Computer Science Classes Relevant to a Physicist

[KMcFadden]

My plan is to major in Physics and to minor in Computer Science. Here are the classes required for a minor in Computer Science at the college I will be attending:

http://www.unf.edu/catalog/link/MINORCCIS3/

Here is a link for course descriptions: http://www.unf.edu/catalog/courses/ug/dept/6502/

I'm required to take four classes of those listed at the bottom of the first link. What classes do you think will be most beneficial to someone seeking employment as a physicist (or some other physics related career)?

 

[MathWarrior]

COP 4300 Discrete Systems Modeling/Simulation - do physics simulations
CNT 4504 (CEN4516) Networks & Distributed Processing - do physics simulations on many machines to speed things up
CDA 4312/4312L Microprocessor Interfacing & Lab - in-case you end up building computer chips or just using them
COT 3210 Computability/Automata - this has interesting uses in a variety of physics areas.

 

[KMcFadden]

Thanks MathWarrior

 

[TMFKAN64]

COP 4300 Discrete Systems Modeling/Simulation - do physics simulations
CNT 4504 (CEN4516) Networks & Distributed Processing - do physics simulations on many machines to speed things up
CDA 4312/4312L Microprocessor Interfacing & Lab - in-case you end up building computer chips or just using them
COT 3210 Computability/Automata - this has interesting uses in a variety of physics areas.

I'd agree with the first three, but I'd take COT4400: Analysis of Algorithms instead of the Computability/Automata course. I don't think COT 3210 is bad by any means, but you probably don't really need that much formal language theory. (As a physicist, you probably won't be called on to write many parsers, and you'll *never* have to determine if something is computable or not.) On the other hand, I think it would be valuable to take a course discussing general classes of algorithms and their efficiency (and limits to how efficient they can be).