need help in choosing electives for 6th sem..

My choice would be either Compiler Design or Operations Research.

nix said:

hey guys.. these are the electives im gonna have to study in the coming sem.. am in VTU

1.06CS661 Operations Research
2.06IS662/06CS62 Compiler Design
3.06CS663 Data Compression
4.06CS664 Pattern Recognition
5.06IS665/06CS65 Computer Graphics and Visualization

i dont know which one to choose. i dont even know what most of them are about. i knw what elective no.2 means.. can anyone tell me what they other ones are about( what is included in that) and which one is easy to score.
thanks..

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OR is a very interesting subject if you are into mathematics and optimization. Gives you an insight into PERT CPM etc. which are concepts taught in Project Management.

Compiler Design would mostly be interaction of compiler with the hardware/ISA and assembly language and optimization.

I would suggest these two as honestly I am not sure about the curriculum attached with the other 3.

hmm.. am not into maths..

i was hoping they would include some management kinda subject.. ie not technical one..
compiler design doesnt sound exciting either.. hmm.. am wondering if all this will be any use to us once we start working..

Compiler Design is actually a very very very important subject if you want to master programming. And, OR helps you do better algorithms.

CG and visualization is not a subject that you can do in Engg. or in a semester. It's a waste subject.

Pattern Recognition is a much more complex subject and you will be scrathing your head 24x7 if you start reading it.

Data compression is an interesting topic but seriously speaking you can learn about this yourself.

OR is again a subject for which you need classroom teaching.

desiibond said:

Compiler Design is actually a very very very important subject if you want to master programming. And, OR helps you do better algorithms.

CG and visualization is not a subject that you can do in Engg. or in a semester. It's a waste subject.

Pattern Recognition is a much more complex subject and you will be scrathing your head 24x7 if you start reading it.

Data compression is an interesting topic but seriously speaking you can learn about this yourself.

OR is again a subject for which you need classroom teaching.

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1) Disagree with this view. You do not need to know the internals of the compiler to "master programming". You would need to know compiler design/internals for "efficient" programming. They are two different things. Compiler design will mostly be at the lower level (hardware), since the interaction of compiler with the hardware is pretty important for performance issues.

2) Disagree again. If you look with that perspective no subject can be done in a semester! All that the courses give are an insight in Bachelors which you can "Master"

3) Pattern Recognition will haf to do more with Algorithms and mathematics.

4) Data compression again will make heavy use of Algorithm concepts and mathematics. That is surely NOT a subject which one can learn by oneself (or at least not in my case!)

5) I'd agree with this. OR requires proper classroom teaching and for me this is the most interesting subject out of the list. I had it during my Bachelors and I absolutely loved it.

thanks guys.. by reading your opinions.. i get the impression that OR loosely resembles the software engineering (SE) subject we had in 5th sem.. so i think i will go with that one. we had a little bit of compilers in 5th semester. it was easy, but they text book which was prescribed to us was not easy to understand from. i often had to use the internet as an aid.. so i think they should prescribe international authors whose books are simple..
thanks..

I've not taken any course on Software Engineering hence I cannot comment if OR is modeled on that course. What I can say for sure is that OR is all mathematics.

^(fghi665) reported

no dude, OR is just full of problems.
NO theory at all. Full of math.