Programming useful in Electrical Engineering?

[Applesmack]

Is it worth it to take an extra 10 courses (and thus a whole extra year) of computer science courses in university on top of my 4 year electrical engineering degree? If I want to work in the electrical engineering field, how useful will the knowledge gained from these courses be? I'm planning to specialize in 'Systems' during 4th year. How compatible is this specialty with programming.

Here are the courses that I will take 4th year according to my specialty:

Systems engineering option:

CEG4158 Computer Control in Robotics 3

ELG4137 Principles and Applications of VLSI Design 3

ELG4156 Linear Systems 3

ELG4157 Modern Control Engineering 3

ELG4159 Integrated Control Systems 3

ELG4177 Digital Signal Processing 3

ELG4912 Projet de Design en Génie Électrique : Partie I / Electrical Engineering Design Project: Part I 3

ELG4913 Projet de Design en Génie Électrique: Partie II / Electrical Engineering Design Project: Part II 3

PHY2333 Mechanics

Three credits of technical electives

The following courses are the ones that I will take if I decide to also add a computer science stream to my core program:

ITI1120 Introduction to Computing I 3

CSI2101 Discrete Structures 3

CSI2110 Data Structures and Algorithms 3

CSI2120 Programming Paradigms 3

CSI2372 Advanced Programming Concepts with C++ 3

CSI3120 Programming language Concepts 3

CSI3131 Operating Systems 3

ITI1121 Introduction to Computing II 3

SEG2105 Introduction to Software Engineering 3

SEG2106 Software Construction 3

Three credits chosen from CSI, SEG, or CEG courses at the 3000 level or above.

Is it worth it to stay an extra year and take these courses if I'm planning to do the systems option?

 

[Kholdstare]

I'm in the VLSI field and will say that you won't need any VLSI course for system engineering. However you can read some introductory book on VLSI and that will be enough. Well in VLSI you generally don't need to know any programming language other than C.

For system engineering I'll tell you to choose computer subjects which are not abstract and has a direct applicability to writing programs. Like, data structures and algorithms,
software construction and some programming languages like C, C++, java, Matlab etc. and some scripting languages like perl, python, tcl etc. Try to put focus on writing computer program to simulate your system. All the other computer science course can be learned by reading some books or spending time with a computer.

 

[Antiphon]

Do it.

I did and I use it all now.