[hirvi74]

Why do you think such students should have been in SE instead? Because it aligns more with their goals?

Perhaps you are right, but I am thankful for my CS background despite being a SWE myself.

Understand that I am also close to the intelligence level of crayon-eating compared to most on this site. I felt like my unspectacular public state university level CS degree wouldn't even hold a candle to some of the people's education in this very thread like the one commenter who studied at MIT.

However, I still believe what I learned was extremely valuable. In fact, I am sadden by my level of understanding and I wish I knew more CS. Just because I do not apply pure CS every single day does not mean that my decisions are not influenced by what I learned. At worst, my knowledge has never been a hindrance.I refuse to believe that knowledge can ever be useless. Not applicable != useless.

Genuine question though, what would a software engineering program provide that a computer science student would struggle to understand?

[pavel_lishin]

I think you can have an SE track with the appropriate amount of CS background. You'd have to, to be a functional engineer. (Then again, some I've worked with...)

One reason I also wish I'd gone along an SE track is that it would likely have given me a lot more experience actually doing what I do for work. Using version control, working with others in a group setting, actually making software.

[laurencerowe]

Having done a software engineering degree (albeit 25 years ago now) you should probably not expect it to be any more practical in that way. We had only a handful of extra mandatory modules over the CS requirements (I think on working on larger systems) but no extra practical programming.

[red-iron-pine]

> Using version control, working with others in a group setting, actually making software.

aye, this. in my experience hard part isn't doing the actual coding bits, it's ironing out the Requirements, stuffing them into JIRA, building the Interface document to cover what we're coding, writing documentation, and making sure the new guy doesn't break the version control.

Coding the specification isn't hard once we have them. A lot of that is outsourced in my org, esp. fluff related to a few areas like UX. But the hard part is getting there, and the engineering processes and mentality to do so.