WGU Computer Science vs Software Engineering - Tough Decision¿ .

Hey guys, welcome to my video today. Today, we're going to talk about the differences between software engineering and computer science. You might have thought, which one should I major in? Right? Both of these degrees lead to a lot of the same common jobs. For ages, computer science was the gold standard degree to get a software engineer job or almost any kind of engineering job, you know, data engineer, a network engineer, um, you know, things like that, computer science was always the gold standard. It's also still the gold standard for AI and machine learning and jobs in that field. So software engineering though. So you have kind of niche degrees like cloud computing and network engineering that like only WGU and very select schools offer, but software engineering is not a niche degree. It's actually become an extremely common degree and extremely respected degree. So a lot of job postings you see for software engineer or a similar engineer, like data engineer. Um, a lot of those, a lot of those postings will say not just computer science degree anymore. It will say computer science or software engineering degree or equivalent. Uh, I mean, the data engineering ones will probably say computer science bachelors, uh, data science masters or something similar, but. Any kind of web developer, any kind of software engineer in general, because data engineering is a subset of software engineering, uh, for the most part. So, but any kind of subset of software engineering, it'll say a computer science degree or software engineering degree, I really don't think a company is going to be very picky, which one you have, even Fain, they're totally fine with a software engineering bachelors. So a software engineering degree will give you everything you need to land a six-figure software engineering job in the future. So which one would I personally pick? Well, I have a computer science degree, but I will say, even though I have a computer science degree from Tessu, the software engineering degree was not out yet at WGU. So it was still called software development and no offense to anybody that did the software development degree. Still, still a good degree, but one software development is seen as a very niche sounding degree, a very niche sounding degree, you know, it doesn't have the word engineering in there, you know, so it's not very common. And number two, I did not like the curriculum for that degree. I really did not, but the new software engineering degree, you know, it has the very normalized name of bachelor of science in software engineering, which, you know, every company knows. And also the curriculum is great. Like it'll really looking at that degree, it will actually prepare you better for a software engineer job than the computer science degree. Now, do I think the computer science degree is still more valuable and more flexible? Yes. The computer science degree can land almost any job as long as you've learned the skills to get that job, right? You can work in AI and machine learning, which usually does require a master's, but almost any AI job, almost any machine learning job will be a computer science bachelor's and for the master's would probably be another computer science degree or a AI or machine learning master's, which is a little more rare. And the computer science degree can get you into cloud jobs. If you get the cloud certs like AWS or Azure, it can get you into data. If you learn data, the computer science degree is extremely flexible. So it's like, if you, if you're doing a computer science degree and you constantly change your opinion, like I always do, right, you want to be this engineer, you want to be this type of engineer, right? Like it doesn't matter because you're doing a computer science degree, which can get all of those jobs, whereas a software engineering degree, you know, you can still work all of those jobs, but it'd probably be a little harder to break into them. But for software engineering, it holds the same value as a computer science degree. And like I said, I really love the software engineering degree curriculum. Like I know we're all trying to degree hack here for the most part and get a degree done fast. But the WGU curriculum for the software engineering degree is really good. I think you could probably jump into a software engineer job. Like very shortly after it, you would still have to learn data structures and algorithms to pass the interview. But I do think that the WGU software engineering degree prepares you for a front end developer job, which is a subset of software engineering and the most common software engineer job. The front end developer, it prepares you for that right away. It has the front end development class. It has the JavaScript programming class, which both you'll be doing on a front end developer job. And I wish it, I wish it had a react class, but in a future video, I will. I will link to actually I'll link to it in this video. There is a meta web developer cert that I really, really like from Coursera. I'll link that down in the description and that covers react. So it covers all of the front end development stuff you need, and then it goes into react. So react is extremely valuable. I wish WGU wouldn't add a react class to that, but it's something you can learn after your WGU experience. And you can basically get a front end developer job using react, you know, just type in react.js or type in react front end developer, and there's lots of jobs and it's very in demand. That's personally what I would go for right now as a new grad. So, but don't forget, you still have to learn data structures and algorithms to pass the interview. Uh, but yeah, software engineering, I love the curriculum. You know, it's got some great classes that really prepare you. Now, computer science will basically cover theory better. You'll learn math better. You'll learn how computers work better. Um, they're like, I find computers fascinating. So it's like the software engineering degree would be extremely tempting. Like, I think I would have a really hard decision on my hands right now. If I was choosing between the WGU computer science degree and WGU software engineering degree. One, the software engineering degree would be really good and help me like prepare for a job. It teaches you everything you need to know, software engineering, and it has a data structures and algorithm class in it as well, whereas the computer science, I love learning about computers. So it's like, I'd be having a lot of fun with that degree and it's still preparing me for software engineering as well. So in the computer science degree, our computer architecture teaches you all about computers, uh, operating systems. Um, you it's an operating systems for programmers class. It's a little different than WGU's other operating system class that they have in some of the other tech degrees. So it's a, it teaches you operating systems a little better and it's a little more rigorous. As for, uh, other classes in the degree, um, there's lots of good computer science theory classes. So computer science is a very heavy theory based degree. So if you want to learn theory, if you want to learn computers inside and out, if you want to learn programming in many languages, if you want to learn programming, basically in and out, um, you know, you want to learn basic everything that there is regarding computer science, uh, data structures as well, there's two data structures in the WGU course, uh, WGU computer science course, so you'll learn it a lot better. Compared to the software engineering one, which will definitely help you, uh, help prepare you better for interviews. So that's, that's kind of the odd ironic thing. Actually. I think the computer science degree helps prepare you better for interviews. And then the software engineering degree actually helps prepare you for a software engineering job a little better. So it's like, there's great things about both degrees and there's cons to both degrees. So also if you ever want to work in like game development, uh, you kind of need math for game development. And I would definitely recommend the computer science degree for that. Um, a physics degree actually works great too for that. If you want to do like 3d modeling, but, um, computer science degree would be great for anything, AI, anything, machine learning, any kind of game development, um, very good degree for all those use cases, uh, software engineering, like I said, you can do either or personally, I know you're probably watching this video for me to make a decision for you, but it's hard for me to even make a decision myself on this. So I'm going to tell you, go look at the curriculum for both. See whichever classes you think are the funnest and just pick one. Now, if you want career flexibility, though, if you're a person that always changes their mind, you want to do a new career, like in your mind, you're like, Hey, I want to, I want to do this career for my future. I want to do this career for my future. And you're always, um, changing it every couple months. I'd probably do the computer science degree. So you have that career flexibility, but if you really, really want to be a software engineer, you love building things, um, you know, for a fact, you're going to be a software engineer or something very similar, closely related to software engineering, then I would do the software engineering degree. So, like I said, I would just go to the curriculums. Both will land a lot of the same jobs. I love WGU's new software engineering degree. I love their computer science degree. Can't go wrong with either. Both are absolutely fantastic degrees. So go to the curriculum. Actually, we'll go to the curriculum right now. This wasn't planned. Uh, this, this whole video wasn't planned. It was, um, a very impromptu video, but we're going to go over both course lists right now and see which one you might like better. All right, guys, we're in the computer science degree page for WGU. We're going to click on the course page here and go over some of the courses. So, like I said, you got both discrete math courses, the software engineering one does not have either of those. You have calculus, calculus. I will say you really don't need this for any kind of engineering. The only time calculus comes into play is like really deep game development. You know, like it's, you need it for physics. You need it for, uh, like the physics of a game. So, and that's like more high end games. Like if you're just creating really simple phone games and things like that, you might not need it, but. Calculus will be required for like game development. Um, but for most engineering, I mean, you might need it slightly for some kind of data things, but for the most part, you don't need calculus in my opinion. Um, and then you have all of these in the software engineering degree as well. So it's a lot of crossover. Um, basically everything. This whole software section is in the software engineering program operating systems for programmers. You do not have any software engineering degree. Now they might have a different operating system class. Let me check here. So they do have a different operating system class and that is hardware and operating system essentials. So it's more of a lighter operating system class and less programming in it. So, I mean, it's still operating systems though and operating systems is absolutely crucial and it's a fun class that I enjoy, so I love learning about operating systems. I love learning about, you know, Mac iOS, windows, um, Linux and all those things. It's operating systems is very fascinating. And the more you dive into AI, right? The more advanced we get into AI, you know, those AI will have operating systems themselves at some point, which is pretty cool. So user experience design, I think this course is only in the software engineering degree. And that is very important to any kind of software engineer role. Um, so that's something you'll actually have to learn outside of the computer science degree if you decide to do the computer science degree, because you do need to learn user interface design. You know, basically if you're going to be any kind of front-end developer, you're going to be a front-end mobile developer, front-end web developer. You need to know user interface design. So that's very crucial. I mean, you could take a Coursera class on that or find some kind of class, say Udemy class, anything, and you could learn a user interface pretty well. If you take a couple of courses on that. So I wouldn't really be too worried about it. And then the computer science degree actually does have introduction to artificial intelligence, which is pretty cool. It's got computer architecture, which is extremely crucial. If you want to learn computers, data structures and algorithms one and two, which definitely helps prepare you better for an interview. Um, and like I said, all these courses are the same. You got Linux foundations. That must be new because I don't remember that being there a while back. Web development foundations. I believe this is in both courses and you have the data, which is in both programs as well. So introduction to Python. I believe this is only in the software engineering one, which is pretty good. I wish this was in both of them. I think Python is really good for interviews. It would actually, I think, make even more sense in the computer science degree. So it's a little strange. Um, I mean, it makes sense, I guess, that they want you to know more programming in software engineering. I just feel like Python. Python is more used in AI and very simple programming tasks, but it is very commonly used in interviews. Now during interviews, usually you get to choose what programming language you want, but Python is like the easiest and simplest and where you can code the fastest. So I feel like 85% of people choose Python on a programming interview, just because of the simplicity and the speed of it. So, and most, most tutorials you find will be in Python regarding data structures and algorithms. So, like I said, two, uh, two fantastic degrees, that's basically all the differences that you have. No, there's not like a whole lot of difference between these two degrees. Like I said, there's more math in the computer science degree. You have an artificial intelligence class, more data structure classes, a computer architecture, a more intense operating systems class. No, it's a lot of, a lot of crossover for sure. So which degree do you want to do? Computer science, software engineering. It all depends on you. I can't make this decision for you. Go to the curriculums, see which curriculum you like better. Which one sounds more fun to you? A lot of this, both degrees can get a lot of the same jobs, obviously, especially a software engineer. Front end developer, backend developer, mobile developer, the software engineering degree will get all the same jobs as a computer science degree. Now, if you want to work in AI, which is really booming right now and kind of the future, then a computer science degree would be what you need. Do you want career flexibility? I'd also go with computer science. Um, but overall just pick whatever curriculum that you think you can actually complete, because if you get bored with your curriculum, you might not complete your degree. So go with whichever one looks really good to you. Whichever one looks fun to you. Uh, if you really want to be a software engineer and the software engineering degree looks really fun, I'd go with that one. So this decision is up to you. You'll have to make the decision for yourself and both degrees are fantastic. I love both of these degrees at WGU. They're actually probably my two favorite degrees at WGU. So, uh, both great degrees. WGU has a lot of great degrees, but these two are very similar, very special. And you can't go wrong with either. If you guys liked today's video at all, please like, and subscribe. It would mean a lot to me. I'm trying to grow this channel. I'm pumping out content a lot lately. So if you guys can like, and subscribe, if I helped you in any way, it would mean a lot to me. Thank you so much. I hope you guys have a wonderful day. Bye.