Ask HN: CS major or business informatics major | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: CS major or business informatics major

1 pointcsorbizinfo2 comments

Hi HN, I'm a 20 year old German business student who got into programming and wants to switch his major. Right now I have choice between two majors - a pure CS major and a "business informatics" major which is a mix of business and CS classes. Since it's a tough choice for me, it would be great if you could give me advice on this situation. (I'm sorry if I have violated any rules since this is my first post here.)

Because I have already studied one year in my business major, I'd rather switch to the business informatics major, so that I can keep my grades . However, the business informatics major would still take three years to complete, the same time as the pure CS major. Because I'd have already completed many classes, I'd have a lot of time for self-learning and personal projects. The downside of this major is of course, that CS topics aren't covered with the same depth as in the CS major. I'd miss out on theoretical and technical Computer Science, as well on one class about functional programming. I'd still have classes about OOP, programming projects and later on some classes about advanced programming topics.

The alternative, the CS major, has the typical classes of a CS major and I'd start from scratch with this major (I can take about 1-2 business classes to the general education section).

My questions are:

-Will chosing the "business informatics" major make me drastically less employable in software engineering positions, even if I have a good portfolio of personal projects?

-Will I miss out on a lot of core concepts in the theoretical & technical Computer Science courses, which will make me less proficient in programming later on?

-Could you give me your personal opinion about this situation?

Thank you for replies.

I'm not sure what the curriculum looks like for the "business informatics" at your school, but if it's anything like what a similar "business CS" program offered at my college was it is mostly admin/management stuff or setting up and maintaining enterprise software (Cisco routers, using Microsoft products, ect). I had a friend who took a 300-level (Junior) class as an elective and they introduced Vim/Emacs halfway through and tested on it...we were both amazed at that level many of them hadn't even written much code, worked on a large code-base, or had a grasp on any programming paradigms/design patterns yet were getting a degree in a computer field in less than a year. I guess it goes to show how different levels of abstraction can be applied to CS to get a job done (ie. they didn't need to know how any of the tools worked internally...just how to use them to accomplish a job).

> Will chosing the "business informatics" major make me drastically less employable in software engineering positions, even if I have a good portfolio of personal projects?

Drastically? Probably not, especially if you have some projects under your belt to demonstrate your skills. If your goal is to be a "software engineer" though, I think you're better off getting a CS degree because it directly feeds into a software career.

> Will I miss out on a lot of core concepts in the theoretical & technical Computer Science courses, which will make me less proficient in programming later on?

Of course you will miss out on some things. There is a reason these are 2 different programs at your school because they are aiming at teaching 2 different things. CS dives into theoretical components such as OS design, programming paradigms and design, algorithms, ect. Now you can learn all these on your own of course, but I find it far more difficult especially at a higher level of understanding. "business informatics" (as I understand it), is about putting software in place which is going to aid business in some way or possibly train you to be in some sort of "software management" position.

Just my 2 cents though.

First, thanks thanks for the reply.

About the curriculum of business informatics major: It has programming classes from the first semester and programming projects with CS students, so I think it's not just a degree to set up enterprise software.

These programming classes are

-Practical programming I & II (OOP, Algorithms and data structures) together with CS people.

-Software Projects I & II (Classes about working as a team on a programming project with a big project on the side)

-Bachelor Project I & II (Again a big programming project, also with CS people)

The business informatics students can chose one of these specialisations:

-Computational finance,

-Logistics,

-E-Commerce,

-IT-Systems (That'd be the setting up enterprise software path).

I'd take the first specialisation 'computational finance' and could have some 'advanced' programming classes with CS students, like Introduction to AI, or Heuristically Optimization Techniques together

The business side of the major is (which I have mainly completed): Introduction classes to Accounting, Marketing, Logistics, Investemnts etc.

As I said, the business informatics major appeals to me because I could keep my grades (for which I've worked quite hard for) and would have lots of free time to spend on personal projects. The only problem with it, as I asked, if it's 'good enough' for good SE positions.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com