Which CS Courses Should a Physics Major Take to Enhance Programming Skills?

[cscott]

I'm interested in taking some CS courses to show basically I know half what I'm talking about to employers when it comes down to coursework. I'm a physics major who's taken first year CS (In my case "Designing Functional Programs", "Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction").

Ie. I recently had an interview for doing real-time visualization of catheter devices and they do their programming in python. They know I can handle the image processing details but I can't really say know anything about programming or theoretical CS.

I'm really limited in my electives right now because I have quite a few from the phys department that I'd take over CS so which ones do you recommend?

Here's a link to our undergraduate calendar: http://www.ucalendar.uwaterloo.ca/0708/COURSE/course-CS.html#CS134

If you could reference this it'd be great.

Thanks.

 

[Asphodel]

Take CS electives that teach you something you don't know. There are other ways of showing an employer that you know something besides taking a class, so taking a class just to show you know the material is a waste of time and effort that would be better spent learning something new.

Which classes are good will depend primarily on your interests and career goals. Physics majors tend to get jobs in scientific computing, numerical analysis, stuff like that...they would make good topics to try and get some experience in. If you have an Applied Math or Computational Science department, they may have relevant courses as well - don't just look to the CS department. I also strongly recommend you talk to your adviser, professors, upperclassmen, grad students - there are tons of resources there that will have significant experience with your institution's offerings!

Of the ones on that webpage (after a brief look), I would be looking at CS 370 or 371 (I would ask around for more info on the differences between these), CS 372, and CS 437.