Since the beginning of mankind, humans have always been obsessed with finding an easier way to complete the tasks they have. The invention of the computer has shown to be one of the most important ones to come out of the 20^th century. There were machines that were technically considered computers that came about in the late 1800s but were barebones compared to what started popping up in the 1930s. Since then, there have been multiple iterations of computers and their respective software with the goal of making anything that could be solved by them easier to complete. Due to the fact that computers have this ability to make life’s tasks easier, they have found their way into just about everything that once was thought ridiculous. Thanks to this situation, it has sparked the need for people proficient in computers and how they work to be in the work force. A common phrase that can be heard to children in lower education that do not know what they want to go to college for is “Get a degree in computer science or anything tech related. That’s where it’s at.” That statement is helpful but rather vague as it does not tell what one can really do in that field. It is the hopes of this essay to try and answer that question and show what is possible.

The biggest area of investigation that comes with the field of computer science is research and development. That is a rather broad term but it simply applies to finding ways to invent new ideas for the general public to use or innovating on existing ideas to make them work better than what was previously set. From this want to invent easier ways to do tasks comes the grueling task of creating artificial intelligence (AI). Artificial intelligence is rather self- explanatory from its name, but it is the making of a machine that can “decide” what to do for its given tasks. Developing artificial intelligences can be used for a variety of options, as shown in a Brookings.edu paper about artificial intelligence, there are AI used for transportation systems that need to utilize data collected at every running second to ensure a collision does not happen.

That same paper also explains how there are AI running to enroll students in nearby schools based on address, interests, desired schools, and so on. The most crucial part of making these machines run is something called “deep learning.” This involves writing the algorithms that allow for a machine to learn essentially as a child would. The programmers act as parents giving guidance and boundaries and the from those presets the machine takes all the data at its disposal to complete the given tasks. One such example of this deep learning comes from this paper by Gabrielli et al. where multiple uses for deep learning are discussed. Theses uses ranging from learning the different sounds that animals make to help identify them easier in an area, learning what a normal heartbeat sounds like compared to one that is abnormal for uses in the medical industry, figuring out what the best place for a person to stand at in a room to get the best quality of sounds from an audio source. Other uses that the paper went through involved using that deep learning to help musicians with finding chord progressions that sounded nice under the desired sound that was set. The developing of AI is some the most ambitious work when it comes to computer science but will also prove to be some of the most important work for improving everyday life. Those who wish to study and work with AI just need to be determined and never give up.

While development of artificial intelligences is one prospective goal for those who wish to get in the computer science field, there are also many other possible jobs to take on with this kind of education. These jobs tend to be more practical in use and where more people will see the benefits sooner. These jobs are also where many people with an education in computer science will find themselves after college. Taking all the skills of computer networking and programming they learned and finally applying it to the real world. It is worth noting that many of these jobs pay on average from ~70k USD to ~100k USD depending on what company a person ends up at.

Companies like Lockheed Martin, IBM, and Google are more likely to pay more than say working for a school system. The job list could almost be listed as endless as computers find their way into every aspect of our lives down to blenders. Due to this fact and that every wireless signal receiving computer needs some sort of protection, it brings up the need for cybersecurity specialists. People in this field are dedicated to ensuring that connections to and from websites are safe and secure. There are plenty of people in the world who use computers and the Internet for malicious intent so it is needed to be protected from them; whether they use their skills to steal private data and sell it off, finding your credit or debit card information and spending your money, or even locking you out of your own computer until you pay them an absurd amount of money. In their paper, Jang-Jaccard and Nepal explain how many of these attacks occur with the biggest being from malware. Malware is software with the intent of exploiting a system’s weakness to allow the person who created it to do whatever they want inside the victim’s system. Beyond malware, bugs (mistakes) in code are another huge reason for cybersecurity specialists. One little bug in code can allow a hacker (malicious user) to disrupt a system’s intended use. The last biggest reason for cybersecurity needs comes from the need to make sure that networks are secure. An unsecure network can let a hacker get into a plethora of private data within a company or even shutdown a website for an extended period of time. All these reasons are major concerns not just for those who work to protect but also for the users as well as these attacks can affect anyone at any time.

Even more practical than cybersecurity is simply setting up the infrastructure that needs the protection. A paper by the Medical Journal Armed Forces India talks about one such structuring. It goes through the need of computer techniques in the medical field as “Medical informatics is a rapidly growing discipline” (Mehta et al., ). The paper talks about how computers have become a necessary part of any medical unit, whether it is for a hospital, a research group, or a doctor’s office. There have to be people to set up these systems for patient care, to pass information, and store information. Computers make all of those tasks easier and can provide better care for patients who need it. As the paper states, “Critically ill patients require large number of therapeutic interventions to optimize their chances of survival. For this, the variables must be collected frequently and the data derived therefrom made available to the clinicians and nursing staff.” Without people who know how to set these systems up the medical world would be very different than what it is today. The use of computer science skills does not need to have such a heavy weight in this field as these skills can be simply used to create a way for one physician to send the medical information of a patient to another physician. One other use that the paper talks about is having a computer automatically disperse drugs to a patient based on body information so as to not accidently cause an overdose. The last major use brought up by Mehta et al. was the set up of medical imaging systems for like CT scans, MRIs, and ultrasounds. Everything mentioned by that paper is so crucial in today’s world now and having the people around who know how to set up and maintain these systems is just as important as having the people who run them on a daily basis.

Another way that people who study computer science can use their education is through cloud computing. Cloud computing ties together certain aspects of the last two applications mentioned. It requires major security as very little is physical, so the system is easier to get into, but cloud computing allows for an easier than ever way of streaming data from one user to another. Cloud computing makes it easier for companies to source out data space, as when a customer needs more space the provider simply changes the code to allow for them to have more space. There is no passing of physical hard drives for that extra space, it simply just exists when it gets called into action. The movement to cloud computing ends up being more cost effective for everyone in the end as there is not a need for a whole building dedicated to that server space, it can be as small as a cereal box; however, it still requires someone with the knowledge to set it all up. An article from Computer.org found on the IEEE Digital Library talks extensively about serverless computing and even brings up some of the needs that come with maintaining these systems. The two major maintenance requirements being testing and debugging the system and keeping the performance up so as to not create a slow system that prevents the users from doing what they want in a timely manner. Cloud computing is not as ambitious a project as AI development but setting up all the systems to keep the infrastructure is still quite the task to uphold.

Computer science has many practical uses for the betterment of society, but it is also a major source of entertainment. YouTube is the biggest platform for people to put out whatever they may please in a video format for potentially hundreds of thousands to millions of people to view. Since the possibilities are endless for what one can do with their computer science skills, YouTube allows for people to show off projects they may have taken upon themselves to complete. One such person doing this is Michael Reeves. He has built robots for a number of reasons but mostly for the purpose of entertainment as many of them serve no real practical use in the real world. A popular YouTuber who has based their channel around creating robots is an individual by the name of Michael Reeves. One such project he took on was creating a robot that picked out the tomatoes in a salad. While he could have very easily just picked the tomatoes out himself, he not just wanted to create the video but also show off the idea he had and how he built it. Reeves is just one of many that proves that having these skills and a creative imagination can allow one to do anything they want with said skills.