computer science in ucc

chelley

ne1 here doing it and got any info on what its like? i heard its really hard so im thinking of applying to bis instead maybe

thanks

GregLake

The computer science course in UCC has to be the least organised pile of **** toss ever organised. You spend half the year programming a stupid little robot to crap beepers and the other half trying to comprehend the inane jabberings of the maths lecturer, Seda. To make matters worst, this year the department has run out of money, the funding crisis is so bad that they can't even afford the Windows license. The failure rate is quite high but if you actually bother to attend the lectures you'll be fine. As bad as first year was, second year is worst. The Java lecturer stinks, you'll have some Romanian gangster with basic English teaching networking etc. Nothing gets explained properly so it's mostly up to yourself to try and get some work done.

dudara

If you're thinking of applying to BIS, you're probably better off applying to Electrical Engineering. The course includes a lot of programming work, and afterwards you're not confined to just programming.

eden_my_ass

My two cents;

The course has changed dramatically recently, and seems to be getting better, which it needs to do. I'm not sure what Gregs on about the Windows licences, Windows 2000 is on every PC in the CS labs. The failure rate is high because a lot of people who have no experience or interest in computers join the course driving the normal failure rates up. There is nothing overly challenging about the exams once you're prepared (and at least capable of tying your own shoelaces if not more complex tasks!). There is a big difference between BIS and CS, but if the only thing you're basing your decision on is the notion that CS is very hard, think again. And as an aside for Greg; 1) Whats this story about Windows licences (I'm curious) and 2) You'll never learn if everthing is spoon-fed to you, the 'science of computing' is far too much to cover in a dozen or so subjects a year and a couple of handouts....

Avoid Elec Eng at all costs, unless you're A)really interested in it or B)you're ready for four years of hard study.

embraer170

he computer science course in UCC has to be the least organised pile of **** toss ever organised.

Sounds like a lot of other stuff in UCC too.

sceptre

Originally posted by eden_my_ass
The failure rate is high because a lot of people who have no experience or interest in computers join the course driving the normal failure rates up. There is nothing overly challenging about the exams once you're prepared (and at least capable of tying your own shoelaces if not more complex tasks!).

Same reason for the high failure rate for comp sys in UL. I'd guess all CS courses have the same high failure rate for the same reason.

Oh yeah, avoid elec eng or comp eng unless it's really your thing.

omahaid

Hello all. As a first year CS student in UCC hearing all this fills me with joy (a pile of **** eh? Bugger!). Anywho's it ain't that bad if you like computers and think you'd like CS. I get the impression a lot of people are there cuz of the low points (300 hmmmmmm). But in fairness I'm enjoying it, lot of work. Karel the robot isn't that bad, it's a lot of sitting down and saying to yourself "how the bejaysus can I do this with only the stuff we've been shown", as it's described to us, it's more a problem solving course than programming. And as for Tony Seda, god bless him, he tries, its just the material is bad. (On a side note I always enjoy whilst in the middle of a lecture he looks up and he looks like a rabbit caught in headlight "Where did all these people come from"). Although saying that I have no idea what he is talking about. But I'm having fun, and I love the course so what more can I say.

GregLake

Originally posted by eden_my_ass

I'm not sure what Gregs on about the Windows licences, Windows 2000 is on every PC in the CS labs.

Nope, the level 1 lab is now Unix only.

Originally posted by eden_my_ass
The failure rate is high because a lot of people who have no experience or interest in computers join the course driving the normal failure rates up.

No arguments there, it was 60% last year, even for this kind of course, that's crazy.

Originally posted by eden_my_ass
And as an aside for Greg; 1) Whats this story about Windows licences (I'm curious) and 2) You'll never learn if everthing is spoon-fed to you, the 'science of computing' is far too much to cover in a dozen or so subjects a year and a couple of handouts....

1. The department is strapped for cash at the moment. Last year the department didn't have enough money to give us tutors for all of our courses, also our labs and projects for certain modules were marked by postgrads for nothing because the college was apparently not able to pay them. This was told to me by one of the professors.

2. We were told to create a program that would read in input from the keyboard, write it out to a file and to be able to modify the files through the Java program. Considering that the most difficult topic we'd done before that was creating arrays, how are we supposed to get to grips with java.io, file input streams and stream tokenizer from a few lecture slides with examples that don't even work? Same story with us being asked to write a multi threaded server, this time nothing was included in the lecture slides about it. The few people who got it out had to google the topic get anywhere.

I don't expect a free ride, but when you're spending hours trawling through Java and C books trying to teach yourself enough just to get the labs done then there is something wrong.

Some more stories, today we were told that we're going to miss four database lecturers because he's fecking off to Italy, he wants to make this time at an hour that some people have Java tutorials on at. The tutorials are worth 5% of the years mark so we can either turn up to them or miss out on 4 database lectures.

Maybe computer science was different for you Eden but for me it's a disaster, almost to the point where I've been considering dropping out and starting a fresh in Limerick.

omahaid

Is that 60% of first year or 60% all together or what? Just wondering because if it was 60% of first years, and there's only 118 first years this year........

Squall

If you're thinking of applying to BIS, you're probably better off applying to Electrical Engineering. The course includes a lot of programming work, and afterwards you're not confined to just programming.

Not sure what you mean by this. Im in first year BIS in UCC and we do alot more than programming. Its a grand course but there is alot of work involved. There is more business than computer subjects though so if your going for just computers then elec eng would probly be the better option.

tiernanoc89

embraer170 wrote: »

Sounds like a lot of other stuff in UCC too.

CIT man eh??? :mad: remeber! you cant spell success without UCC,

You cant spell biscuit without CIT

barry181091

tiernanoc89 wrote: »

CIT man eh??? :mad: remeber! you cant spell success without UCC,

You cant spell biscuit without CIT

Remember ! Don't be digging up ancient threads

Miguelg6969

Hi, sorry for digging up an old thread!

I'm an applied science student at St. Johns Central college.
I'm quite interested in computers, I don't have a vast knowledge of computers but do wish to learn more.

I noticed in CIT there's Software Development and Web Development.

What is the difference between Computer Science and the courses in CIT?
What is the better course?
I don't fancy getting a bus to CIT everyday since UCC is only down the road from me after all...unless the courses in CIT are better of course.

I hear there's a massive drop rate in CS, but apparently the same goes for web development and software development (I could be wrong).

If anyone can give me their opinion I would be grateful.

omahaid

Wow, I posted in this thread 8 years ago as a first year CS student, I feel old

I can't speak to the courses in CIT but CS in UCC was very good for me, learnt loads and am now 4.5 years after graduating and what I learnt in CS is still being used by me on a daily basis as part of my job. It's probably even better now with the new IT building, it wasn't there in my time