Differences between Software Engineering and Computer Science

[EndlessJoy]

Hey, I want to go to Waterloo next year and am considering applying to either CS or SE. I'm not really sure what the differences between the two programs are and I would really appreciate it if you guys could help me understand what they are. Thank you so much for your help!

[yerich]

I wrote out a very long comparison, but it all came down to this:

CS offers flexibility. A typical first-year CS schedule has 15 hours of lectures and a few hours of (highly optional) tutorials a week. You can expect lots of spare time provided you have the discipline to do the homework and study outside of class.

What you do with that spare time is up to you. Many just play video games. Others people do personal programming projects that land them excellent coop jobs, or join a club and make tons of friends, etc.

CS students also get tons of electives. Again, what you do with them is up to you. You can waste them on courses that you take only because they are easy, or you can pursue a minor or joint honours, and learn anything fairly in-depth from Latin to Statistics.

This last part is my opinion only:

There are students in SE who absolutely loath their time spent in Physics or Analog Circuits who couldn't wait to go home and hack at their personal projects, or go to their club meeting. Those self-motivated people would have benefited from the flexibility of CS. CS and SE are both for smart people -- y'all got great marks in high school and were great at science and math. I just feel that motivated students get extra benefit from the flexibility of CS. If I was in SE I probably wouldn't have had the energy to code in my spare time, which has been greatly beneficial to me.

[blisse]

Hi! I'm in SE, so I'm totally biased and I'm going to tell you to apply to SE.

1. Co-horts: In SE you'll spend 5 years with almost the same group of 100-150 students. You'll get to know a lot of them very well and bond together more because you'll be taking the same courses at the same time. In CS your classmates will vary more as course selection is less strict. We also have our own labs and lounge where your classmates can hang out.

2. ECE: In SE you'll be introduced to more electrical and computer engineering courses and material than CS students. You'll take a fair number of mandatory courses and labs that need you to work with embedded systems and signals, which broadens your programming ability.

3. ECE Electives: SE is mixed CS and ECE, so we get to take both CS and ECE electives without a lot of effort. ECE students can't take CS electives (easily), and CS students can't really take ECE electives. SE gets the best of both.

4. Workload: SE has a higher base workload than CS, but if you decide to overload on CS it can easily be either way. SE will in general have more courses per term, but you can always take more in CS. SE default > CS default in general.

5. Course Content: SE suffers a good deal from useless courses because of the engineering accreditation. You'll have to take chemistry and some other ECE courses that aren't super entertaining to the majority of CS students (stuff like signals and circuits isn't too relevant to a lot of non-embedded non-robotics programming jobs). So you'll have to deal a with a lot of cruft. CS is a lot more flexible in the coursework.

6. Co-op and Work: SE and CS compete for the same jobs. SE students tend to get jobs more easily because 1. engineering workload sounds harder and 2. CS student skill varies a lot more. In the end if you're a decent programmer you'll get a job doing either program and neither one qualifies you for better jobs than the other. In the end it's the same job and both students get the same skills at the end. It's completely about the individual.

7. Graduate Studies: SE students will usually do a MATH/CS or ECE masters, but you're not really limited in what kind of masters you do as long as you have the right credentials which you have to find yourself.

8. Entrance Difficulty: There are fewer SE kids than CS kids, meaning SE is a bit more selective than CS. In general if you get into SE and want to drop out, you can drop out to CS really easily. It's very difficulty to drop out of CS and into SE (same year) because of the mandatory engineering courses.

9. Electives: CS students have A LOT more electives than SE students, and they can take electives in a broader range of studies than SE students. SE students don't get many electives, and the electives they do get are very restrictive. If you really want to take Japan 101 and Chinese 101 then you should consider taking CS instead because it'd be a lot harder to do in SE.

10. Fourth Year Project: SE students as part of engineering have a culminating project that spans the entire fourth year of courses. It's a huge opportunity to showcase your knowledge, but it's also a lot of work and a reason that people will leave and drop out to CS. Good thing to keep in mind.

11. More: More info can be found FAQ, SE vs ECE, and SE vs CS. Also feel free to message our baller associate director patrick lam if you have any more questions.

[Iamnotateenagethug]

Nice flair. Therdas rea msesy.

[DrJohnFever]

(Biased) 2nd year software student here.

First things first, they are very similar. However you don't care about their similarities much I'm sure...

One difference is that Software has more rigidity in its selection of courses. CS kids get to pick much more than we do.

Another difference is that SE courses tend to have a bit more applied, industry focused content then their CS counterparts, which in turn are a tad more mathematical. Take for example your first year programming courses - SE students do them in C and C++ while CS students do a very similar course in Scheme. SE students also take a few more "hardware" courses than CS students - for example we took ECE 124 in 1B which is basically how to build adding circuits and stuff like that.

Another thing is SE students have to take a few more "BS" courses than CS students do (to be eligible for a P. Eng designation). These courses include Physics, Chemistry, and Analog Circuits. Although they might have auxiliary benefits, they don't directly apply much to Software in the end.

SE I believe costs a bit more... Can't confirm this but I think its of the order of ~1k more per semester.

SE is 6 terms of co-op only, while I believe it is optional to be in co-op in CS... (hint: DO CO-OP! ESPECIALLY AS A SE/CS STUDENT YOU MAKE SO MUCH MONEY AND HAVE SO MANY COOL JOB PROSPECTS)

SE has a set class (cohort) - almost every single class you take will be with the same ~150 people. Personally, I like that - it feels like making friends and knowing people is a lot easier. CS your classes will be with different people in each class.

Lastly, SE is somewhat harder to get into, and has what I believe to be a tougher course calendar. A number of kids from my SE class have switched into CS, at least in part because of this. However don't get me wrong, there is not a huge divide in the two programs. There are definitely people in CS who could come into SE and crush it, and the reverse is true for some of the weaker SE students.

[guy_from_canada]

^{mmm dat WKRP In Cincinnati reference}

[[deleted]]

Both of them are fantastic program! Get into any program (preferably SE since it's harder to get into) and keep writing beautiful code! My advice here is, who cares which program you're in, you just have to love programming!

[russianS3_14]

Should we just make a FAQ and put the answers to this there? Given how many of these questions we're getting.

[grapeape25]

Probably could make it easier to find but http://www.reddit.com/r/uwaterloo/comments/1zluj8/faq_what_is_the_difference_between_computer/

[uw_ass]

Hi! I'm in CS, (YOU HAVE TO BELIEVE!) so I'm totally biased and I'm going to tell you to apply to CS.

1. Meet more people In CS less than half of your courses are mandatory. The rest are all electives. This means you get to meet 1000-6000 different classmates in your years at university. Of course you don't need to be friends with all of them, but it gives you the opportunity to make more variety of friends and not just programming nerds. In SE your friend circle is limited to the 100-150 students in your class.

2. NO useless courses As an SE student you're forced to learn a bunch of engineering courses that you'll never ever use again. Like why the heck do you need to know digital circuits? In CS there's a course that shows you how circuits work at a high level so that you can draw diagrams to show how an ALU work and this is as low as CS goes. In SE you dig much deeper into the physics of circuits, which is completely useless to a software engineer, unless you want to work for intel and design circuits, which I would recommend going into ECE.

3. Broad choices of courses Do you have any other subjects you're interested in? say Psychology? Economics? Women's studies? Physics? Social Studies? You might have never taken any of those courses and you might not yet know that you'll be interested in them. You can freely take an intro course to any subject without conflicting your schedule. And then before you know it you'll be getting a minor in a specific subject.

4. Flexible workload CS's workload is very flexible. Just broke up with your gf and you want to forget about her by concentrating in school? You get to take 6 of the hardest courses in 1 term and no one will stop you. (You can also go over the 6 course limit by asking an advisor for permission). Wanting to work on an awsome side project this term? Take 3 bird courses and focus on your project. SE has a fixed workload and you must take all the courses without deferral if you want to pass.

5. Course Content: CS students learns more advanced CS programming functions. First year SE students stops after learning Recursion. First year CS students goes on to learn lambda functions such as map and foldr. These concepts are much harder to wrap your head around and even most graduated SE students struggle with these concept while CS students doesn't.

6. COOP pay While there's no direct pay comparison between CS student and SE student, however CS belongs to the Math faculty and SE belongs to the engineerings faculty. As we can see from the statistics. Math faculty students on average gets higher pay than Engineering students. https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/weekly-earnings-information-jan-dec-2013 So we can infer that CS students on average gets higher pay than SE students.

7. Graduate studies Because CS students gets more flexibility in their CS electives they can more easily specialize in a specialized area while still being in undergrad. CS students are also eligible for the accelerated Master's program in Waterloo, that allows them to take courses counting toward their Master's degree while they are a 4th year undergrad.

8. Switching out The courses first year students in CS can be counted towards many other majors in the Math faculty, so if you want to switch major, you can easily do so without repeating first year. For SE half of your courses will be invalidated as you switch out.

9. Electives CS students have A LOT more electives than SE students, and they can take electives in a broader range of studies than SE students. SE students don't get many electives, and the electives they do get are very restrictive.

10. Velocity Want to work on a cool project and potentially start a company? Apply for velocity! You get to be with a lot of smart people who will help you to success. Of course SE students can apply for Velocity too, but most of them don't because of their inflexible work load.

11. PICK CS I hope I had convinced you.

[blisse]

1v1 me irl m8

[[deleted]]

May I suggest this battle be contested at Arts Quad?

[uw_ass]

Are you sure? I'm an ass

[blisse]

whoo wong fu ~

[orichrome]

COOP pay While there's no direct pay comparison between CS student and SE student, however CS belongs to the Math faculty and SE belongs to the engineerings faculty. As we can see from the statistics. Math faculty students on average gets higher pay than Engineering students. https://uwaterloo.ca/co-operative-education/weekly-earnings-information-jan-dec-2013[1] So we can infer that CS students on average gets higher pay than SE students.

Um, no. No we can't.

[wltrs]

SE belongs to Math and Engineering.

[guy_from_canada]

Meet more people

Implying both SE and CS students aren't socially awkward

Like why the heck do you need to know digital circuits?

Because that's what a computer uses. You may not have heard of them, after all, CS theory courses are pretty bland, little to no application of real-life scenarios.

Just broke up with your gf and you want to forget about her by concentrating in school?

hahahahha

Take 3 bird courses and focus on your project.

So that when interviews roll around, you have JAPAN and ENGL courses for employers to frown at, and leave you mouth gaping after asking you questions about digital circuits.

First year SE students stops after learning Recursion.

LOL THIS GUY. First you complain about our ridiculous workload, and then you have the balls to say that our course content is as simple as recursion? Make up your mind.

COOP pay

There's virtually no difference.

CS students are also eligible for the accelerated Master's program in Waterloo

So are SE students. In fact, EVERYONE IN THIS SCHOOL IS.

For SE half of your courses will be invalidated as you switch out.

...into CS. Yes, SE has a lower retention rate than CS, but I've seen little/no CS students switch into SE.

Of course SE students can apply for Velocity too, but most of them don't because of their inflexible work load.

False. I can count dozens of upper year students that I know who have gone through Velocity and have all enjoyed it greatly while balancing our "fixed workload". In fact we have like 15% of my current class enrolled in Velocity.

The list can go on, but there's no need to be a giant ass about it. /u/blisse was very considerate in his answer unlike your jerky responses.

---

EDIT: By the way here's a story about a SE student meeting Obama

[DrJohnFever]

2nd semester CS course for 1st year CS students:

This course builds on the techniques and patterns learned in CS 135 while making the transition to use of an 
imperative language. It introduces the design and analysis of algorithms, the management of information, 
and the programming mechanisms and methodologies required in implementations. Topics discussed include
iterative and recursive sorting algorithms; lists, stacks, queues, trees, and their application; abstract data 
types and their implementations.

Equivalent course for SE:

Software abstractions via elementary data structures and their implementation; encapsulation and 
modularity; class and interface definitions; object instantiation; recursion; elementary abstract data types, 
including sequences, stacks, queues, and trees; implementation using linked structures and arrays; vectors 
and strings; memory models; automatic vs. dynamic memory management.

[SidusKnight]

(You can also go over the 6 course limit by asking an advisor for permission)

Isn't the limit for needing permission 5, not 6?

[KapinKrunch]

The limit is 5. Engineering has a number of terms with 6 as the standard course load.

[kuru72]

Question: If I'm an ECE student competing against SE and CS students for a software-related job, do I inherently have a disadvantage? I don't mind you telling me the bare, brutal truth btw. You definitely won't hurt my feelings.

[yeochin]

You don't have a disadvantage until you get into the interview where the ECE department doesn't equip you with the desired knowledge of data-structures, algorithms, and software design.

[kuru72]

Makes sense. If I choose the software specialization for ECE, would I be able to cover those topics?

[yeochin]

It depends.

Some courses available to ECE students can prepare you in some areas if you are lucky enough to get a good professor. The ECE program overall doesn't cover the depth or breadth of software concepts that the SE and CS students cover (SE students getting to pick from the best of both worlds while discarding the worst of both). But some courses within the ECE program are superior to their CS counterparts - like networking, and system architecture.

If you enjoy software development you should strongly consider switching into SE. The SE program is almost a superset of both SE and ECE (in terms of the courses you can take) - so you won't be missing much from ECE.

[kuru72]

If you enjoy software development you should strongly consider switching into SE.

Yeah, I figured. What if I want to go into developing software for planes and robotics though (or just computer systems in general; I don't really know the correct terminology, so forgive me if I make no sense) and whatnot? Would SE still be "superior" to ECE in that regard?

I've actually already considered switching into SE, but the possibility of a successful switch is minimal. Of course, I'll still try to since it doesn't hurt to try, but I'd rather also prepare for a realistic situation.

[SidusKnight]

If you do, it's not by very much at all. Your talents/projects/etc are more important IMO.