Difference between Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Software Engineering degrees

There was once a time when a major percentage of people who had anything to do with computers were in more ways than one Electrical Engineers by training. In fact I have seen many popular books on Computer science and electronics which are authored by people who have a background in Electrical engineering.

Then with change in times and fast technological progress, the electronics and computer field evolved and they branched into seperate engineering fields. And now computers have come a long way that this branch of learning has in turn split into sub streams namely Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering and so on. Ask a techie what is the difference between these similar streams of study and in most cases you are sure to get a blank stare.

I myself didn't know about the difference between these computing streams until I chanced upon this very informative article authored by Tony. In the article, he explains in what way these are different from each other. For example he notes that Computer Science is inherently mathematical in nature and is about writing code where as Software Engineering is thinking about writing the said code (what ever that means). And Computer Engineering discipline deals with design of specialized type of software, and incorporates more hardware material into studies.

Massive list of free educational video lectures - courtesy Berkeley and MIT

A couple of years back, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) released a press note revealing their intention to make available free of cost the study notes which includes lectures, tutorials, video and audio of lectures of all their courses online. This was big news then and was welcomed by aspiring professionals and institutions the world over. And MIT Opencourseware was the platform chosen to deliver on their promise.

In fact you can find a huge collection of video lectures (which this post is about) on the MIT opencourseware website. The lectures are divided into their respective sections which makes it quite easy to find what you need.

Also check out this web page which features links to over 177 video lectures from the Berkeley University as well as links to other online educational resources. A very good resource worth bookmarking.