I have always been asked about my vocation and academic background. When I said to them that I am a graduate in computer engineering, they were like, “Huh? Is it computer science?” or sometimes they will go like, “Oh, you’re an IT person”… Then, I would go like, “Err.. No. Not quite.” Sometimes people would just responded to my answer like, “Oh, you’re a computer programmer.”
Still, it didn’t give the closest clue on what I have studied, the weightage of difficulties in my degree and the macro views to my expertise.
So today I have searched the terms and keywords for the differences in the following 4 areas of study. The listings are suggesting on each field’s domain and environment. In addition, I have sketched sets diagram to illustrate on the differences between the four disciplines.
Computer Engineering
- Marriage of computer science and electrical engineering
- Microprocessors
- Embedded computing devices
- Electronic components computation
- Desktop, laptop, super computers
- Software writing
- Software compilation and optimization
- Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI)
- Operating System (OS) design
- Integrated circuits
- Motors, radio, sensors
- Chipsets
- Numerical methods
- Process instructions and operations
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Computer security
- Expert Systems
- Database Management System (DBMS)
- Computer architecture
- Data communications
- Computer networking
- Information Technology (IT)
Computer Science
- Data processing
- Algorithms
- Applied Mathematics
- Instruction language design
- Human Intelligence
- Human Computer Interaction
- Theoretical and practical approach to computation
- Sofware writing and coding
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- Computer security
- Expert Systems
- Database Management System (DBMS)
- Computer Architecture
- Data communications
- Computer networking
- Information Technology (IT)
Computer Networking
- Data networks
- Data exchange
- Network topology
- Personal computer + Phones + Server + Router + Modem
- Information Technology (IT)
Information Technology
- Internet protocols
- Telecommunication protocols
- World Wide Web
- Markup languages
So you see, the IT is just a subset of computer networking and the networks are just a subset for both computer science and engineering study. There are a number of areas that computer science overlaps computer engineering including the networking and the IT. On other note, computer engineering has a bigger domain than the computer science because this discipline is a marriage of computer science and electrical engineering.
It also means that usually a computer engineer is able to do the tasks of a computer scientist but not the other way around.
For other auxiliary studies such as knowledge representations, semantic web, Information Retrieval (IR), data mining, cognitive computing and programming languages are just the extension to the above listing of domains.
Credits to the following websites:
