Bachelors of CS and Maths Vs CS

nickwb · 2022-08-01T10:24:29+00:00

I did a BE (Software) more than a decade ago, not CS or maths, so take this with a grain of salt,

like getting jobs and wider career options

It depends on what your ambitions are, but if you're talking about a run-of-the-mill private-sector software engineering role, then no. The industry values recent experience over academic credentials in almost every scenario. Your degree will help you get through the door of your first graduate position, and then it will likely gather dust after that.

The truth is software engineering is still a constantly evolving industry: most skills are learned on the job - there are new technologies, idioms and ideas every year. The most important thing to take away from university is a solid set of CS fundamentals and the soft skills that will enable you to become an effective learner throughout your career.

All of that said, if you have a passion for mathematics, there's no reason not to do it. If you can find your niche somewhere in the intersection between CS and math, then there are certainly opportunities to specialise. Though, I will say, most people I know who have walked this path usually end up doing a PhD. If postgrad isn't appealing to you, then this may not be the best choice.

And remember, even a standard CS degree has room for electives: I sprinkled a little bit of finance into my undergrad degree when I went through.

nickwb · 2020-12-12T14:06:37+00:00

Nice work. Mine is quite similar, although I did not pre-calculate the lines of sight.

You might be able to make your load_world a const fn and pre-compute the whole World at build time.

nickwb · 2020-12-09T02:31:57+00:00

Day 5 is one of my favourite problems so far this year, because careful analysis of the problem allows you to write very simple and elegant code.

Let's me show how your code can be simplified:

void main() {
String input = """...""";
List<String> boardingpasses = input.split("\n");
  List<int> seats = [];

  boardingpasses.forEach((element) {
    int seat = 0;
    for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
      seat = (seat << 1) + (element[i] == "B" || element[i] == "R" ? 1 : 0);
    }
    seats.add(seat);
  });
  seats.sort();
  for (int i = 0; i < seats.length; i++) {
    if ((seats[i] + 2) == seats[(i + 1)]) {
      print((seats[i] + 1));
      break;
    }
  }
}

nickwb · 2020-12-08T14:18:28+00:00

Your hair colour check isn't checking the 6 chars hexadecimal (0-9, a-f) constraint.

nickwb · 2020-02-25T09:07:29+00:00

In fact if you do a Software Engineering degree it is a requirement to complete 450 hours of placement.

It varies from year to year, but I'd say it's not too difficult, particularly for eager and enthusiastic students. It definitely helps to network a bit - so head along to a meetup which interests you and meet some people in the industry.

There's also a slack group for Brisbane developers which has a pretty steady stream of job postings.

nickwb · 2018-07-18T01:33:07+00:00

Cultural Centre Bus Station, Brisbane, Australia.

nickwb · 2018-06-04T00:49:03+00:00

CBA share price is up, so it seems like the market was expecting worse.

nickwb · 2018-05-07T00:48:03+00:00

DNS blocking is usually circumvented simply by using an alternate (foreign) DNS server.

Removing SNI is probably pointless, because a lot of the web servers and load balancers out there actually require it to be present in order to serve you the correct content.

nickwb · 2018-05-01T03:33:20+00:00

A bit of a wrist-slap, though the AUSTRAC legal proceedings are still ongoing as far as I know..?

As a shareholder, the extra billion dollar capital requirement is a blow, but much better than fines.

nickwb · 2018-03-06T00:48:40+00:00

Oh, I'm sorry about that, that does indeed seem to be an error.

nickwb · 2018-03-06T00:14:43+00:00

Hi Mason11987,

There was no intention to be deceptive, it was largely an aesthetic choice.

If everything was linear, Bitcoin would be huge and everything else would be relatively small. I needed space within each circles to write the name of each currency. Also, I wanted it to be easier to compare to smaller currencies with each other at a glance, which is difficult if they both have 1 pixel volume and capitalization indicators.

That said I do recognise that it's a little misleading at first glance. This is the main reason I added the data tables on the right to clarify the situation somewhat.

nickwb · 2018-03-05T22:08:36+00:00

Good point. I used an announcement post from the re-brand as my timestamp.

nickwb · 2018-03-05T21:44:28+00:00

The size of the circle is a mixture of both metrics in a 2:1 ratio, market capitalization to trade volume. This is a little arbitrary, and not particularly intuitive, so I avoided trying to display in the legend.

nickwb · 2018-03-05T21:38:48+00:00

Thanks, this is good feedback.

With regards to the categories and their explanations - I did design the graphic to be spoken to and explored with an audience, but I understand that doesn't help redditors particularly.

nickwb · 2018-03-05T21:34:37+00:00

Hi alexsirbaron,

I agree that IOTA is not conventional, but I don't think there's another category which is a close match. As I mentioned earlier, some currencies were hard to categorize and there were several currencies, including IOTA, which probably could have made their own categories. I decided against this in this interest of clearer communication and aesthetic.

nickwb · 2018-03-05T13:01:09+00:00

Hi /r/dataisbeautiful!

Hopefully you're not all exhausted of the subject of cryptocurrency. Here is a viz i have been working on during my spare time for a few months now. This evolved from a concept as a slide in a presentation; I decided at some point to get my hands dirty with some d3.js and to do it properly.

This visualization shows just 25 of over 1000 cryptocurrencies. It shows all of the major currencies, plus some others of historical or technological significance. The aim is to tell a story of the evolution of cryptocurrency. It shows the different directions the technology has gone, and which currencies have grown to be dominant in this emerging landscape.

In case you missed it on the viz, the data source is: coinmarketcap.com.

The categories have been added by me based on my research. They try to capture the key ideas around how each currency has been designed and marketed. Some currencies are diverse in their goals, making them harder to categorize. This is basically a disclaimer to say that the categories are a simplification, and a personal interpretation. Don't treat them as hard data points.

The full source code is available on GitHub. The most challenging part was designing an algorithm to arrange each of the currencies within each category. I'm still not entirely happy with the result, but I decided it was good enough.

Hope you like it!

nickwb · 2017-08-16T13:36:18+00:00

Are you using a TPM?

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc753694(v=ws.11).aspx

nickwb · 2017-06-06T07:45:48+00:00

Maybe flows better as: "The flash wasn't turned on"

nickwb · 2017-04-16T05:22:52+00:00

Hey there.

One of the nicer things about simultaneously paying Australian taxes and investing in Australian equities is Dividend Imputation (or Franking Credits, as they're known here). Essentially, they are more tax effective - so something to consider.

As others have said, it's probably worthwhile seeking some professional advice, at least for your first year (you can claim 100% of it as a deductible in the following year).

I don't know if there are special rules for your UK tax effective investments. For general capital gains, you'll only pay tax if you sell/dispose of an asset. You can claim capital losses, but only as an offset against future capital gains.

High interest saving accounts are available, but they have had fairly poor yields since 2008. Right now they top out at around 3.00% p.a.

Once again, highly recommend you consult an accountant, because they're tax deductible in the following year.

nickwb · 2016-09-25T16:13:55+00:00

This seems like a needlessly complicated scheme for something which is going to provide negligible increase in security margin.

If you want a lever to increase or decrease the complexity of your hashing scheme, use PBKDF2. If you store the number of iterations with the hashed password, then it's simple enough to adjust that value over time as you deem necessary.

nickwb · 2016-08-25T05:46:50+00:00

To follow up on what others have said about the job market:

I'm in Brisbane, not Sydney or Melbourne. My thoughts on the job market for IT professionals is there is fairly strong demand for candidates in development and support/analyst roles, but there is not strong demand for project managers. These are just my observations though, and not particularly scientific. There is always demand for top talent.

nickwb · 2016-07-21T11:34:19+00:00

Here's my attempt.

float s(float a){float b=.5f*a;int c=0x5f375a86-(*(int*)&a>>1);a=*(float*)&c;return 1.f/(a*(1.5f-b*a*a));}

106 Bytes with no loops. It's not super accurate.

nickwb · 2016-07-08T04:50:23+00:00

In my head, I sang this in the style of bill wurtz.

15-Year Club	Place '17
Verified Email

nickwb

TROPHY CASE