Running head: PURSUING A CAREER IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

Trident University Stephen Trotter Module 1 Case Assignment CSC111: Foundatns of Comp. and Program Dsg Mr. Santos Galvez 26 February 2012

PURSUING A CAREER IN COMPUTER SCIENCE What does it mean to pursue a career in computer science? I will first explain what computer science is, and how it relates to the current career marketplace. I will then delve into

what it means to me, personally, to pursue this career. Later I will discuss the decline in interest in this field of study before projecting an idea for its growth. Computer science is the study of the workings of things (Carey, 2010). From the basics of input and output devices, down to the ones and zeros of assembly language, computer science is about how things work. How exactly can we fit trillions of transistors on a tiny silicon chip? How does a series of these switches create the output of monitors, or turn the input from the keyboard and the mouse into meaningful translations on that screen? This is what computer science is; how to control and manipulate those inputs and outputs to have the desired effect of the computer scientist. It seems as though as there is a decline in the amount of computer science pupils, there is an increase in the number of computer science positions to fill (Burger, 2008). To me, this would mean an easier time finding a suitable hiring position upon graduation; however, it also means that less people are looking into this working of things I have mentioned. People are moreover looking at their computers transparently, as a way of accessing their social network, their online lives. People could care less how it works, meaning an increase in demand on the people that do care and that do know how it works. Looking at the employment outlook for this career based on these deductions, it would suddenly seem as though pursuing a computer science degree would be highly desirable. And it is, for me. While I could care less about some of the finer points of the inner workings of something such as my car, I can spend hours getting the final bugs out of my new web inventory code, or rewriting that code to run more logically or faster. To me, pursuing this

PURSUING A CAREER IN COMPUTER SCIENCE career is about doing what I have always wanted to do. It is about finding little projects in my

everyday life to work on and to make little tasks easier. For example, when I first joined the Air Force, I went through a Career Development Course, designed to quickly further your understanding of your career path. I struggled through this, dealing better with the pace of work than with the study material; however, I took that opportunity to whip some Python code into a quiz program. Inputting the questions manually into this system, I believe I learned more in this way than I could in any other method. Computer science, to me, is about breaking down every piece of every problem, fully understanding the problem, and solving it. In June 2005, the Presidents Information Technology Advisory Committee was not renewed (Klawe & Shneiderman, 2005). The number of graduates with computer science degrees was down 32 percent in 2007 (Burger, 2008). In 2010, the first time in decades, the College Board did not offer the Advanced Placement AB Computer Science exam to high school students (Carey, 2010). These excerpts, in chronological order, show the signs of the decline in interest in pursuing a computer science degree. As I have touched on earlier, it seems as though people are more interested in touching the surface of computer science with things like web programming or video games, but hesitate to delve deeper into the science of the machines that they work with on a daily basis. To me, this seems sort of natural. On one hand, you have the people who scratch the surface of things; where, if they were to dig deeper into the subject, they would be overwhelmed with information. On the other hand, you have the people that can handle that extra information, that crave it, and can actually work on something better if they have all of it understood. I think that these are the current computer science students, and I believe that the others have been weeded out of computer science courses due to the everchanging landscape that is the current computer science life.

PURSUING A CAREER IN COMPUTER SCIENCE One idea as to the growth of computer science is to expand into other fields, working in them from a computer science perspective (Klawe & Shneiderman, 2005). As for myself, I also

believe that improving in the areas that computer science already covers is also a viable solution. One specific example I have that comes to mind is interfacing between a home-grown business and PayPal. With the social power of Facebook, networking a new home-based business is a snap. Anyone can do it from home. Jumping off from that point and into your own actual web site is a struggle for some. Streamlining that process is one idea that could draw interest from different people into computer science. There are a multitude of areas where this could be done. Pursuing computer science as a career today means delving deeper than the surface. Careers in computer science are not hard to find in the marketplace today. Personally, computer science is about problem solving, and there are more than a few different ways to increase the decline in interest in computer science. We just have to get the word out.

PURSUING A CAREER IN COMPUTER SCIENCE References Carey, K. (2010). Decoding the Value of Computer Science. THE CHRONICLE. Retrieved from: http://chronicle.com/article/Decoding-the-Value-of-Computer/125266/ Klawe, M., & Shneiderman, B. (2005). Crisis and Opportunity in Computer Science. Communication of the ACM, 48(11), 27-28. Retrieved from: http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/p27-klawe-CACM-10-2005.pdf Burger, D. (2008). Is An IT Career Looking Better for Students?. IT Jungle. Retrieved from: http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh021108-story07.html