Poll: Computer science or Mechanical engineering?

[Frushe]

Hey guys. How are you? Im doing general engineering degree and will have to choose my degree in a couple of months. I like both degrees. Still I feel that learning mechanical enengineeri will satisfy my curiosity a little bit more. I can study Computer Science or study Mechanical engineering and learn to program on the side. I believe that mechanical engineering will have many potential fastlane businesses in the nanotech, aerospace and biotech.
Software is just awesome to make money.
A thing to note is that I am from Argentina and college degrees are free.

 

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[SteveO]

Sounds to me like you answered your own question. It all depends on you.

 

[SSimz]

I did computer science in college, all I really learned was how to use google and stack overflow to solve the assignments

 

[Digamma]

I would go for mech. You can learn to program on your own, but learning mechanical engineering is harder (I have done both things).
Plus, CS is cool right now, and it's choke full of insufferable fools. In mech you find your straight up nerds, and they are much better to be around.

 

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[juan917]

free college degree...holy fuk i cant wrap my mind around that

 

[Evil_Jester]

I finished my mech degree last year. If you want a "job" from this degree you will always be middle class poor. The only thing you can learn from mech is 3D modeling, which you can learn on your own.

If you want to learn how to design and manufacture PHYSICAL products for fastlane ideas, it is harder than selling something like software. Software doesn't have to be manufactured, shipped, and storage.

 

[Frushe]

free college degree...holy fuk i cant wrap my mind around that

Unbelievably private schools are a thing. Even tough the public school is the best. All the good professors are hired by the paid institutions. The only bad thing is that the public school's organization sucks. You need to pay attention or otherwise none will give a fuk about you.

 

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[David Young]

An engineering degree will be very interesting and open up a world of possibilities. However, they will almost certainly be slow lane. This isn't necessary bad as it will depend on the lifestyle you wont. It is the route I have followed for the last 20 years- it has taken me literally around the world to places I would never dreamed off visiting and allowed me buy a house etc. However, and its a big however, taking an engineering degree fastlane is difficult- unless you are incredibly talented and can design/ invent something special. The vast majority of revenue streams require either a lot of time or money- and unfortunately can be highly influenced by external factors which are impossible to second guess. They can also be difficult to scale. You could therefore build a great engineering business that could come to grinding holt due to cash flow or something completely random like the sudden drop in a commodity price,change in import duty or exchange rate. It is a reality that hit me about 18 months ago and opened my eyes.

 

[NuclearPuma]

I'm a mechanical engineer. I got my masters about 3 years ago. If I could do it all over I would have done computer science. I think it's more fastlane with the advancement of computing and software. Offers more leverage.

Mechanical engineering is more old school way of product developement and manufacturing, and the really cool cutting edge inventions and trchnology requires teams of guys with decades of experience and a lot of times Phds and lots of money. Much comes from university research labs that partner with industry.

That said, I have gotten to work on some pretty awesome awesome projects I could not have done with computer science.

A mechanical engineering degree will teach universal problem solving and thinking skills which is probably more valuable than programming knowledge. In my role I have to look at whole systems from flow rates, to material properties, to sensors and electrical noise, etc. Requires a lot of work with vendors, selecting the right parts, materials etc to make a design work.

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[marklov]

I would go with mechanical engineering , have a family member that parlayed it into FIFO/ working on heavy duty machinery makes good coin but his hands and knees suffer.

Then again last year I paid some dev $75/hr for a few hours work to build outa linkedin scraper for my own personal use.

Would've taken me years to lean what he did and I made a lot with that tool.

But I'm a hands on guy that like gears and grease, it's really up to you.

 

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[Bouncing Soul]

free college degree...holy fuk i cant wrap my mind around that

Good, because as common sense should tell you, ain't nothing free.

I'm an ME, also did part of a EE so I have some extra programming. I would agree with @David Young on the path, and I've been in industry nearly as long; also sounds like I've had many similar experiences.

We diverge at Fastlane opportunities. We got out of college at the tail end of Dot Com 1. That was a crazy time to be a coder. As someone who had wanted to be a ME his whole life, yet easily got A's in all programming classes I took, unlike the ME specific classes some of which were F*cking brutal, I was wondering if I'd made a terrible call. Especially as I'm from the Silicon Valley, started my career there, and met some seriously clueless humans that had cashed out real money.

I took a break last summer and tried to start a code based company, I just couldn't find passion for it. I dunno, maybe at this point I'm just not hungry enough or something, but I like hardware too much. Writing code to make hardware do my bidding is awesome, but I gotta have something tangible to have that feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. Good news is, going forward, the next billionaire founders probably aren't going to be as heavily IT based. VCs are slowing investment in code based companies, and hardware based stuff is going. VR is a great example of a place where MEs attack serious problems and can ride the wave. Additive manufacturing is just getting going. Robotics. Healthcare/bioengineering. Many of the problems in Cloud Computing are stuff MEs solve. Energy. Water. Believe me, I could go on.

It's just the model is college-->salaried industry guy...and an entry level ME salary and benefits are unreal to a typical college kid, plus if you like making stuff many of the jobs are super fun; you get plugged right into operations systems and working atscale from day 1. It's hard to turn down.

 

[Bouncing Soul]

I'm a mechanical engineer. I got my masters about 3 years ago. If I could do it all over I would have done computer science. I think it's more fastlane with the advancement of computing and software. Offers more leverage.

Mechanical engineering is more old school way of product developement and manufacturing, and the really cool cutting edge inventions and trchnology requires teams of guys with decades of experience and a lot of times Phds and lots of money. Much comes from university research labs that partner with industry.

That said, I have gotten to work on some pretty awesome awesome projects I could not have done with computer science.

A mechanical engineering degree will teach universal problem solving and thinking skills which is probably more valuable than programming knowledge. In my role I have to look at whole systems from flow rates, to material properties, to sensors and electrical noise, etc. Requires a lot of work with vendors, selecting the right parts, materials etc to make a design work.

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Heh, you said CS and then proved ME was better...at least how I read it.

I personally think a classical engineering or science (Physics or Chemistry) education is far more valuable than CS because it is so fundamental principles and systems based. Get a physics degree and then do a code bootcamp.

 

[NuclearPuma]

Yeah, ME was maybe better, harder to outsource. I think there is a lot of opportunity in computer science too.

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[SWB]

A mechanical engineering degree will teach universal problem solving and thinking skills which is probably more valuable than programming knowledge. In my role I have to look at whole systems from flow rates, to material properties, to sensors and electrical noise, etc. Requires a lot of work with vendors, selecting the right parts, materials etc to make a design work.

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Both are great vehicles however are both slowlane. However as @nuclearpua says the mechanical eng degree equips you with a mind set that is more valuable. Go mech eng.

 

[Ninjakid]

Do both with a double major

 

[Diracdelta]

As a mechanical engineer, I never enjoyed programming enough to take a pure CS major. I'm more of a physical science kind of guy.

At the end of the day, you have to decide for yourself, and to be honest, it doesn't really matter in the fastlane pursuit; what matters is your ability to align your skill set with the needs of others.

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Thread is over 2 years old...

Wonder what he picked? And if he was happy with the choice?