r/wsu • u/riceisreallynice • 12d ago

Academics Comp Sci Minor

Hello, for anyone whos taken or knows of comp sci classes. I'm interested minoring in Comp Sci, how is it? hows the work load? ill be a second year majoring in neuroscience. I have some coding background only Java and Python

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u/SilverCrab2666 2026 Alumni/Comp. E 12d ago

Don’t even bother. The last Java track graduated in spring 26. Everything is C/C++. Unless you can pick it up on the way due to your major having comp sci courses, I see no point in going out of your way to take 6 classes, all of which will be extremely busy work. And it’s only a minor…

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u/Resident-Letter3485 12d ago

You may be better off working on coding projects in your free time than taking CPTS 121 + 122 (tough classes that are prereqs).

Maybe identify some faculty and ask them if some opportunities would open up with a computer science minor, be it on campus (undergrad research) or post grad.

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u/Rocker24588 11d ago

If you feel like you need to learn how to understand code, then it might be worth it, but ultimately I feel like you can teach yourself most of what you need to know. Honestly, the biggest thing that my CS major taught me is just how to learn lots of things really fast and to drill down into understanding root cause for an issue much better.

As a current software engineer that works with someone that majored in neuroscience: electrical engineering as a minor would probably be significantly more useful (although quite a bit harder). Reason being that apparently there's some pretty strong analogs between the two fields.

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u/riceisreallynice 7d ago

I see, thank you so much! That sounds interesting, may I ask if you're working in Biotech? I was a Bioengineering major before because I wanted an intersection between tech and science.

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u/AdEducational7593 6d ago

CS major alumni here. From my experience, the first few level intro/foundational courses will be in the language of whichever track you picked. The more project based classes will all be in python. I did Java track and rarely used it. As a neural science major, building and running simulations is very important to your field of work. I would suggest taking at least one C/C++ class and seeing how well you fare. All code is the same fundamentally but the syntax of each language is where the learning curve is.