If you have done or are currently doing software engineering can you please take a few minutes to write down your opinions of the program and shed light on the good, the bad and the ugly. Please be honest as I'm sure many people who read this will want to know what they're getting themselves into.

Originally Posted by justicebeaver

If you have done or are currently doing software engineering can you please take a few minutes to write down your opinions of the program and shed light on the good, the bad and the ugly. Please be honest as I'm sure many people who read this will want to know what they're getting themselves into.

OK GeorgeLucas, someone has answered my prayers and provided you a forum to bash Software engineering, while remaining in context with the thread. Preach brother preach!!!

hold on... Let me get some popcorn on.

Plenty of bitter software eng alumni / current students on here. They have some excellently awful ways to describe the program; and rest assured, it's essentially all the department's fault {end sarcasm}.

Only personally knowing some software eng students, I would also strongly suggest you find and chat with some upper years in the program too -- like, IRL. The most mature ones can tell you how to do software, get through the tough parts (read: poorly taught), and come out on top.

Best of luck

Alumni here. Also my favorite topic. I'm sure its Ownaginatios and GeorgeLucas' favorite topic too.

The program isn't great. Most courses are outdated, profs disinterested. Fei Chiang, Douglas Down and Wolfram Kahl are the only good profs in the department. You may be better off pursuing Computer Engineering if you have an interest in electronics/embedded systems. However, if you don't have an interest in electronics, then I'd suggest you take up Computer Science instead, because of the lighter load and make use of that extra time in taking part in Hackathons and making personal projects. There are students from Mac's CS and SE program who've scored internships and full time positions at MS, Google, Fb, Amazon, and other startups in SV despite those companies not coming to our campus and hiring exclusively, like they do at Waterloo. But this is mainly because such students have put their foot forward and done the work themselves in making side projects and contributing to the open source community.

I myself did my internship at IBM (which was a pathetic experience btw), and am now working at Microsoft. I had one side project, which I made in my spare time in my final year, had a decent GPA and knew my algorithms and data structures. That's pretty much all you need to get in to a good company like MS (at least I consider it pretty good, I know there are a lot of haters out there).

To end, I'd like to quote another Macinsiders' user, Ownaginatios who put it very well when someone had asked if the students at Mac had any regrets about their program:
"Overall though, it's just 4 years of your life. If you're truly motivated and passionate about what you're studying, where you went to school doesn't have much influence on what you can achieve."

It couldn't be said any better.

Unfortunately you will have to wait until Wednesday after my exam is over, then I can spend some time to write a few paragraphs, as well as find some posts I've seen from other people in the past.

For now, imagine the following situation: A student (me) asking Ned that teaches 3F03 (assembly language).

Q: As someone who works with chip programming, what chip family would you suggest for embedded systems student to practice with?

A: Eh, I don't know, I just read material from the book.

This pretty much sums up how the profs are for most Soft Eng courses in McMaster.

To be fair 3F03 was removed from Tron curriculum, and now a replacement course will be taught by Lawford, who usually knows something about what he's teaching instead of nothing at all. Unfortunately there's a shit load of retarded courses in Sftr Eng, but only Lawford and MvM who seem to know their stuff, and they can't teach everything by themselves.

I'm sure its Ownaginatios and GeorgeLucas' favorite topic too.

Second only to Star Wars prequels.

Originally Posted by GeorgeLucas

Unfortunately you will have to wait until Wednesday after my exam is over, then I can spend some time to write a few paragraphs, as well as find some posts I've seen from other people in the past.

For now, imagine the following situation: A student (me) asking Ned that teaches 3F03 (assembly language).

Q: As someone who works with chip programming, what chip family would you suggest for embedded systems student to practice with?

A: Eh, I don't know, I just read material from the book.

This pretty much sums up how the profs are for most Soft Eng courses in McMaster.

To be fair 3F03 was removed from Tron curriculum, and now a replacement course will be taught by Lawford, who usually knows something about what he's teaching instead of nothing at all. Unfortunately there's a shit load of retarded courses in Sftr Eng, but only Lawford and MvM who seem to know their stuff, and they can't teach everything by themselves.



Second only to Star Wars prequels.

What about the sequels though!

Bump.
If anyone has anything else to add please do so. George, hope you can find some time soon, perhaps the weekend cause Im really looking forward to hearing what you have to say.

Right, right.

Let me start by saying that if you learn software languages and protocols on your own and code in your spare time, then you probably need the degree just to get a higher salary or some other reason, then stop reading here and go for Software Engineering.

Personally I don't know why you would put yourself in a 40 thousand dept just to get a diploma and do what you already do afterwards, because I know people who have no engineer degrees whatsoever and yet are working at high IT security positions after years of freelancing.

---

Also, I'm a tron student so I only some courses from the program, so I base my opinion on those. If those courses are just a taste of how software engineering is like, then you don't want it.

Basically okay, you are software engineering student, and you start by doing dumb shit like 2S03, which is a 1:1 rehash of 1D04 but now with Java (but without Labs that pressure students into fast coding like in 1D04). You pay money for studying something you already know, while doing a level of coding you could do on your own in a month. You learn nothing beyond that. Most courses are like that.

One of the better courses is actually Ned's 3F03, where you are supposed to learn interaction of assembly and C. But courses like that are rare, also in 3F03 Ned wastes a months trying to teach people Linux terminal commands, then cramming the rest of the course (which is the actual course topic) into 2 remaining months. What the hell? How does he plan a course like this?

It's not the student's fault either, it's Ned style (or lack of) of teaching. Ned was teaching 3X03 for the first time 2 years ago. Everything about that class was wrong. Everything. He didn't even fucking read what we studied prior to the course. Every class you would hear this: "... you guys heard about this before right? No? You're kidding. " He failed so badly, the class had 25% average for their first midterm, he had to bump it up to 50%. At the end 17% of the class failed the course. The course is actually pretty simple, Franek was teaching it and the average final mark in class was in high 60s (with many people acing it), which is comparable with ECE's version of the class.

There's also a bunch of other courses that you could wipe your ass with for various reasons:

4O03: the class is dumb as dirt (super easy) when you figure out what the fuck is happening by using YouTube's help. But Deza is too lazy to explain anything, he just uses slides from another university (not even from Engineering department), 99% of which is irrelevant and you never see other than on the slides. As I said, the course is easy, but it's a problem based course with no practice problems whatsoever. Do what you want.

Another class (only for Tron, lucky you) that gave me a strong impression was 3SH3. The course is just as outdated as McMaster's Software Engineering department. It teaches you a simulation OS that was made back in the early 90s, with the version currently used being made in 2005. The OS is not too advanced, but because it's a simulation it has a lot of high abstraction overheads, and it was written as a tool for teaching in one of the best Universities for Software Engineering where students eat and breath code. In McMaster it's used in a class full of ECE and Tron students who only program low level systems. Why??? The professors are just too oblivious to who is taking their course to realize that it's not what the students need.

Then there's also a bunch of crap that even Software Students find irrelevant. Like 3DX4, and 2MX3 (I think it's like 2XB3 or something starting next year). They deal with things that Software students shouldn't care about (and from what I hear from my friends they don't), like physical control systems and signals. Rong Zheng is actually teaching a software elective this year about signals, and it's so bad, any single ECE course's lecture on signals will be more productive that this.

The program is a free for all. The profs do whatever (I saw one prof playing cards with janitors in his office ???), they don't have any teaching plan, they teach you shit that was outdated 10 years ago. It's a nightmare. The program needs a complete overhaul.

It should also be mentioned that someone pointed out that Linked-In's ratings for Universities for Software ranked McMaster below schools with no Software Engineering departments whatsoever. They seem to have bumped McMaster up a bit for this year, but still.

Here's a reference to Asparagus's posts about software engineering, a look at the program from a perspective of someone who knows his stuff: http://www.macinsiders.com/showpost.... &postcount=8

How much course work is there? Per week how much stuff do you have to do and how much time do you get so you can sit down and learn something from this decade on your own?

Also what are you odds of transferring to Waterloo after 2nd year. Im assuming the average needed would probably be 80+ atleast.

Originally Posted by justicebeaver

How much course work is there? Per week how much stuff do you have to do and how much time do you get so you can sit down and learn something from this decade on your own?

Also what are you odds of transferring to Waterloo after 2nd year. Im assuming the average needed would probably be 80+ atleast.

The schedule is pretty easy, because Soft Eng doesn't have any labs forcing them to be on campus, except for maybe a couple of courses they take with tron. Most of what they do is just via remove machines.

Your odds are directly proportional to your marks. Your marks suck because you hate your courses? Then you get stuck here forever.

Also you would need to consider the number of classes they will count, there's a list of courses they count from McMaster. Also you should probably contact them about transferring now, to make sure you do everything right.

If you really like doing software more than the other subjects in first year, then just do software engineering and you will still be able to get alot out of it. The fact is that anywhere you end up working will definitley care more about your personal projects (especially in programs like software and tron). You will never be able to learn every language or program used by companies but if you work hard at your courses and projects you will be able to learn enough to work in the companies you want to. Mac may not have as many co-op opportunities, but it is possible to get them and from there you will really learn what it takes to be software engineer in industry.

Originally Posted by justicebeaver

How much course work is there? Per week how much stuff do you have to do and how much time do you get so you can sit down and learn something from this decade on your own?

Also what are you odds of transferring to Waterloo after 2nd year. Im assuming the average needed would probably be 80+ atleast.

Doesn't matter what your average is. You should have completed 3-4 co-op terms if you want to transfer to Waterloo after 2nd year. I had the average, I tried. So don't make decisions based on that.

Then again, when I look back, to me it doesn't matter that I didn't make it to Waterloo after second year, because I am where I wanted to be after graduation.

Should I consider CS as a serious alternative to SE. what do you learn in Cs that you dont in SE and vice versa? Are Cs grads considered at par with SE (excluding experience, just in terms of the degree)?

Should I consider CS as a serious alternative to SE. what do you learn in Cs that you dont in SE and vice versa? Are Cs grads considered at par with SE (excluding experience, just in terms of the degree)?

No. In every SE course that I had, CS students were suffering because they had no prior knowledge of many topics (unlike SE students or even Tron). There's some sort of issue with their program and courses are backwards, which is weird because a lot of 3rd year courses in SE are listed as 4th year courses in CS.

Plus really CS is just a downplayed version of SE, with some Math and Stats and Comp Eng sprinkled around.