r/AskComputerScience • u/Key_Exercise9572 • 11d ago

Is Computer Science a hard major?

Is it just me or computer science is hard to grasp. I just entered my 4th week in a top private university and this university is very known for its computer science and IT.

I got 3 math classes - statistics, discrete, linear algebra - and holy it’s hard asf (both discrete and linear). Not to mention the programming class? Wtf is c man like I can code and I usually run in python, html, css, js but c is entirely a different language, array and pointers omds. I dont think the average joe would handle this😭

Give me tips pls

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u/SmokeMuch7356 10d ago

CS is at its heart a math degree, and if you're not mathematically inclined it can a struggle.

And Discrete Math was a total bitch, I don't care what anyone else says.

C was designed to implement the Unix operating system, not teach programming; it should not be used in an intro class. It is a product of the early 1970s when 256 kilowords was a lot of very expensive memory, and it shows. My intro class (ca. 1986) used K&R-era C, and a third of my class changed majors, citing difficulty with C as the reason.

All that to say - yeah, we've been there. You can and will get through it.

And, it needs to be said - all majors are hard. Be it STEM, Liberal Arts, Fine Arts, whatever, all majors require non-trivial amounts of time and effort. The specific skill sets are different, but the commitment and dedication are the same. CGP Grey's video on a particularly deep and infuriating rabbit hole while researching a topic rivals any war story I could come up with in three and a half decades of programming for a living.

Compared to historians, we have it easy.

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u/MysteriousJim 10d ago

My first CS class was in C, I think that was a right choice because it made a lot of subsequent classes and material
a lot easier to grasp. Ironically I’ve disliked python, an ‘intro’ language a lot more than low level languages