MIS vs. Comp Science Options

[pebkac]

I'm going to go back to school this fall, and I'm trying to decide something. I'd like to do something working with computers and networking, but I don't neccessarily want to be a computer programmer.

Which would be better for me to major in?

[impala454]

I guess I'm just odd then because from experience it feels like I have learned more than the CS majors I've talked to.

I had to present at some CS class last semester about cryptography and multi-key hashes and most of the class looked at me dumbfounded and at the end I actually had a few of them come up to me and ask me what a public and private key were 

It's all a matter of opinion. I think that if you want to get into networking then MIS may be the way to go, but I suggest you go talk to professors in both departments and lay it out for them. Don't talk to the advisors, they know very little about the majors besides what classes you have to take.

CS is harder because of the engineering classes? I can believe that, but then again, MIS majors have to take finance, accounting, and 3 semesters of economics, the focus is a little different and it's all in your opinion of what's hard. I know some very smart people who can't figure out finance for the life of them...

This whole thread is kind of a testament to what the one problem with CS majors is, the "holier than thou" attitude. I don't have a problem with it, y'all are smart folks, but in certain environments it pisses people off.

Well I wouldn't call it a holier than thou attitude. It's more like CS people get defensive when MIS people trivialize CS like "MIS is just CS without engineering". When I work my ass off to be one of the 20 out of 100 that passed my calc based phyics course, and then have a MIS major comparing that to some finance class, you could imagine people getting defensive.

Then compare the MIS classes where you learn about databases, SQL, web pages, etc to CS where you have classes where you design a cpu from scratch, have automata theory that would drive a person insane, design and implement your own operating system, etc etc. Now don't get me wrong, the web page/sql/database type stuff does exist in CS, but it's an assumed knowledge and not really a class.

It's not a personal attack on yours or any other MIS major's intelligence, but CS is definitely a much harder major.