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Q: I write from India; currently I am in my last year of pre-university schooling. I am very interested in engineering, and especially automobile engineering. I am really interested in designing automobiles. What are the top engineering schools in the world where I could pursue these interests?
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Q: What the kind of courses are you taking?
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Q: Is it usually really hard to find a job once you've completed engineering studies in a college?
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Q: I am an undergraduate student studying toward a Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) degree in electrical engineering.
(1) What kind of a pay should I expect from an internship at my second year?
(2) What kind of a pay should I expect to get from a job after I have completed my studies?
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Q: Did you decide which engineering discipline to study during your first year in college? Or later?
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Q: What study habits or skills would I need in order to do well in computer programming?
To answer this question, we visited a company that performs massive programming jobs for the government and for industrial partners. We spoke to programmers who worked there to find out how they learnt to program and what characteristics they felt were important for learning and excelling in computer programming.
Many of the experienced programmers with whom we spoke stressed the importance of being able to think logically and pay close attention to detail. Computers, being made of electronic component such as transistors and diodes, only process commands that follow formal logic, and have unambiguous interpretation mechanisms. Compilers are "sticklers for rules." "You need to think like the compiler" one of our programmers said. If we provide the computer with a set of commands that does not comply with its logic, or make the mistake of substituting human judgment for the logical structure of the computer’s infrastructure, the result will be failure to perform altogether, or, worse, the computer will act differently than what the programmer intended.
Many programmers we spoke to suggested that beginner programmers educate themselves first about how computers implement programs, so that they can appreciate how a compiler would interpret what the programmer had written and handle it. It helps to write and test a few simple programs in the Assembly language before trying a high-level language like C or Java. Those who took this approach claim that they write more efficient code now. The reason - they have a better idea how many instructions and what kind of instructions the processor will use to carry out a higher-language command, and they understand better how data will be stored and retrieved from memory.
Everyone agreed that learning to program takes patience and persistence. Yet ingenuity, creativity, and imagination were also recurring words in most responses. In spite of the seemingly rigid formats that computers "understand," an imaginative and creative programmer can write programs that are more economical, robust, quick and elegant than programmers that follow only the basic rules and write programs "by the book."
Finally, programmers should be well organized and methodical. Software needs to be written in a way that users and other programmers can understand; comments should be added to explain key statements and routines; structure and naming conventions should be transparent and consistent. A good programmer does not write only to accomplish the task that a program is specified to perform, but also to help users and other programmers that will maintain and modify the software in the future.
Here are a few useful links:
Becoming a Better Programmer
How to be a Programmer by Robert L. Read
Advice on How to Become a Programmer
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Q: Why did you decide to study engineering, and do you find the coursework allows much hands-on work?
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Q: I am a community college student and I am trying to decide if I should transfer to a university that has both Engineering and Engineering Technology programs. However, I can't find the difference between Engineering and Engineering Technology. Could someone please explain the difference?
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Q: How did you choose the school you went to for your degree? I'm having a hard time deciding…help!
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Q: I am a junior in high school and all my life I have enjoyed building things, solving problems and drawing plans for various devices. After doing a little bit of construction with an engineer on a mission trip with church, I am pretty sure I want to go into engineering. My only problem is that when I understand math I love it, but there are times when I don’t understand it and then I can’t stand it. I am in Trig Analysis / Pre-calculus this year and I like solving the problems, but I still have mixed feelings. Do you or any students that you work with have the same problem and do you think it would be a big hindrance to me if I want to succeed in Civil Engineering?
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