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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, 11-17 March 2014 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Request for some career advice:
I am planning on pursuing computer science as a double major (along with art). I'm doing this mainly for practical reasons - right now I feel like I don't really care about money and would rather enjoy my life than be upper-class, but I want to have an option available in case these preferences change. I enjoyed CS classes in high school, but since coming to college, I have found CS classes, while not profoundly unpleasant, to basically be a chore. In addition to this, my university is making it needlessly difficult for me to choose CS as a second major. This has lead me to rethink - is CS really worth it? After researching it a bit, it seems like CS genuinely is worth it. From what I hear, programming jobs pay very well, are easy to find, have good working conditions, and seem to relatively easily facilitate a 4-hour-workweek lifestyle, should one choose to pursue it. No other career path seems to be able to boast this.
Am I correct in thinking this? Is a computer science degree worth it even if it means a lot of drudgery during college? Conventional wisdom seems to be no - "don't try to major in something you don't enjoy" is something I've heard a few times. But that seems kind of idealistic.
The alternatives would be econ or math, both of which I am fairly unfamiliar with and find sort of interesting but don't exactly have a passion for.
For reference, my current preferred careers are, in order:
I think if you want to have a career in art, being able to program will help a lot. Few artists can program and good art is always about moving forward. The kind of people you want to impress as an artists generally don't know how to program. That means that it's relatively easy to impress people.
If you know how to sew, creating clothing that uses an arduino lilypad to do something shiny is relatively straightforward. If you walk dressed like that into art auctions people will start to notice you and ask you about it and then you can tell them about your art as an upcoming artist.
That said, you don't need to major in computer science to be able to program. If you do a bunch of projects with arduino, the coding isn't that complicated and you can put up the code on github to show that you can program.
As far as game programming goes, in the LW community we have people like Kaj_Sotala who works on creating a game that teaches bayesian updating. He might benefit from someone doing the necessary artwork for the game for him.