Question: Mike, Your A Computer scientist and im gonna be a Computer Engineer Is it the same job or is there a difference between them two?

Michael Cook answered on 28 Jun 2012:

That’s a fantastic question!

Normally, a scientist is someone who tries to discover new knowledge about the world using experiments, data and rules. An engineer is someone who solves practical problems in the world using this knowledge.

In Computing, these jobs often require the same knowledge, so you will probably learn the same things I learned (in fact, my degree is an Engineering degree, not a Science degree!). So we’ll be quite similar in what we know.

I suppose the main difference is that computer scientists work in research, which means they often do things that aren’t immediately useful to people (this is common in a lot of science). Engineers, however, solve problems that need solving right now – they build huge websites for projects like Facebook and Google, and design complicated communications systems for banks and governments. Both are very exciting jobs!

At the end of I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here I’ll put up a link to my Twitter account – if you ever want to ask about Computing or learning programming, I’m happy to answer anything!