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[iasms]

Hello,

Im sauze, Im new to this forum, I would like to ask an advice to you as most of you are programmers. I will soon begin my software engineering studies, and my university told me I had to choose one of two optional courses for my first semester. The choices are Computer Systems and Applications and Introduction to Digital Electronics.

I really can’t decide which one to choose, that’s why I ask for your advise.

The first one, computer systems and applications is more or less like an overview of the whole computer science, whats covered in the module is:
• Computer Hardware.
• Operating System Principles.
• Using Unix & Windows
• Electronic mail and bulletin boards, and the World Wide Web
• Assemblers, compilers and interpreters.
• Handling text on computers.
• Spreadsheets.
• Databases and 4th generation languages.
• The evolution of computer languages.
• Artificial intelligence.
• Communications and networks.
• Theory of computation and computability.
• The history of computing and future trends.
More or less a bit of all the basics in computer science.

The other module is Introduction to Digital Electronics, and as I can see it’s the only electricity module I would have in all the degree, whats covered is:
• Review of Electronic Components and Circuits
o Resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors
o CMOS logic gates
o Ohm's and Kirchhoff's Laws
• Reading circuit schematics
• Logic Circuits
o Gates: AND, OR, NAND, NOR, NOT
o Truth tables
o Adders, Shift registers
o Boolean Algebra
o Laws of Commutation, Association, Duality, De Morgan
o Fan-in, Fan-out
• Number Systems and Representation
o Decimal, Binary, Hexadecimal, Octal
o Conversion
o ASCII, BCD
• Registers
o RS, D-Type
o Single Byte
o Byte transfer
• MUX/DE-MUX
o Multiplexer logic and truth tables
o Use in registers
o De-multiplexer logic and truth tables
o Use in registers
o Tri-state
• Data Conversion
o A/D and D/A techniques
• Microcontrollers: The PIC as an example
o Types of computer
o Stored Program Control
o Arithmetic and Logic Unit
o Input/Output
o Memory
o Control Unit and Clock


Well, this is all, what advice would you give me, and which would you personally choose?

[WingedPanther]

It depends on where you see yourself going. Both are worthwhile classes, but are targeting very different areas.

computer systems and applications: this is about understanding typical user applications and the technologies that support them. It's very useful, and should probably be taken at some point during your studies.

Introduction to Digital Electronics: this is about understanding low-level programming. It's very useful for direct hardware programming, robotics, etc. It will also give you a lot of useful information for understanding low-level memory management in C, as well as understanding how assembly works. If you are not interested in lower level programming, this will be less useful, but it can give you a huge leg-up on algorithms and data structures down the road.