[albertdisuza]

I have an idea of doing my engineering in computer field. I have a confusion between CS and IT. Can you please tell what is CS and what is IT. Will Job opportunity of the both departments differ?

[Tormod]

Well, it's not rocket science. They are similar terms but have different usage.

Computer science is the science of computers, computations and their applications - which basically means a technical study of how computers work, how networks function, how infrastructure is created and maintained etc.

Information technology is more or less a term used to describe the same thing but in a more general way. It is the class of technology used in order to store and retrieve information, and thus involves computer science but also a broader approach.

CS is purely an engineering field, while IT is a lot broader IMHO.

[f4ktu4l]

If you like engineering computer science is probably going to be best for you. Have you tried looking into computer engineering? I know a lot of campuses offer computer engineering now alongside computer science.

As for the difference between computer science and infomation technology:

Computer Science: If you choose to pursue Computer Science you will be creating programs, learning about the logical processes going on inside the cpu, learn how to interact and control the processor and ram, etc. Computer science is mostly rooted in the abstract and logical aspect of computers I.e. software.

Information Technology: On the other hand if you decide you like IT you will be working with both software and hardware. You will probably work with setting up networks, implementing software, troubleshooting hardware/software issues, etc.

My definitions come from my real life experience in the IT and Computer Science worlds so it may not follow classical defintions exactly but I feel real world definitions are more useful in situations such as these.

[rienwoo]

albertdisuza, on 18 October 2010 - 01:14 AM, said:

I have an idea of doing my engineering in computer field. I have a confusion between CS and IT. Can you please tell what is CS and what is IT. Will Job opportunity of the both departments differ?

Computer science refers to the processes used to create usable computer programs and applications together with all theory behind those processes.
Information technology on the other hand refers to the application of computer programs to solve business processes. It is the application of technology in business. Information technology is very vast in terms of scale because it is applied virtually to any type of process that may require automation, from business, scientific research to the music industry, telecoms and banking.

[alexander]

Having been involved in IT first and more general CS over the past few years.

Neither relates to just software or hardware, neither is just about one or the other, they approach it at different levels.

IT deals with management of a wide variety of technology, main factor for which is data, so anything that manages data, is part of information technology field. Any media, any form of data, visual or not, all of that is encompassed within IT. This may be anything from software installation to hardware, to networking, to software design, to hardware design, to database administration to management and administration of systems and even systems development.

CS is the study of information and computation theory, implementation and application of thereof. It deals with data on the low level and encompasses things such as programming, graphics, algorithm design, AI, programming language design, networking (low-level), cryptography, robotics and much much more.

To sum it up and make it easier to relate to, let me describe this using the OSI model: CS encompasses layer 1-3, where as IT deals with layer 4-7

[maddog]

I remember in college days when it was much simpler to compare. IT didn't even exist as a field of study and CS in most universities was actually a sub-department of Mathematics.

In these days there is such a proliferation of fields that I get confused: Computer Science (CS), Computer Engineering (CE),
Information Technology (IT), Information Science (IS). So if the institution you are looking to get into or are already there and
considering a change of major and all you have to choose from is CS & IT then consider yourself lucky and utilize the OSI
method described by Alexander.

For myself, I still think of Information Science (IS) as some over-generalized Computer Science (CS) {they're both science - right!?}

So when you see it is some __ Technology then this is a more broader brush stroke of study, and when you see __ Science,
then this is more of the internal guts of how things work. So I am guessing that when you see __ Engineering,
it is somewhere in the middle ?

Alternately when I see the word Science used, it has more a Software Flavor, when the word Engineering used, it has more a Hardware flavor.

Mind you I don't think of these as "hard fast rules" -- just guidelines.

I can only imagine what Nanotechnology will do to this field in twenty years - then we will have fields such as Nano-information Sciences and Nano-information Technology and Nano-Software Design, Nano-Robotics, etc.

maddog