Computer Science-which is the best?

sean_b97

Just started 6th year and have been looking a lot lately at some courses related to computer science and that sort of area. I've no previous coding experience. I've done stuff like rooting, jailbreaking, flashing roms on phones etc but no coding. Out of DIT, DCU, Trinity and UCD which of those courses would be the best (preparing you for a career etc.) Its called something slightly different in DCU I know but I believe its fairly similar. Points shouldn't be an issue for any of these courses btw. Theres also computational thinking in maynooth but thats quite different I think? Anyway thanks for the help!

sean_b97

.....keeping post relevant.....

TheBody

You can do regular computer science in Maynooth too, not just computational thinking.

sean_b97

OK �� so maynooth, dit, DCU, trinity or UCD?

sean_b97

And what exactly is computational thinking? Material covered, differences between it and CS, career opportunities?

sean_b97

OK �� so maynooth, dit, DCU, trinity or UCD?

N1tro

Just seen this post, and I've noticed a lot of people saying they have no coding experience or anything like that.

You don't need any coding experience. It's actually good in some ways that you don't because wherever you learn some code if you are preparing for college you may pick up some bad coding habbits. Learn code if you want but if I was you I'd focus more on my leaving cert.

Regarding colleges some teach more relevant technologies some don't, and at the end of the day and in my experience, colleges lay the foundation, its up to you to learn new technologies as they appear.

sean_b97

So which college would 'lay the best foundation' so to speak?

N1tro

sean_b97 wrote: »

So which college would 'lay the best foundation' so to speak?

Maybe all of them, I can only speak speak for my college which is the National College of Ireland. I just finished my C.S degree, and I'll be starting my Masters in two weeks.

NotCominBack

sean_b97 wrote: »

So which college would 'lay the best foundation' so to speak?

Trinners of course!!

They all do the same thing, I attended dit, mostly decent tutors, but I would assume trinners and dcu have better quality tutors overall

DeclanRe

Nobody can tell you which is the best one. Its all relative really, I did 4 years in DIT and it was really good. I've also heard good things about DCU. Regardless of where you go, as long as you do well and get like a 2.1 you'll be fine. The college you attend doesn't really matter, what will get you a job, is all the work you do outside of college, e.g. building a porfolio of work, contributing to GitHub etc..

zl1whqvjs75cdy

NotCominBack wrote: »

Trinners of course!!

They all do the same thing, I attended dit, mostly decent tutors, but I would assume trinners and dcu have better quality tutors overall

Poor assumption.

NotCominBack

donkeyoaty0099 wrote: »

Poor assumption.

Possibly, I guess if you have 10 tutors then 4/5 would be average, 2/3 would be excellent and the others fairly poor

But I still say go to Trinners, even if it's only to name drop when trying to impress the ladies, and employers

a fat guy

I'm going to UCD for a masters, and I've heard more than once that DCU is actually the best for Computer Science courses.

Trinity has this one really good networking masters course, but while that course gives you a better chance of employment, it also pretty much guarantees that you won't be doing as much software development as you would be doing if you went with a regular software development masters.

So yeah, for any course other than computer science, go to Trinity for the good reputation (As far as I know, could be wrong regarding some courses. I've heard that WIT and DIT are leagues ahead for Architecture, for example). For computer science, go to DCU.

sean_b97

DCU's class sizes are meant to be far big than Trinity or UCD's I've heard (over twice as big) would anyone see this as a major detriment? And would the course be far ahead of say Trinity's (Trinity is handiest transport wise and I'd know more people but DCU is still reachable)

a fat guy

sean_b97 wrote: »

DCU's class sizes are meant to be far big than Trinity or UCD's I've heard (over twice as big) would anyone see this as a major detriment? And would the course be far ahead of say Trinity's (Trinity is handiest transport wise and I'd know more people but DCU is still reachable)

The bottom line for me is that I've only heard of DCU being particularly brilliant for computer science.

Class sizes wouldn't bother me at all, since you're going to get that for some modules anyway. Case in point, my current Android class is huge, but my Cognitive Science class is tiny by comparison (UCD).

sean_b97

So DCU over Trinity ?

sean_b97

?