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Originally Posted by revolution27
Nobody I've talked to seems to be able to give me a clear answer on the difference between these two programs. I was planning on going into software eng but it seems you dont spend much time doing actual coding in that program. I dont want to graduate knowing only theory and be useless in an actual software development environment. I'm starting to think CS might be the better option for me. Anyone in the Soft. Eng program want to share your opinion on this?
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Unfortunately, I think the amount of coding is fairly even between the two programs.
In second year, both share CS2SC3/SE2S03, "Principles of Programming", in which we learned OCaml and C. This is, I'd say, the last course that they really teach you programming in.
In third year, both share CS3GC3/SE3GC3, "Computer Graphics", in which we used C to learn about OpenGL (the prof explicitly said that the purpose of the course wasn't to learn C, but OpenGL).
Also in third year, there's a compsci only course CS3MI3, "Principles of Programming Languages", in which we use SML, but focus on the theory behind the language.
Those are the only courses I've had that have a heavy programming load; I've had programming assignments in other courses, using MIPS, Perl, Python, and of course C/C++.
Ultimately, it's left up to you to learn programming languages. It's not what you want to hear, I know, but it's there all the same. I remember in compsci 2SC3, a few people asked the prof why we were learning OCaml, since it's not used in the industry. His response was that it's not his job to teach you languages that prepare you for your first job; it's his job to instill in you the principles that are fundamental to software development.
tl;dr: You won't program as much as you want to, but you will what's important: the fundamentals of software development, that still be around when no one uses C/C++/Python/whatever anymore.