Computer Science Module In Arts

Coen

Hey, in the process of picking my four subjects for first Arts at the moment. Have English, Physchology and Philosophy picked so far. The last place is gonna be going to either History or Computer Science. Could anyone give me any help on my choice here? What are both subjects like through Arts; Difficulty, hours etc? Any help would be greatly appreciated, Cheers

Plautus

Okay, I'm a little bit biased here, as I did History for my undergrad, but your other subjects would have a greater continuity with History than Computer Science. I'm averse to Mathematics so I would have stayed clear of CS for that reason. I'm told that the difficulty of CS can be overrated - and I'm sure you'd get by if you worked consistently at it but your first three subjects suggest you're more of a humanities person.

As for History, it's great. The lecturers are decent, and the first year course corrects a lot of the damage done by the Leaving Cert. You get introduced to the political history of medieval Europe and also find out that scholarly History hinges on interpretation of facts, not the facts themselves. Workload isn't too heavy - you have three essays over the year and three exams at the end of the year (an hour and a half each.) The exam questions are nearly always repeated or simply rephrased from year to year so it's not all about rote learning anymore, it's about preparing questions properly.

It's the second most popular subject after English though, so you might want to make it your first or second choice subject to be assured of getting it.

.E_C_K_S.

Computer Science module was very easy when I done it.(2 years ago) There was 3-4 lectures during the week but then 2-3 hours increased for labs where you would design a website as part of your continuous assessment.

This was the hardest part but manageable once you actually attended the labs, paid attention,asked questions and took your time with it. All of my notes were put online so you could pay proper attention in lectures and take extra notes if needed (Not really though).


Here's a better description:
http://www.ucc.ie/modules/descriptions/page014.html#CS1050

You can look up any module using this to see what it is like:
http://www.ucc.ie/modules/

My take on it is that it would have less work in it than History but History would be more popular and therefore have limited spaces so choose wisely.

Best of luck!

Coen

Thanks for getting back to me, ended up picking History in the end, thought it would go better with my other choices