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?

[Hartmann]

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.

I didn't want to be a CS major for the reasons you pointed out. I don't care about writing an OS or designing a CPU, it's not for me. I really like writing support applications. I like analyzing a problem, finding the business motivation behind improving it, and then implementing it.

I understand what you mean about MIS people lowering the difficulty of CS to something they can compare to. MIS people have different concerns though, it goes beyond web pages, which we don't even really touch, I think that's a Mass Comm thing now. We focus on analysis, design, and project management. It really comes down to CS and MIS majors working together, depending on the company.

We have one class in Databases and SQL, but a lot of our curriculum focuses on Object Oriented stuff and the MVC model.