I am a student at ITT and have been going there for a year.
You get plenty of math and alot more programming than you think.
ITT is a private school so it costs a little more but the education is just as good as a university. But ITT is a technical trade school and not a university so you have smaller classes and are able to ask the teachers questions and have discussions in class and all the tutoring you can handle. Where I live the programming students at my school tutor the computer science students at the big university. Because its all about hands on and nothing to do about history class. Plus they also have bachelors degrees and not all universities will transfer other schools credit anyway.To add one more thing ITT is an accredited school because you can''t get fedaral aid from an un accredited school.

There''s a lack of mathematics, physical science, and arts. (I''m a bit surprised they kept composition and economics.) These areas would be covered by an accredited university degree.

You would take calculus I/II/II, discrete mathematics, linear algebra et. al. not "college math" I/II/III. You would have physics, chemistry, and perhaps biology for science courses. And you would have some philosophy fundamentals as well as a course or two covering world literature and art.

It''s not a "well rounded" program. I''m assuming those are the core courses, and that you have elective to take in addition. Otherwise, it''s a bare minimum program.

If you already had a degree in something unrelated to CS, you could take this and change careers. I''d encourage you to opt for a university program if it is feasible.

quote:Original post by dmikesell
Actually, I''d prefer that my engineers implement the simplest algorithm first and change it only if a) the application is slower than the spec indicates, and b) profiling shows that the sort is a bottleneck.

If your engineers actually test the software to the degree that the bottleneck is apparent I applaud them. I would not expect my engineers to write a sort. I would expect them to use a sophisticated but appropriate algorithm and already proven code. Hand coding a bubble sort is not acceptable when we have proven code for a heuristically optimized quick/merge/insertion sort available.
Proving the code takes far more time than writing it. Why change something when you can do it right the first time?

I have to agree with Magmai. The university route is probably the best route possible, most particularly in the long run. Although, I''ve taken classes at the University I am currently attending and a few free classes at local small colleges and community colleges, and a couple offered by technical schools, and the level of knowledge seems fairly narrow scoped and minimal even in that. I''ve noticed that a lot of professors and teachers know their lesson and only what they would have to teach in class and don''t really seem to know anything much further than that... and a really sad reality is that a great majority of them are very technically challenged and they more or less just know the concepts behind their topic and not the hands on experience kind of knowledge being passed down. Granted, not all of them, but a great majority that I have run accross. I work technical support at a University and with the problems I have to fix, sometimes it makes you wonder... why some people are teaching computer science courses.


I know only that which I know, but I do not know what I know.