If you were a college CS major, and you had two advanced CS electives to choose from, which two would you choose between

Compilers
Operating Systems
Databases
and
Computer Networks?

Those are the ones I'm leaning towards, but I also have the option of taking Unix Systems and Parallel Programming.

As far as what I want to do career / programming wise after school, no idea. I haven't ran into any programming I didn't like, and I find that whatever class I take I usually develop an interest in it over time anyway. Just curious to hear thoughts / experiences / perspectives / recommendations.

Databases and Computer Networks

They are all very good electives and I would recommend taking them all. However, if this is not an option then it will come down to preference. If you want to be a developer, parallel programming and databases will be useful. System admins would see value from computer networks and operating systems. Compilers is fluff. It's an amazing course, and understanding a compiler and formal language theory goes a long way, but if you can't take it then oh well. You won't find yourself unable to be a developer without a deep understanding of a compiler.

parallel and db

If your college was mine, then it'd be OS and compilers REQUIRED.

If it was my CHOICE, probably would still pick those two. Though not 100% relevant for most jobs, the experience (assuming you have courses even close to the difficulty of mine) would be great. Meeting deadlines, indepth debugging, cumulative project structure etc.

I'd go for networking and Unix.

If you don't know databases already, should get this, as it is very practical to have this knowledge, everything else is preference but I would take networking and operating systems.

I'd say get unix systems, it's a good basic skill to have which will make you more valuable in the end. Databases is also a pretty core skill to have for most IT professions. I'd say a basic understanding of networks is too but honestly if you're focussing on it you'll quickly run into the small nitty gritty stuff which you'll rarely use in practice (studied networks myself, now doing software engineering).

Unix+database and you'll be instantly employable.

Oye, that awkward moment when there really isn't a consensus.

Pretty much what I'm getting is databases and SOMETHING, so I guess databases for sure.

Out of networks, Unix, parallel, and maybe OS/Compilers, which one do you guys think is the easiest to teach yourself?

If I had to pick, I'd say I'm leaning towards Databases and Unix personally, since Parallel, OS, and Compilers are all pretty specialized and more for old guard ish programming. (not that they're not important)

I should also add that at my university, OS is more theory based and there isn't that much actual programming surprisingly (which I think is stupid) so I'm leaning away from that.

This post was edited by Rejection on Feb 14 2015 01:14pm

oh, boooo


OS was the most intense programming course at my UNI. 7 projects each semester, so you get 2 weeks per project, and each was harder than the last.