Computer Science - DN030

coffeecat

Does anyone know whether it is necessary to own a laptop while studying computer science?

Are the laptops used in lectures?

i'll be waiting for some answers here

googler

Yes this is the first year it is necessary to have a laptop for computer science. They aren't used in lectures, but will definately be needed for the labs. If you got into the course in sure you will get a letter about it.

http://www.cs.ucd.ie/content/csi-laptop-programme

coffeecat

Thanks for reply googler!

it's really helpful:)

Dave!

If it's compulsary then they had better be getting good deals with Dell..... The €1k registration fee is bad enough.

Anyone know how much the lappies are costing this year?

Drodan

You can get pretty good Dells for around 500e these days.

neilk32

ill see you there mate, i picked up a dell xps m1530 last month for 1200e with 4gb ram and 320gb hard drive. Its really worth the extra few bob.

Xhristy

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rainbow kirby

/me strokes Macbook Pro (even though mine is nearly 2 years old!)

Didn't actually realise they were making laptops compulsory, but most people for the last few years in CS have had them.

Any questions about the course feel free to ask - I'm heading into 4th year.

Xhristy

This post has been deleted.

Dave!

rainbow kirby wrote: »

/me strokes Macbook Pro (even though mine is nearly 2 years old!)

Didn't actually realise they were making laptops compulsory, but most people for the last few years in CS have had them.

Any questions about the course feel free to ask - I'm heading into 4th year.

Thought you were going into 3rd year / my year?

rainbow kirby

Nope, I scraped through 3rd year in 06/07 and then took a year out - I thought you were going into 4th year?

Dave!

Negatory 3rd year... I won't be doing 4th year!

rainbow kirby

Have fun, 3rd year can be the cause of much swearing

WellCultured

Is third year much more difficult than second year?

rainbow kirby

I found it to be quite a bit more work than second year, though I had it easy in second year because I had an exemption from maths. You'll swear at Franz's course (Foundations of Computing) - I hated it and I've a heavier maths background than most in CS, you'll swear at Tahar's course (Operating Systems 1), you'll swear at Mel's course (Object-Oriented Programming, practical exams suck >.>). You'll either find Henry's course (Program Construction 1) easy or impossible, I fell into the first bracket and got 75% on it.

I failed graphics - which isn't difficult to pass if you actually do the work, but is very time consuming. Just keep up with the work in all subjects as much as possible, as it's very frustrating if you fall behind given how quickly the work stacks up.

Dave!

Cheers

Dreading it now lol

rainbow kirby

You'll be fine. I'm convinced the purpose of a CS degree is to **** your head up as much as possible while teaching you some programming along the way.

**** i scraped through last year with actually a good bit of work, ****

rainbow kirby

The most important thing is to keep up with the work, if you don't do that then things snowball and get out of control really quickly, that happened to me second semester of 3rd year. Tbh I don't know how I got into 4th year.

Waltons

rainbow kirby wrote: »

The most important thing is to keep up with the work, if you don't do that then things snowball and get out of control really quickly, that happened to me second semester of 3rd year. Tbh I don't know how I got into 4th year.

Cannot, cannot, cannot agree more with this. Just finished third year, and it's fine if you manage to keep on top of the work. If you lay up at all though, everything falls on top of you very quickly - especially with reagards to Graphics (which is great fun if you keep up, but a monster if you don't).

Companion Cube

If you are indeed going into first year Computer science, unless they have completely shut down the lap machines in the first year lab, you wont really need a laptop at all in the first seimester because the amount of actual programing work you are going to do will be trivial.

Certain electives aside intro to programing (Fintan Costello) will be the only subject you will be doing any work on a computer, and frankly it will be your easiest subject. Towards the end of seimester two you will probably want to bring in your laptop for some software engineering work but even then its nothing too intensive.

Looking back on my 2nd year though i pretty much had to bring in my laptop the majority of days, as did the whole year. I cant imagine doing some of the work we had on the lab machines.

Going into third year im pretty certain the dependacy will increase as the software becomes more specialised and the code more complex, looking forward to it.

You should pick up a mac if you can, Software engineering really really wants you to use linux or a Unix based OS like OSX, if you have no experience with linux in the past, you should try it but OSX is alot easier to get to grips with.

rainbow kirby

I'm a happy Mac user - but in terms of OS, I'd just suggest using your favourite one (whatever that may be), and if that's Windows, set up a dual-boot on your laptop with one of the more user-friendly versions of Linux. The reason for having a Linux dual-boot is... Joe Kiniry. He wants everyone to use a non-Windows operating system for their software engineering projects, this pisses off a few people every year, but it's a learning experience that quite a few people need!

kiniry guaranteed everybody would be using linux over windows by the time we finished software engineering and i have to say i hated it, caused nothing but problems, it often didnt even work on the lab machines and the "instructors" were less than helpful, I cant remember his name but the easter european guy, think he was from the Czech Rep was an ignorant prick and Fintan tried his best but there was too much work for him to do, a disaster of a module i felt

Dave!

Yeah alot of people had issues with that module (and made their frustrations known on the Moodle).

Design_Dude

Heyya, im starting CS in UCD in a week or two, will i need to have a laptop for lectures? I have a gaming pc which ill have in my room.

rainbow kirby

This is the first year that laptops are compulsory. You will need one - if cost is an issue, then just get something small like an EEEPC and use it in college, and use your gaming PC at home.

Companion Cube

While the computer science bunch are posting here i thought i might ask, Any of you guys have any advice regarding the comp3xxxx electives going into 3rd year, there's quite a few available ranging from unix programing to AI, games and puzzles...

WellCultured

They all sound much, much harder than the core modules.

rainbow kirby

Companion Cube wrote: »

While the computer science bunch are posting here i thought i might ask, Any of you guys have any advice regarding the comp3xxxx electives going into 3rd year, there's quite a few available ranging from unix programing to AI, games and puzzles...

What do you have to choose from? I'll be doing AI for Games and Puzzles as a 4th year module... and quite a few of the 4th year courses have COMP3xxxx codes.

rainbow kirby

Bump'd for a question to 4th years:

When do we get our project title list to choose from?

Johannyogibear

As far as I know, its the first week of the semester, we get the list and then choose some in order of preference, more info and questions can be sent to Dr John Murphy, he is the project coordinator for fourth yrs. More info here http://www.cs.ucd.ie/LocalInformation/UndergraduateAffairs/FourthYearInformation.html but date for projects is for last years 4th yrs