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Computer science vs software engineering

Hi, I’m currently studying my first year of A level and we halve to be thinking on what courses. At first I didn’t even know there was a difference and was just going to go with computer science. I don’t really know exactly what exact job I want, but I want it to be very much coding/programming based. Possible career ideas include software developer, game developer, Artificial intelligence(I like the sound of it, but haven’t done too much research as of yet on whether I’d be suited to it). Definitely don’t want to be a web developer, so which degree do you think might be best? Ask further questions if needed.
Thanks in advance

Reply 1

winterscoming

There are different variations on Computer Science, so it depends upon the university and the course you apply to.

Computer Science at the 'top' universities will be focused far more intensely on aspects related to problem solving, mathematics, theory, and the academic study of computers / computing. There'll usually be quite a lot of programming, but you won't get very much software engineering content, although you can expect a lot more exposure to the kinds of skills which support R&D into cutting-edge technologies like AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain, etc.

Computer Science at most other universities outside of the 'top 20' or so tends to be a lot more vocational in nature with a greater emphasis on preparing graduates for technical IT careers, however it's quite common for the focus to be heavily on Software Engineering -- this means a lot of content related to programming, problem solving, databases, testing, software design, software maintenance, OO programming, UI/UX design, web development, and as well as learning often being focused on solving the kinds of typical problems and building typical computer systems that you'd find in a commercial environment through coursework.

So from that point of view, you can often find a huge amount of overlap between computer science and software engineering - universities usually re-use the same modules, so you'd probably find that around 80% of the modules between software engineering and computer science at any particular university are exactly the same.

You mentioned about not wanting to be a web developer, however the reality is that web technologies themselves are fairly ubiquitous and most 'web development' job in 2018 are exactly the same as software engineering using other technologies. Web development is not the same thing as "web design" however (Which is focused almost exclusively on design aspects, including UX creation with HTML, CSS and some JavaScript); instead web development tends to focus on building/maintaining back-end services and infrastructure - which is much the same as you'd expect when writing software for any other technology.

Reply 2

MarcellusPye

Hi, personally I think that you shoul pick software engineering. From my experience even companies that originally focused on computer science primarly, like my favourite https://ax-dynamics.com/enterprise-resource-planning, eventually ends up developing software, because that is what the people and the market demands. If I were you I would definitely choose the latt