Excerpts from linuxchix: 7-Dec-99 Re: [issues] Prototype vs. .. by
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> I'm a graduate of the first type (Smith)... could you elaborate more on
> what an EECS-focused program looks like?
CMU has both ECE (Electrical and Computer Engineering), part of
engineering, and CS (Computer Science), which is in its own division.
I'm in ECE, so that's what I know mostly about. The ECE curriculum is
designed such that students have a lot of flexibility in choosing what
courses to take. For the BS degree, (In addition to the 3 "intro"
classes) 3 Breadth courses are required in 3 of the 5 categories of
Applied Physics, Signals and Systems, Circuits, Computer Hardware, and
Computer Software, then 2 Coverage (basically any ECE class), 1 Depth (a
second class in one if the 5 categories), and 1 Capstone (picked from a
list of capstone (read "difficult and time consuming project") classes).
(This is covered in detail at http://www.ece.cmu.edu/undergrad/overbs.html)
So, basically, I took breadth classes in Circuits, Computer Hardware,
and Computer Software, then a whole bunch of stuff in Computer Hardware
and Computer Software, to cover the remaining ECE requirements and a CS
minor. I've never taken an actual course on design or software
engineering, but I've figured some out on my own and by learning from
project group members, since many of the classes I've taken include
semester long software (or otherwise) projects. There's basically 1
class on software engineering that's open to undergrads.
CS, (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/csd/bscs/currreq.html), is not as flexible as
ECE, but it is possible to specialize a bit in areas such as AI,
languages, systems, etc. There are a few software engineering classes,
but most CS students also learn SE by having a big project thrown at
them. There is a group of classes called "Fundamentals of Programming",
but their idea of fundamentals of programming is formal languages and
logic. The difference between a CS major and an ECE major who takes all
of the "computer" classes is that generally the CS major will have a bit
more math-side CS theory, and the ECE major will have a bit more
hardware.
Basically, neither CS or ECE tries to teach you how to code; they just
throw projects and theory at you and expect you to have figured out the
programming part by then. (There are 3 intro-type classes which are
prereqs for every CS class, but the first one is pretty trivial and the
third one is in ML, so they don't really help.)
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