whats up.

[Infinite Poise]

Hey.  I\'m new.  What I was really interested in, aside from PS, is if you developers (or anybody else directly associated with the game) have degrees.  If so, what are they in?  I\'m a student at the University of Oklahoma and have access to a great engineering school\\computer science program here and this type of development is what I\'m interested in, but I can\'t decide what major would aid me the most.  Any ideas and suggestions (from anyone) would be helpful.
   Also, is there a timetable on when the next alpha release will be?

    thanks.  forgive my new-ness.

[Vengeance]

It really depends on what you want to do after you graduate.  If you want to work in Hardware and do a lot of math in college, do engineering.  If you like to code and dislike math, do Comp Sci.

Many more jobs in CS also than in EE.

- Venge

[kinshadow]

Originally posted by Vengeance
It really depends on what you want to do after you graduate.  If you want to work in Hardware and do a lot of math in college, do engineering.  If you like to code and dislike math, do Comp Sci.

Many more jobs in CS also than in EE.

That also really depends on the school.  At Texas A&M, CS majors still have to take a great deal of math.  Depending on your CS area (if you have one) you may take even more math than a typical EE.

The comment on the jobs also depends on the area and school.  A&M\'s EE dept is ranked pretty high, so I\'ve seen a lot more CS\'s graduating without jobs.

If you like HW and SW, then Computer Engineering is a nice mix.  Then again, depending on the school, that could mean different things.   My degree was a pretty even mix of the two, mostly because I structured it that way through electives.  Other schools view CE as a specialized EE degree.  Its a good idea to lay out all the required and optional courses and see which degree has the most things your interested in.

[Infinite Poise]

hmmm...  I\'m much more interested in software.  I may go with CS.  It would be interesting to know how many people in software design\\development have degrees in other than CS or EE but learned it and just used their degree to get a foot in the door.  In other words, is it all that important what degree you have or does it have more to do with how good you are?

[kinshadow]

Originally posted by Infinite Poise
In other words, is it all that important what degree you have or does it have more to do with how good you are?

Depends on the field and the degree.   I know a lot of non-EE engineers (bio, petro, etc.) that have gone into SW design.  You need a strong technical degree for anything related to computers.  Don\'t get a liberal arts degree, contrib to a couple OSS projects and expect to land a high paying job.  

The degree is really most important when you are looking for a job and you hand the recruiter your resume.  They look first at your degree, then GPA, and work down from there.  If you don\'t have a degree in the area you want to work in, you\'ll get thrown away before you can show them \"how good you are.\"

[Vengeance]

kin is basically right about this, because most recruiters are (and I can\'t emphasize this enough) complete dumbasses.  They have NO ability to recognize intangibles or tell talented people from untalented people.

So what they do is look for objective facts from others people (who have to be more qualified than the dumbasses, right? :-) ), who say you are qualified for something.  This is why the school you go to, your major, your GPA are important initially, and later why things like certifications are important.

Most EE work is NOT glamorous at all--designing new space heaters or new digital thermostats, not designing new chips and CPUs.

Most CS work isn\'t glamorous either--a 1000 accounting system programmers for every 1 game programmer or so.

Just go with what you enjoy doing. :-)

- Venge