For mysef, Computer Science has always been hot and cool! I thank my lucky stars every day for having moved from Aeronautical Engineering to Computer Science when I was a freshman at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. I have completely enjoyed my degree or my career.
According to the results of a recent Taulbee Survey put out by the Computing Research Association (CRA), the number of Computer Science undergraduates rose 8.1% in 2008. The total enrollment in computer science classes also increased by 6.2%.
The summary report, "Computing Degree and Enrollment Trends, From the 2007-2008 CRA Taulbee Survey" by Stuart Zweben, Computing Research Association, 1100 17th St. Suite 507 Washington, DC. 20036 http://cra.org has the subtext, "Undergraduate Enrollment in Computer Science Trends Higher;
Doctoral Production Continues at Peak Levels".
The survey is named after Orrin E. Taulbee, University of Pittsburgh, who conducted these surveys from 1974-1984 for the Computer Science Board (the predecessor organization to the Computing Research Association).
Read The Industry Standard article about the results
The CRA Taulbee Study home page
The Summary Report (the complete report will be available in May)
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I am not sure whether I would advise my child to study computer science (if I had one). There are other interesting fields of study and computer science tends to lead to sweatshop style programming or IT support jobs that usually are not regarded highly by your non-IT coworkers.
I’m in the same boat as Thomas. CS and developer jobs can be cool, but nowadays, most of the time they aren’t.
From observation, I might even risk saying that having only a CS diploma (on its own) will probably just land you the most boring jobs in the IT industry, jobs that few CS graduates seem to be able to escape.
If you want to come to programming, best do it with diplomas in other fields (be it engineering, management, maths, etc.), it is the way IMO and IME to the most interesting IT jobs.
Just write some shareware tool and start your own company.
Computer science had better make you cool, because it sure doesn’t make you hot: http://crookedtimber.org/2009/01/22/hotties-and-notties/
At least I’m not a chemist.
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