Computer Science Stellenbosch University

Overview

Key Features

The Association of Computing Machinery is an international organization for computer scientists. The ACM has developed the following list of top ten reasons to study computer science which we quote from their web site.

• Computing is part of everything we do!
• Expertise in computing enables you to solve complex, challenging problems.
• Computing enables you to make a positive difference in the world.
• Computing offers many types of lucrative careers.
• Computing jobs are here to stay, regardless of where you are located.
• Expertise in computing helps even if your primary career is something else.
• Computing offers great opportunities for true creativity and innovativeness.
• Computing has space for both collaborative work and individual effort.
• Computing is an essential part of well-rounded academic preparation.
• Future opportunities in computing are without boundaries.

We admit that we are biased, but we can only add one more “fact”: Computer Science is FUN!

Computer Science deals with computer systems, both the hardware and the software. But this doesn’t mean we sit around writing programs and building PC’s all day! We take a scientific approach to the subject, emphasizing the principles of computer systems, instead of the nitty-gritty.

• In the first year, the focus is on learning to program. At the moment we are using the Java language to teach programming, but this is not critical: we expect our students to know many languages by the time they leave university. Having said this, Java is a very important language. It is simple enough to master adequately in one year and it provides an excellent introduction to other languages like C++ and C (which we use in later courses).

• The second year looks at data structures and algorithms. A good knowledge of this important topic is what sets the expert apart from the beginner. In the second half of the year the focus is on computer architecture and low-level programming.

• The third year contains four core modules: concurrent programming, databases and web-centric computing, computer networks, and software engineering. There are also optional modules in Machine Learning (how do we get computer systems to learn from real-world data?) and Computer Vision (which also covers graphics – a key topic for computer game programming). At the end of the year, students are able to answer questions like:

  • How does Windows/Linux/Mac OSX work inside?
  • How do we use multiple computers/processors to perform large computations efficiently?
  • How do we design large databases for use over the internet?
  • How do computers communicate over WiFi or the Internet?
  • How do we design and build BIG pieces of software reliably?

  Along with all the theory, our students work hard on their practical skills. For instance, in previous versions of some of these modules the students constructed an Internet chatroom system, a traffic simulator, and a shopping app for smartphones.

Some universities offer courses certified by foreign organizations to adhere to certain standards. At Computer Science program at Stellenbosch University we have long prided ourselves on our teaching. We follow the international ACM curriculum recommendations as closely as possible, but we do not believe at this point that accreditation by these organizations is a sensible way to spend our students’ tuition fees. Our third year and postgraduate courses are moderated annually by experts from other universities and some of these courses undergo additional moderation by ECSA.

We use both English and Afrikaans in our lectures. However, we have a pragmatic attitude in this matter. We love Afrikaans, but we also try to accommodate all of our students, including our English-speaking and foreign undergraduates. In our experience, language has never been an issue in our teaching, and we do not believe that it should ever stand in the way of education. Many of our students speak only English and cope very well in our courses.

Careers

We are flooded with requests for qualified students every week. Around 2000 there was a dip in the job market, but since then it has recovered to unprecedented levels and now international experts predict a serious shortage of computer scientists in the future. This is good news for anybody with the right qualification, looking for a job: there is a lot of choice.

Some of our students start out as programmers, but most end up as software designers and engineers. Apart from the many local companies that employ our students, there are also many opportunities overseas. South African computer scientists are generally in demand, because they are known as highly qualified and as hard workers.

Usually there is a high turnover in the software industry. People move frequently from one company to another. In other words, they are exposed to many different kinds of environments.