Importance of CS in future courses and programs

[MathewsMD]

I am currently considering pursuing a specialization in Physics and hopefully research in the future. I'm not exactly sure what exactly I'd like to go into, but fields like nanomaterials, electromagnetism, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, particle physics and optics and photonics. I know this is a very wide spectrum and my interests are not limited to these, but how extensive does one's CS skills have to be in such areas? What types of research specifically in these fields and others do not require much programming skills or CS involvement in general? Any comments on employability on graduates with weak/no computer science skills and experience?

 

[WannabeFeynman]

I have read that physics requires a considerable amount of computer science skills. However, for the fields you mentioned, I wouldn't expect anything more then programming (C++, Fortran or some language specific for computations like Mathematica would be enough) and numerical analysis. It's obviously beneficial to have more CS skills like strong knowledge of algorithms, and would help with employment, but I wouldn't deem it required.

 

[donpacino]

As I see it anyone in a tech field should be required to learn 2 basic types of languages:
computation: matlab, mathmatica
testing,automation,scripting: python, C

at a minimum as a physicist I would learn mathmatica and python