What is CompSys; Is it fun?

Hello! Welcome back to another yap session. Today I’m going through some FAQs and by FAQ I mean maybe like 1 or 2 people have asked me.

⚠️ Disclaimer: Some of this might be wrong but this is what I’ve gathered during my time. 

What do Computer Systems Students actually do?

Something you might’ve heard a lot is that CompSys is an in between of electrical and software but what does this even mean??!! I personally think it’s more fun to go in blind but I guess I’ll explain what I’ve figured out so far. 🤷‍♀️

You can think of computer systems as having 2 sides: hardware and firmware (software). 

The hardware is the processors (microcontroller/microprocessors/FGPAs which you’ll learn more about the differences between in PII) and peripherals which interact with the real world. For PII  you will only get to work with microcontrollers which already have a lot of built in peripherals (inputs, outputs, ‘timekeeping’). Processing is where it takes all the information from inputs and does stuff with it to produce an output.

The inputs and outputs of an embedded system can be connected to real world things, for example an input from the real world could be like measurements of temperature taken from a sensor. This would get processed through a microcontroller and produces an output which could be for example a digital monitor. Usually embedded systems work together as a part of a larger system. 

For firmware: the language you work with is C and you start to become more aware of the importance of efficient coding and also working with bits/bytes. This configures what modes the microcontroller is set to, what it actually does with any inputs and how your output is presented. You can even configure how the microcontroller responds to certain events and I believe another aspect includes programming an interface so that users can interact with the embedded system.

This embedded system specific programming is not really done so much in PII. It is mostly gonna be in CompSys209 with some of the conventions/code first introduced in CompSys201. The software paper SoftEng281 paper in Sem 1 is pretty different dealing with Java and Object Oriented Programming.

If you like robotics, computer systems might be perfect for you. Apparently though, as a computer systems student you’ll be learning about embedded systems in a lot more depth, like the theory behind how they actually work as well as how to design them. For PII though, this basically means it’s A LOT of electrical. 

Is it fun? 

This is gonna be subjective and there’s kind of 2 aspects to this: University experience and course content. At the end of the day, I personally think uni is gonna be as fun as you make it but it does help when you find like-minded people and friends.

Course Content

In terms of course content, the first semester is not ‘fun’ per se but it really is the fundamentals that you need to wrap your head around. If you like problem solving it’s kind of fun. A lot of the courses kind of feel like sudoku puzzles once you learn the content. It’s very logical and you can usually go step by step to see where you go wrong. (The Stockholm syndrome is real; I was struggling so bad at the time.) Some of the lectures are not as engaging but I love them nonetheless. You can tell the lecturers are trying their best and really open to questions/feedback and helping you learn.

The second semester, so far, is more fun I reckon. Most of my time is spent on CompSys 209. I mean it’s definitely hard but it’s kind of fun and apparently it’s the course where you sort of level up and you start to feel like a real Computer Systems Engineering student. You spend a lot more time in labs and the amount of resistors I’ve collected is crazy. Shoutout to the random person I gave my resistor chain to 😭, I really hope you’re taking care of it 😔.

My opinion is probably gonna change very soon.

Maybe rather than fun I would say Computer Systems is rewarding

Student Life

Student life as a Computer Systems student is also pretty fun. We do not have a dedicated Student Association but there’s lot of clubs in engineering and no one says you can’t join other Spec Student Associations. I guess the most relevant club would be IEEE Student Branch who do useful events for finding internships and connecting with the electrical industry, they also do some social events too which are a nice break from uni work. Recently, I weaseled my way into MECHA’s assassin’s week where I camped a PIII student’s lab for 2 days with nothing to show for it 🥲. I have no photos so you just gotta trust.