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Computer Studies w/o Excessive Coding?
Peterus7 asks: "I'm a student at the University of Washington, and I was planning on majoring in Computer Science or Informatics until I took Computer science, and I'm realizing that it's simply beyond me. I grew up with computers, and naturally I want to study a field that involves a lot of interaction between people and technology (mainly computers), but the Intro to Java class I'm taking now is driving me over the edge. Any suggestions for a technologically intensive field that doesn't require ungodly amounts of coding, or perhaps any general methods for surviving computer science courses for new students?"
You could study applied math, electrical engineering, computer engineering, cognitive science, human-computer interaction, psychology, etc. All of them involve high-tech and aspects of computer science, but they won't make you do lots of programming initially. However, when you actually work in them, it will be hard for you to avoid programming anyway, and you will be less prepared.
If you hate your intro CS course, chances are that the intro CS course is just poorly taught. And Java itself is a pretty questionable choice as an intro CS language in my opinion: it's tedious, it's sluggish, and has enormously complex libraries. It also is based on a very narrow view of what programming is and how people should build abstractions.
I'm not sure what you can do about that. Switching majors within your university is one choice. Switching universities might be another if you think that that kind of teaching is common at your university. Or you may just sit through this and hope that it improves. It depends on how much you are dedicated to CS. Your university may also treat this as a kind of hazing ritual, to weed out people who just aren't all that interested in CS after all.
One think you can do is have a look at the intro CS lectures at other universities and see how they compare (MIT's 6.001 is a good course to look at); maybe that would help you make up your mind whether you just dislike your course or whether you dislike the field.
Have you considered studying human factors (i.e. user interface design)? It's a small field, but when I've employed people for this they've really made a huge difference to the quality of my software. No coding is needed, but HTML is often required and it's sometimes useful to be able to craft a demo interface in a prototyping environment such as VB.
I want to study a field that involves a lot of interaction between people and technology (mainly computers)... Any suggestions for a technologically intensive field that doesn't require ungodly amounts of coding
The statements above are going to cover nearly EVERY professional field and field of study in the next few years. Psychology, Economics, statistics, law, medicine, and even English are all using computers way more than they ever did, and that trend is only going to continue.
However, I recognize that there are lots of technically inclined people who aren't cut out for the particular mindset involved in programming (and programmming well.) Here are some job descriptions that I think incorporate both a love of technology and computers, but don't require programming:
Log/traffic analysis: Almost every company has a Web site. Many don't make much use of their web logs to do much more than count hits or visitors. Logfiles, with lots of massaging, can reveal lots of data about the patterns of visitor behavior. These data can help develop new site features to increase return visitors or clickthrough ratios, improve upon text or navigation, etc. You can use commercial or open-source software packages to glean the information you need, but the real challenge isn't in finding the right data, it's in asking the right questions.
Usability/Human-computer Interaction: HCI is one of the sections of the ACM computer science curriculum. Carnegie Mellon has a grad program devoted to this (I believe.) It's a growing field, combining software and cognitive psychology. It's everything from designing the User Interface to software programs or Operating systems, to figuring out the right button configuration on a new mouse design. Study cognitive psychology, take some electives in HCI from the Comp Sci department, and whatever likely courses appear in the Engineering department. Also look under ergonomics (a slightly related field.) My personal theory here is that desktop computers in business are more than fast enough to run the programs we typically use them for. Gains in productivity from faster processor and more RAM are going to be minimal. The real productivity gains of the future are going to come in making it faster and easier to do the things we do by creating better designed, more intuitive software.
QA: Every technology shop needs QA. A lot of the time it's done by programmers. To me, that sucks. The programming mindset is a "problem-solving" one. The QA mindset is a different one, and one that programmers are almost diametrically opposed to... finding potential problems, breaking software, etc. A good coder learns how to anticipate and code for these things as part of their practices. They build in validation, check internal validity of data, prevent buffer overflows, and avoid making assumptions. A good QA tester will run circles around a good programmer in this area though. I think there's definitely a "knack" for QA that some people have, and others don't... and these people are often not the most computer savvy. At our company, we have a copy-editor who we have test out new apps, maybe because she's a copy-editor and has a good attention to detail, or maybe it's just her super-power, but she never fails to find problems that coders have missed.
Tech support: I don't mean answering the phones for AOL... i mean find a software company that makes products targeted at end-users with better than average computer skills, more of a B-to-B than a B-to-C company. You become an expert in their software product or products, you learn to solve simple and advanced problems that users might have. You become a god and savior in times of need... there are Tech Support reps, and then there are GOOD tech support reps (although many slashdotters may disagree with me regarding the latter, but trust me, they are out there, albeit in small numbers.) We need more GOOD reps. It's a different mindset than programming, again, but we need them.
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