CS 10051 FAQ

Q: How well do Computer Science jobs pay?

A: CS is among the top 5 Most lucrative college degrees according to a recent article by money.com.

Q: What types of jobs are there for CS majors?

A: See Programming Jobs, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Insider Advice.

Q: How important are computers for other disciplines?

A: Very important to extremely important depending on your specific goals. But, the computer is becoming an indispensible tool in almost any area. Knowledge on how to effectively use this tool will be most helpful and not just for work.

Q: What professional organizations are there for Computer Science?

A: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), is an international organization for computing. ACM sponsors conferences, special interest groups, local and student chapters. Another organization is the IEEE Computer Scociety.

Q: How does one go about studying Computer Science?

A:With interest, dedication, hard work, and fun, that is how! See this article by a student in Germany.

Q: What is Computational Thinking?

A: Understanding how computers and programs work can enhance mental tools for analyzing and solving problems. See this article for more.

Q: What different computer systems do people use?

A: The most common computer systems are MS/Windows, Linux/UNIX, and Mac OS/X which is built on top of a version of UNIX.

Q: What general-purpose programming languages are widely used?

A: There are many different programming languages at different levels. To list a few: C/C++, Java, Fortran, and Cobol. For Web programming, you'll find Javascript, PHP, and Perl widely used.

Q: Why do CS departments use Linux/UNIX for teaching programming?

A: Linux/UNIX systems are open, free, and powerful. To study computer systems and programming, we need to get into the internals of the system and that is not possible (or very much harder) on proprietary systems such as MS/Windows.

Q: How important is mathematics to the studying of computer science?

A: Mathematics is at the base of computer science. But it is not the boring brand of mathematics some have grown custom to hate. In fact, by studying computer science and by dealing with the math involved you'll find the beauty and power of mathematics fully appreciated in something concrete and practical.

Q: I often hear the word algorithm, what does it mean?

A: An algorithm is a step-by-step procedure to solve a given class of problems, to perform certain tasks or computations.

Requirements for a procedure to be an algorithm: the procedure consists of a sequence of steps, each step is clearly doable, at each step it is clear what the next step is, and the procedure ends in a finite number of steps.

There may be multiple different algorithms to perform the same task, some more efficiently than others.

Q: What does bit stand for?

A: Binary Digit.

Q: What is ASCII, UNICODE and UTF-8?

A: American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a standard 7-bit code for letters on the English keyborad. The preferred name for it is US-ASCII. With internationalization of computer systemsthe charact set often preferred is the 16-bit UNICODE that includes all known languages in use today. The UTF-8 encoding of UNICODE includes US-ASCII and is the preferred way to encode charcters for Email and the Web.

Q: What is the Internet? The Web?

A: The Internet connects computer networks anywhere on the globe. It enables connected computers to communicate with one another via the Internet Protocols and is an extremely important wordwide infrastructure for information processing. The Web is a particular service over the Internet. It uses the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and URLs (Universal Resource Locators) to make Web pages accessible. Web browsers such as Firefox and Internet Explorer are used to access the Web.

Q: I've heard of cloud computing. What is that?

A: Normally, one would expect the computing power to come from one's own workstation or laptop. But, through the Internet and Web, we can access the vast resources of network servers that are load-balanced and well managed (the cloud). This means we can use less capable computers (lighter, longer lasting and more mobile) and rely on the cloud to do most of the heavy lifting.

Q: What is SSH and SFTP?

A: Secure Shell (SSH) is used to provide secure login to remote hosts on a computer network. SFTP provides secure file transfer (upload/download) between networked hosts. You need to use SSH and SFTP to access the CS Department computers. See this section in the lab page for more information.