There are so many different fields when it comes to working with computers, and it's definitely something I want to do.

But where I get lost and worried is what field to chose.

How hard is it to get a job in a certain field and if it pays good, will there still be jobs when I'm done with school, etc...

I'm taking my first semester of computer science along with calculus.

I would really love to create video games, since I'm always playing them but I wonder, does that job have a lot to do with graphic design?
I know probably not I think the creating of a game and someone designing the art is totally different but that's something I'm not 100% sure about.

Software design seems very interesting, but at the same time I feel it would be hard to find a job ??? Not sure.
At the same time I don't really understand how someone can make a lot of money with the career, I know I looked it up they do but how?
Who do they get hired by? Who do they create software for?

Website design also seems very and would be cool to work on new projects often, but the way technology is moving it seems like people will be able to create their own websites even more easily then it is now.
I know the world is going to just keep growing with the use of computers so I'm sure the big companies will always want professors built websites..

What I'm basically asking , or venting about.

What made you chose your field?
What were you worried about?
Are you happy with your choice?
What college courses did you take to achieve goals?

i think it's more important for you to first ask yourself some important questions.



why is this definitely something you want to do? do you want to work on hardware or software? if hardware, do you want to work on networking / assembling parts / installing servers? or do you want to design computer chips and design other hardware? if the latter, you want a computer engineering degree, not computer science. if you want to work software, do you want to write code? some careers do that a lot (eg: application developers) and other careers dont. from your post, i'm guessing you have 0 experience in either one. so this is a very important question you must answer.

if your initial goal is making video games, get out of the degree and run. right now. i'm very serious because it's not gonna happen.

web design is fine, but it's actually one of the lower paid software jobs i think. my coworkers used to work with one who was really good, and he only made 27$/hr with years of experience in georgia.


what in your opinion is a lot of money? it varies a lot by field. almost every company needs to hire someone to do technical work. whether it's a hardware guy to maintain servers or a software guy to build them a website or someone to design a system to make the whole company run.

/edit: going back to the questions you were asking, i got into the career because my dad was a programmer. he pushed it on me. i dont really have a passion for anything, so i dont really like or dislike it. i got a bachelors in computer science. i am a software engineer. i work on mobile apps for delivery guys.

This post was edited by carteblanche on Jul 27 2013 11:02pm

I am not actually in a career yet nor have I finished college yet (almost done! one more year baby)

but I have definitely decided on computer science as my field.


What made me choose it? A mixture of things. I spent a lot of time after HS trying to figure out what I was.....'good' at. I liked problem solving, I loved working on and with computers, and (as I later found out) I am apparently really good at Math.

Worries? Initially I was going to get a rag tag associates degree in CS because I was afraid of all the high Math requirements for my states CS degree. (I never took above college algebra in HS). But I realized I was now an adult and if I put my mind to it maybe even someone like ME could do calculus or whatever. So I went full in on the bachelors.
To this day I still have plenty of worries, like the fact that I don't code enough in my free time, or if I will find a job, etc.

Am I happy? Hells yes. Even in the worse parts of this degree (harder courses, shitty professors etc) I ALWAYS managed to find a silver lining. The study of CS is so awesome and most people don't realize how much hard work goes into it and how much our predecessors truly made a lot of this stuff possible.

What college courses have I taken? Typical (Missouri state) CS bachelors. Requires at least Calc 1 and 2, discrete math, linear algebra, statistics. I personally took Logic and Philosophy as some of my gen ed electives.

What made you chose your field?
I wanted to get into game programming, but couldn't land a job in the field out of college. I ended up working for a software company, and don't regret it. I still do game development in my spare time.

What were you worried about?
I was worried about not graduating. Game programming is fucking hard

Are you happy with your choice?
I'm very happy with my choice.

What college courses did you take to achieve goals?
I took game programming in college (3 year advanced diploma)

to extend on what carteblanche said.

web design and development are way different.

typically if your going the design route you would end up as a ui/ux (user interface/user experience) designer, in which you specifically do designs only. such as creating wire frames photoshop designs. you also have to do interface testing with other people where the intrface is created on paper and you have another user navigate through it, kind of hard to explain, I did it when i was in college.

then you have a web developer, think of these guys as sofware engineers for the web, but still different. to be a good developer, typically you obviously are going to know how to program usuing a server side scripting language (PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby ect) you will also need to know how to set up databases (mySQL being the most popular, but there are others such as mongo). its also good to know linux commands as well as using git. then your going to need to know client side languages / markup such as javascript, html and css.

now there are quite a bit of different languages and pretty much all of them are open source(free to use). each one also has different frameworks: PHP has code igniter, zend +++, Python primarily use django, perl (actually i dont know if/what frameworks has/uses perl), ruby has rails. theres even frame works for client side javascript such as jquery, mootools, backbone.js ect.

web is no walk in the park. and wordpress, joomla and other content management systems are just that, they dont really get you further than created a small blog page or small local business website. they cant be used for enterprise or large scale websites. and to be honest freelancing or working for a company that is basically a glorified freelance company(they many make tons of small websites for other companies) dont typically make that much money anyways. if you want to make money off of this you either a: need to create something big, ei: facebook, twitter, ***, ect. or create a product that many people can use, ei: CMS systems, ecommerce platforms ect. where these dont make you much money upfront, they bring tons of money and keep on bringing in money after they are complete.

This post was edited by AkuuZ on Jul 30 2013 08:49pm

are you creative? = Science

or

are you Repetitive? = Engineering

i'm in both fields to be honest.. well at least im headed in that direction