any other c/c++ compiler/IDE or incompatibilities with VS. You are ultimately responsible for the effects of your programs and the integrity of the machines they run on. Anything I post, code snippets, advice, etc is licensed as Public Domain https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ and can be used without reference or acknowledgement. Also note that I only provide advice and guidance via the forums - and not via private messages!

    C++23 Compiler: Microsoft VS2022 (17.6.5)

  7. #7
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    Re: Can i hear from others about real world experience?

    I am proud to tell you that I a loyal user of this site, I have been here for almost 10 years. But I am very sad when I received replies from older users of this site about my question of unit-testing. They provided me correct information but too general and to make me think that C++ is dying out. It is now clear to me that there are tools to generate mock for really hard and complex functions from libraries even COM/DCOM/COM++ so all of them can be unit-tested. The guy didn't tell share with me the tool but I believe all code is generated by a specific tool (it looks like that spider that can run all over the place inside the impl files and extract correctly unit-testable methods). Is there a single post on CG with keywords "mock file generator" ? No, no one ever talks much about mocking hard functions. Can they be mocked ? Yes. . Are they easy to work with ? No! Never for complex spaghetti legacy code
    Last edited by terminalXXX; May 31st, 2013 at 11:24 AM.

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