What do they teach you guys as Computer Engineering and CS majors?

[quan chi2]

As all of you know, the rate at which technology advances is increasing. There is no possible way that one can just study all of the engineering aspects of the new technologies in school; Or can they? I'm not in college yet, but I'd like to know how CS, CE, and EE majors learn how to work with all of this new technology? How do you know what hasn't been invented if you don't know about the new technology being presented to the world everyday? Do the instructors teach you how to adapt to new types of mechanisms involved in engineering the new technology we see today, rather than teaching you one thing and expecting you to get ideas off of that one philosophy? Both?

 

Sorry if I'm not clear in what I'm trying to ask. If you don't understand something, just please post what you don't understand about my post and I will be happy to try to clarify it for you.

 

Thanks in advanced!

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Here's Harvard's course listing for Computer Science; you can see what sort of things you'd learn there.

[Adrian]

You will take a Computer Architecture and Assembly programming course in just about any school you go to. There you will learn fundamentals of digital logic, embedded systems, etc. With those fundamentals, you can apply them to new technologies, since they are based older technologies(most of the time). Its kinda like when you learn how to work on cars...when newer models come out, you still apply some of the basic principals you have used.

[bascule]

I can list what you should learn in a reasonable computer science course. Unfortunately that's not what mine taught me. Many have veered far away from actual computer science and turned into Java shops churning out "coders" who have little fundamental knowledge of programming and instead can take a "brute force" approach to producing code which meets specific problem domains.

 

I would hope you'd receive:

 

A basic introduction to algorithms. This would include basic data structures knowledge, sorting algorithms, and algorithms for manipulating complex data structures. It would also include coverage of computational solutions to basic mathematical problems, both those from linear algebra and matrix algebra.

 

Knowledge of discrete mathematics, including the theory behind formal languages. Knowledge of grammars, languages, programs, (and how these three concepts interrelate) and the Chomsky Hierarchy. You should be familiar with the differences between first, second, and third generation languages, and how they fit into the Chomsky hierarchy. Knowledge of regular languages and their applications in pattern matching (e.g. regular expressions and scanners)

 

Knowledge of how to scan/parse a 3GL into an abstract syntax tree and output it as a different language (e.g. a 2GL) Knowledge of how to scan/parse a 2GL and output machine language. (i.e. a compilers class)