In College/University

Hello, this is my first time here. Not new to your channel, but I took a look at the trailer nonetheless, and you mentioned a 'robotics' competition there. Which got me thinking, although I have a good 4 years left until I go to Uni (or college in the US), what courses I want to do in the future.
I would like to know what courses you picked?
I guess I want to do robotics, programming robots and machines sounds quite fun. So for the undergraduate degree, I'm thinkning to do Computer Science and Mathematics, but I'm not sure whether to choose that or Computer Science and Engineering. As for postgraduade, well I'm thinking of doing a master's (that can be done as undergraduate so I might go for that) and pHd. So, should I go for a Robotics post-graduate and go back to a Computer Science pHd? I'm not so sure. I generally like everything about computers, lol. Although I should note as a slight digression, I spent hours trying to install Arch Linux but gave up, there were just too many errors when it came to installing the bootloader, that I installed Kubuntu today (and I'm loving it!)
 

Hello there!

So first, to talk a little about the robotics competition you saw in the trailer, that was a high school robotics competition called the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC for short.) I made a big video about it here. If you've still got a few years before you go to college, I would highly recommend checking whether there are any FRC teams you could join in your area. It's a great way to try your hand at lots of different technical fields. FIRST is based in the US, but there are some teams in other countries as well.

As far as courses go, I decided to study Information Technology for my higher education. IT involves a lot less programming and a lot more using and setting up computers when compared to a Computer Science degree. I started off at a university working toward a degree called Information Science & Technology, but I transferred to a technical college for this past semester, and the Information Technology degree there is entirely different. The skills you learn will vary widely between different schools, even if they're named similarly, so I'm hesitant to recommend one degree over another.

In general, Computer Science is more theoretical math stuff and Computer Engineering is more physical hardware stuff. Between the options you named, I would guess that Computer Science and Mathematics will be a little more about book learning and programming, while Computer Science and Engineering would be more physical, and possibly more practical. You really need to visit whatever school offers those degrees and ask the people there what the different options would entail. The school should have a list of courses required for each degree (usually published online), and looking at that might help you make your decision.

I really have no idea about any of the post-graduate stuff. Personally, I take the view that the end goal of education is to enable you to get a job, but I've also learned throughout my first year of higher education that building a career is more about what you do with yourself and less about school than I've always been taught. Master's degrees and PhD's are for people who either want to teach the material they're learning about in a formal setting, or who want to pioneer research and expand their entire field rather than just working within it. If that describes you, that's great, but I'm not qualified to give you any advice about it.

Finally, Arch… yeah, it can be difficult. Kubuntu's a great distro, and you should stick with it if you like it, but if you ever want to try Arch again, there's a spin called Antergos that takes Arch and gives you a GUI installer and a GUI package manager. It's a great way to make the transition from an easier-to-use distro to a more technical one.

jacobgkau said

Hello there!

So first, to talk a little about the robotics competition you saw in the trailer, that was a high school robotics competition called the FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC for short.) I made a big video about it here. If you've still got a few years before you go to college, I would highly recommend checking whether there are any FRC teams you could join in your area. It's a great way to try your hand at lots of different technical fields. FIRST is based in the US, but there are some teams in other countries as well.

As far as courses go, I decided to study Information Technology for my higher education. IT involves a lot less programming and a lot more using and setting up computers when compared to a Computer Science degree. I started off at a university working toward a degree called Information Science & Technology, but I transferred to a technical college for this past semester, and the Information Technology degree there is entirely different. The skills you learn will vary widely between different schools, even if they're named similarly, so I'm hesitant to recommend one degree over another.

In general, Computer Science is more theoretical math stuff and Computer Engineering is more physical hardware stuff. Between the options you named, I would guess that Computer Science and Mathematics will be a little more about book learning and programming, while Computer Science and Engineering would be more physical, and possibly more practical. You really need to visit whatever school offers those degrees and ask the people there what the different options would entail. The school should have a list of courses required for each degree (usually published online), and looking at that might help you make your decision.

I really have no idea about any of the post-graduate stuff. Personally, I take the view that the end goal of education is to enable you to get a job, but I've also learned throughout my first year of higher education that building a career is more about what you do with yourself and less about school than I've always been taught. Master's degrees and PhD's are for people who either want to teach the material they're learning about in a formal setting, or who want to pioneer research and expand their entire field rather than just working within it. If that describes you, that's great, but I'm not qualified to give you any advice about it.

Finally, Arch… yeah, it can be difficult. Kubuntu's a great distro, and you should stick with it if you like it, but if you ever want to try Arch again, there's a spin called Antergos that takes Arch and gives you a GUI installer and a GUI package manager. It's a great way to make the transition from an easier-to-use distro to a more technical one.

From “Post #184”, May 28th 2017, 8:38 PM

Thanks for the advice, I barely know the basics of Computer Science, but I'm thinking of going with a Computer Science and Maths degree because Computer Science/Information Technology is the field I want to work in and so the theoretical side of things might be more useful because I'm probably going to end up writing code as a job. I'm not sure yet, though, because I'm generally interested in the hardware side of things, so I may also choose to do Computer Engineering. Haha, well I haven't even done my GCSEs (high school diploma??) yet, so I have a long way to go. As for Antergos, I actually used it and really liked it. I didn't really see any problems with it, the only reason why I got rid of it was because I had partitioned my drives unevenly and resorted to a re-install, at which I chose to go with a different OS (shortly before my hard drive failed). Then I went to Windows 8, coincidentally the WannaCry outbreak happened, although I was more influenced by the lightweight usage of Linux, I switched back. I tried to install Arch, I just could not install that, I used 3 tutorials, and the Installation Guide on the Wiki, but GRUB and systemd-boot would not detect my EFI partition whatsoever, no matter how many times I went back to square one and formatted, and mounted, and wiped, and unmounted, and formatted, and wiped, and every time I would restart the USB I would have to configure everything all over again, which was also a pain. I personally don't see much of a 'technical' difference between Arch and other distros, apart from the installation process, which was a downright pain to deal with. Anyways, I reinstalled Windows (since it was the only other operating system I had at hand), got Kubuntu on a USB and installed that. Can I call it perfect? Not necessarily, no Operating System I've ever used was perfect, and I doubt that will ever be the case. But this is a really good distro, it works fine for me (the issues I had were more blamed towards Linux itself, such as errors in Wine, I believe). This is sort of a digression, but I haven't used Windows in a while considering I don't even have it on my personal machine, but I'm planning to build a computer in the future and I'm probably gonna use Windows. The only Windows that should be installed is Windows 10, but that would slow down often on my laptop, which is why I use Linux. I neither like nor dislike Windows. It's full of telemetry, but it's regularly updated with security patches. Why would I not use it over Linux? Because of compatibility. Wine just isn't at where I would like it to be, as I had stated before. Yes it is fun to fix bugs, but there are times where I need to do something urgent (which ironically would still be an issue due to Windows updates), and the fact that with games, the graphics drivers tend to work better on Windows, and a lot of games require Wine and go through quite a performance loss. But I'm not bashing on Linux in any way, in fact I would prefer it over Windows 9/10 times. But if I'm building a Gaming PC, then I'd get the Operating System with more API support such as DX12 (which is made by Microsoft, unfortunately.) So in the end I might dual-boot, but it depends as to how bad Windows gets, or till I lose my sanity of having such a boring interface, lol. I guess I've gotten a distro-hopping syndrome. I remember having that sort of thing with Android ROMs, makes me want to go back to those days and here's another digression - please make a video on installing Android ADB on Linux, because I remember failing to do so with my OnePlus 3 because something happened, I don't remember exactly what though but that was part of what made me go back to stock OxygenOS.