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Computer Applications

Keano!

Anyone here doing it right now?

Thinking of going into it next year but would like if anyone could tell me a bit about it and how they think it is etc...

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Skylinehead

I'm just coming out of first year, and it's been fairly easy. You'll do bits on hardware, operating systems and networks (and the dreaded maths), and programming is completely Java-oriented. Not sure about other years though.

Keano!

if you don't mind me asking, what points did you go in with?

maths hard in it? i'm pretty useless when it comes to figures :P

john.needham

If you search the boards, you'll find plenty on this subject.

But anyway...

Im about to finish my final year of the current ca software engineering course. I dont believe the maths has changed to much over the years and is do-able for most people, you just have to do the work. I came in with hit and miss maths skills (that hasnt changed much.. :rolleyes:), and got through ok. (make friends with people who are good at maths!)

The new course is still very java orientated, but you get a good grounding in a wide enough area. Its a good degree, I loved it. Its not all easy, like any good degree, and it seems to still hold a decent bit of respect in industry.

Good luck.

Keano!

cheers for the info.

stainluss

john.needham wrote: »

Its a good degree, I loved it. Its not all easy, like any good degree, and it seems to still hold a decent bit of respect in industry.

I heard its Irelands most popular, would it be more respected nationally than the Computer Science degrees like the ones in NUIG, UCD etc?

Is there much diff?

john.needham

stainluss wrote: »

I heard its Irelands most popular, would it be more respected nationally than the Computer Science degrees like the ones in NUIG, UCD etc?

Is there much diff?

Im not totally familiar with those, I know its much more applied and less theoretical than say trinity. It used to have a very, if not the highest standing in Ireland afaik, dont think thats the case today, not that its looked on badly though.

I would focus more on other things than degree standing myself, DCU is a four year degree and the chances that opinions will change over that time are very high (they have since I statred). Look at your interests, see what matches up on the courses, look at the rest of the college (clubs/socs (see other threads dont bring that up here :rolleyes: )), accomodation etc.

john.needham

Mr.S wrote: »

you will probably fail maths tbh. Going through the results lists there atleast 1/2 the class have failed the last test:)

You'll usually find about that many did a decent bit of study too, (unfortunately) while there are courses where cramming will work (in some years) Maths just isnt one of them. First year maths in ca is..unique..by the way

Keano!

What level of maths are we talking here?

Applied maths
Very good at honors
Okay at honors
Very good at ordinary
Weak at ordinary

john.needham

Applied maths
Very good at honors
Okay at honors
Very good at ordinary

Should be fine, vg at ordinary will need you to put the work in (preferable have done a bit of the hons course but you should be fine), above that should be no bother.

Skylinehead

Mr.S wrote: »

Plus we have an awful lecturer for semester two.

Maths learning centre ftw.

Aye, she's awful. Been to two of her lectures out of....34-odd. Lordy.:D

TheChrisD

At least you guys don't have Michael Clancy... Not that he's bad and all, but he has a very roundabout way of teaching.

I remember him teaching me first year maths a good while back. Spent the best part of a week explaining something, and only at the end did he say, "Now this is how you did it in the leaving cert", and only then did it make perfect sense

It's mostly high-end ordinary, low-end higher stuff at the beginning. If you struggled at maths in the leaving you might have trouble with the maths modules.

stainluss

TheChrisD wrote: »

It's mostly high-end ordinary, low-end higher stuff at the beginning. If you struggled at maths in the leaving you might have trouble with the maths modules.

And do you see immediately how this fits into computers?

Keano!

john.needham wrote: »

Applied maths
Very good at honors
Okay at honors
Very good at ordinary

Should be fine, vg at ordinary will need you to put the work in (preferable have done a bit of the hons course but you should be fine), above that should be no bother.

Cheers. And to what degree is CSS covered? Ie. writing codes and layouts etc... I run a website so that would be interesting.

I think this course is right up my ally

Keano!

Mr.S wrote: »

First year you take a Web design module, only for Semester 1 though.

50% project where you have to create a website which uses CSS.

Very basic though so if you have any experience in websites, you'll find it piss easy.

haha, nice one. 99.9% sure I'll be heading down this route now. :cool:

thanks for all the help

Keano!

hmm

will do thanks

Landa2

stainluss wrote: »

I heard its Irelands most popular, would it be more respected nationally than the Computer Science degrees like the ones in NUIG, UCD etc?

Is there much diff?

The other courses around the country are more theory based courses, i transfered into Computer Applications from DIT Kevin Street where they have their own Software Development course for this reason.. You will find DCU's course to be a lot more on the practical side while still keeping its grounding in theory, making graduates of Comp Apps more used to programming and the Practical side of the discipline than other colleges..

argonaut

You'll probably want to really, really like Maths.

If this isn't the case, do EC, which is what I do and I'm practically morally opposed to the very concept of mathematics at this point.

Skylinehead

It wouldn't have anything to do with this test tomorrow would it?:D:(

Fuhrer

Maths is really easy

But you have to teach yourself, the classes are far too large for any kind of back and forth with the Teacher.

irish_boy90

argonaut wrote: »

You'll probably want to really, really like Maths.

If this isn't the case, do EC, which is what I do and I'm practically morally opposed to the very concept of mathematics at this point.

There isn't that much maths.
First year maths is year long and pretty much leaving cert higher level with a bit of applied maths. so if your doing it for the LC, hang on to your notes. they will help you a lot later.

Keano!

irish_boy90 wrote: »

There isn't that much maths.
First year maths is year long and pretty much leaving cert higher level with a bit of applied maths. so if your doing it for the LC, hang on to your notes. they will help you a lot later.

i'm okay at ordinary though. expect b1 at the very least.

did honors for my junior cert and got a c.

[Deleted User]

argonaut wrote: »

You'll probably want to really, really like Maths.

If this isn't the case, do EC, which is what I do and I'm practically morally opposed to the very concept of mathematics at this point.

Yeah, but you're a business student, so if you think about it, you lose at everything by definition. Of course someone in EC would express distaste for maths; EC exists for people who can't count but want to benefit from presenting employers the illusion of them knowing something about computers. Thank Lucifer that Information Systems was done away with and replaced with your course, so the degrees are now different and no longer considered equally valuable.

(No prizes for guessing which the more valuable one is. :pac:)

Keano!, Computer Applications is very difficult. Prepare for long, sleepless nights and bitter resentment towards all the slackers doing business and humanities courses. There is no mid-semester Reading Week for scientists (read: people valuable to humanity) either.

argonaut

Deleted User wrote: »

Yeah, but you're a business student, so if you think about it, you lose at everything by definition. Of course someone in EC would express distaste for maths; EC exists for people who can't count but want to benefit from presenting employers the illusion of them knowing something about computers. Thank Lucifer that Information Systems was done away with and replaced with your course, so the degrees are now different and no longer considered equally valuable.

(No prizes for guessing which the more valuable one is. :pac:)

Keano!, Computer Applications is very difficult. Prepare for long, sleepless nights and bitter resentment towards all the slackers doing business and humanities courses. There is no mid-semester Reading Week for scientists (read: people valuable to humanity) either.

Troll post is troll post.

e: Admittedly it doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to notice that...

Hauk

Deleted User wrote: »

Yeah, but you're a business student, so if you think about it, you lose at everything by definition. Of course someone in EC would express distaste for maths; EC exists for people who can't count but want to benefit from presenting employers the illusion of them knowing something about computers. Thank Lucifer that Information Systems was done away with and replaced with your course, so the degrees are now different and no longer considered equally valuable.

(No prizes for guessing which the more valuable one is. :pac:)

Keano!, Computer Applications is very difficult. Prepare for long, sleepless nights and bitter resentment towards all the slackers doing business and humanities courses. There is no mid-semester Reading Week for scientists (read: people valuable to humanity) either.

+1 +1 +1 +1

public_enemy

Deleted User wrote: »

Keano!, Computer Applications is very difficult. Prepare for long, sleepless nights and bitter resentment towards all the slackers doing business and humanities courses.

Wouldn't quite agree with that, there are an awful lot of people in CA who seem to get through it without actually knowing anything. Most of the exams, you can pass them with a decent cramming session the night before and a considerable number of the assignments have you working in groups. There are points towards the end of the semester where you can have a pretty severe workload but it's more of a quantity thing than difficulty most of the time.

If you like computers and aren't stupid, you'll be fine in CA.

[Deleted User]

MrS wrote:

Also no girls

This is a good thing if you're gay (~3% of men) or don't feel like listening to high-pitched whining and an abundance of upper inflections while trying to do seriously difficult work (100% of people).

argonaut wrote: »

Troll post is troll post.

e: Admittedly it doesn't exactly take Sherlock Holmes to notice that...

My post was neither particularly controversial nor contrary to what I actually believe. Speaking one's mind doesn't equate to trolling. EC is designed to spit out people to work in "IT management" and other buzzword fields; you know, the kind of entrepreneur who sets up his small business in the "computing industry", wears a blue polyester shirt with jeans since he's young and hip, and pretends to know what he's talking about because he did web development and Java for a couple of years.

CA also tries to push a business edge on students, but it's far easier to ignore when you know you won't be condemned to that kind of existence because you have skills and knowledge which go beyond Internet Explorer and Microsoft Word.

public_enemy wrote:

Wouldn't quite agree with that there are an awful lot of people in CA who seem to get through it without actually knowing anything. Most of the exams, you can pass them with a decent cramming session the night before

Not really anymore. The exam format has changed to make sure students understand everything and can't just memorise to pass. CA has a massive drop-out rate; people go into the course thinking "O I PLAY GAMEZ I CAN DO DIS LOL" and then **** themselves to death before second year. First year is easy, second year it's like getting hit with a freight train and the subsequent years are that train picking up speed.

public_enemy wrote:

and a considerable number of the assignments have you working in groups. There are points towards the end of the semester where you can have a pretty severe workload but it's more of a quantity thing than difficulty most of the time.

I didn't say the assignments were all insanely difficult (although many are), but the course as a whole is; whether or not this is due to the quantity of work doesn't change the fact that it's a hard course.

Carri

Mr.S wrote: »

Also no girls;)

Beg to differ. *wave*
One of the smartest people in our year (2nd year CA) is female.

Deleted User wrote:

This is a good thing if you're gay (~3% of men) or don't feel like listening to high-pitched whining and an abundance of upper inflections while trying to do seriously difficult work (100% of people).

You make it sound like that girls never do any work -_- I know a fair few men in CA who are loud and obnoxious when it comes to getting work done and it's impossible to work with them in the vinicinity.

Attol

I'm a 2nd year CA.

As long as you go to your lectures and don't leave your assignments til the last minute you'll be fine.

The people who drop out/think the course is impossible are quite often the same ones who just don't go to classes.

[Deleted User]

If you're going to college for ladies do ARTS. If you're going to college to be a MAN!!! do Computing, look at it like this, in a computing course, its very hard to be looked upon as odd.

Tiroskan

Pfft. Everybody knows all the gays are in arts. Duh.

Also,

Mr.S wrote: »

Not so good when basically the whole year are long haired & greasy:D

this. Wouldn't wanna be cruising by the computer building :P