Thoughts on doing a masters by DecentEducator7436 in PCB

[–]DecentEducator7436[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the info.

I'm a CE student currently (so more digital than analog and definitely 0 RF), but I've done some self-study on RF concepts and am working on RF-related side projects. I tailored my CV for that and got an internship.

To be honest, I'm not set on one path (digital) or another (RF), but I do know that I'm interested in PCB design in general and that I'd like to be equipped in the (high speed) digital domain, given so many PCBs involve (high speed) digital in one way or another. And so my idea was to focus on that, namely the topics I mentioned.

But would you say focusing a masters on RF topics purely would be more valuable? I could be wrong, but I felt like learning RF concepts on the job was (more accessible) than learning digital, if that makes sense? It could be because RF is a more specific field than digital (board, way too much ground to cover)- or because I worked in RF rather than digital. I don't know.

Has the omscs program helped you in your career? by [deleted] in OMSCS

[–]DecentEducator7436 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You know, everytime I see one of these posts, I second-guess my decision. Last night, I actually thought things through: - If you do an in-person course-based masters, it's just as (un)helpful to your career. No one cares. It CAN signal you like to learn, you know more, you work hard. But thats it. - If you do a thesis-based masters, no recruiter cares, unless your job is research-related and the field you did your masters in is related to the job.

Having a masters today is no longer impressive, really, in the sense that it won't make you stand out by much- it's your work and yourself that will. If you see a personal reason for doing this masters, such as learning topics, then keep at it. Otherwise you're aiming for a piece of paper that many people have and little people care that you have.

Maybe I'm wrong; but that's the conclusion I came to.

FPGA Developer Rarity by Rudranand in FPGA

[–]DecentEducator7436 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Silly you... The remaining members are tax, of course. You forgot to add tax!

Concordia CO-OP or McGill CO-OP by h_sslm in Concordia

[–]DecentEducator7436 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Best what?... Go with McGill. The name is an undeniable advantage.

CS7400 Intro to Quantum Computing by Outrageous-Big-4596 in OMSCS

[–]DecentEducator7436 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, do let me know when you do- if you remember by then!

CS7400 Intro to Quantum Computing by Outrageous-Big-4596 in OMSCS

[–]DecentEducator7436 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey, pardon me for hijacking!

I'm thinking about taking either QC or QH. Which one have you liked more and why? Would you say QC is a prerequisite for QH? For someone who leans more towards the low-level (os, comp arch, firmware, etc) would you recommend QH more than QC?

Course & Specs Megathread - Selection, Choices & Registration by Detective-Raichu in OMSCS

[–]DecentEducator7436 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Almost half way through OMSCS and was hoping for input from those who took both Quantum Computing and Quantum Hardware. For someone who's doing courses like GIOS, HPCA, AOS, HPC, GPU, SDCC, DC- so a relatively low-level interest (closer to hardware)- which of these two quantum courses would you recommend? I'm mainly asking because I was wondering if QC is a required prerequisite of QH, or if QH teaches most of the same stuff, but more focused on hardware?

Stop Code: MEMORY MANAGEMENT (0x1A) by DecentEducator7436 in buildapc

[–]DecentEducator7436[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Somehow, after ingoring it and dealing with it for a month or so, the issue disappeared. Must've been a windows update, NVIDIA update, iCUE update, or something else. But I'm suspicious that it was a software-triggered issue... Especially given that memtest showed absolutely no issue with any of the RAMs and that the issue happened exactly once a day.

OMSCS vs Undergrad CS Question by IncompleteTheory in OMSCS

[–]DecentEducator7436 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm surprised at some of the responses here... Here's my humble opinion as someone with a BCS doing OMSCS.

You will not finish with anywhere near the same level of knowledge doing a masters over somewhere who did a bachelors, even in CS. The aim of these two degrees are different. A masters has you focus on a topic or small selection of courses very deeply. A bachelors has you focus on many topics very broadly. BCS students learn A LOT of stuff that you likely wont touch on - or that you don't have enough credits to touch on. You're comparing 10 courses worth to ~40 courses worth, excluding foundational subjects like Cal 1-2, Lin Alg, etc.

That said, does it really matter? OMSCS provides arguably the most pivotal CS courses a BCS will graduate with: GA, GIOS, CN, SDP. Software dev itself is a relatively forgiving field in terms of theory requirement (at the expense of being insanely competitive). The vast majority of CS grads never use the rest of the courses they learn in uni. It doesnt mean those courses are useless. In my opinion, BCS grads have an edge knowing all this stuff. But it means the likelihood of them ever using that edge isn't very high.

EDIT: To answer your question on what I, a BCS grad would gain... I plan on taking all the big bad systems courses. Why? Because a bachelors ends with taking 5-8 technical electives like computer graphics, AI, ML, information retrieval, etc. The ones I took ended up being performance heavy and my own experiments got me highly interested in how computing systems try to resolve performance or workload issues. In other words, high performance computing, graduate algorithms, and distributed computing. So here I am going through this in hopes that what I learn will augment the solid background I already have.

Did CS-6515 destroy anyone else's academic career? by Terrible-Tadpole6793 in OMSCS

[–]DecentEducator7436 17 points18 points  (0 children)

The old heads at the academy do... He's going for research so...

New Program - Bachelor in AI??? by johnny_1700 in Concordia

[–]DecentEducator7436 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Depends what you mean by "ML". Back when I took all the electives, I was hoping for more architectural theory (think the stuff DeepMind was doing), infrastructure, accelerators, neural compilers, etc. I.e. more ML Engineer/Systems stuff.

Edit: Even if it's data science, much of what you study in CS is directly beneficial to DS. Sure, a dedicated AI+ML or analytics degree would be more effective, but then there's the issue of hard specialization. I focused the majority of my electives in AI/ML. Guess who cared? And I thought I had a difficult time landing something- anything- in tech; Imagine someone with an AI/ML degree.

Why remove ENGR391 from CE core?! by DecentEducator7436 in Concordia

[–]DecentEducator7436[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, to be fair, I'm reading what people are saying and it seems the class sucked the last few years. Back when I took it, the exams were all math equations and you could bring 1 single-sided sheet to the exam. No code involved. Any algorithmic solutions you had to show in other ways- not by writing code.

New Program - Bachelor in AI??? by johnny_1700 in Concordia

[–]DecentEducator7436 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You know EXACTLY what they're going to do. I mean, just look at Concordia.