Great Websites for Computer Science Majors: What Are The Best Sites?

In this article I will share some great websites for those of you who are majoring in computer science. This list includes lots of websites with the latest news in computer technology but I'll also include some that I think will interest computer science majors.

I have found that many computer science majors are also interested in other technological developments and science in general so some websites below will also cover that.

Many of the websites below have their own community and they wouldn't exist without your active participation. So if you like a website just join it to submit your own news and contributions! If you know of a good website that could be included in this list just post it in the comments section below and I'll have a look!

• http://thedailywtf.com/

The more you become involved in computer technology, the more you come across examples of human stupidity at work. Some people just don't know how to write a computer program properly! And of course not all of them have majored in computer science like you do. This website collects all those examples of how you should NOT do something in computer technology.

In particular I like the category CodeSOD which includes actual snippets of code that just boggle the mind: what were these people thinking when they produced this? Were they thinking something at all???

• http://slashdot.org/
  

An absolute classic website for those interested in the latest developments in computer technology as well as other scientific developments. Anothing good thing is that user comments on news items receive scores which allows you to focus on the higher quality comments and discussions.

The site is also infamous for giving its name to the verb slashdotting: a website can be slashdotted when some content on it is discussed on Slashdot and the website succumbs to the massive traffic that comes from Slashdot.

• http://www.fsdaily.com/
  

If you are majoring in computer science chances are you won't be using the Windows operating system that comes by default with any computer these days. I've seen many Mac users as well as GNU/Linux users during my time at university and many support the free software movement wholeheartedly. The website fsdaily.com brings you the latest updates and developments in the free software community.

The site distinguishes between published news items and those that are upcoming. Posts in the latter category have been submitted by users but they have not yet reached the status of a published news post yet. So anyone can submit their free software news but only some will get promoted to published news item if it's relevant and popular enough. They are still worth a look though because you can find things you wouldn't have found otherwise.

• http://www.physorg.com/

This website discusses many areas of scientific development including computer technology. As a computer science major you'll find many technology related posts and the latest developments in quantum computing. The things you're taught now relate to the classical model of computing with bits and bytes but in the future our computers may turn quantum. This website allows you to keep track of the latest developments in that area.

The articles are generally accessible even if you're not too familiar with the area of research of the news item but without dumbing things down of course.

Just visit xkcd to view the latest comic! This margin is too narrow to contain the comic!

• http://xkcd.com/

A great online comic for a good laugh and insightful viewpoints on topics related to technology and science. The comics are created by Randall Munroe and new comics appear three times a week.

• http://www.ted.com/

Each year some of the greatest minds on the planet come together during the TED conference (TED = Technology, Entertainment and Design) where they give talks about a variety of subjects, including technology. These talks are available online and I hope you'll find them as interesting as I have.

• http://www.wolframalpha.com/
  

This is a really interesting website and it's not a news website! It's a so-called computational knowledge engine where you can enter a question or query and it'll compute the answer for you rather than giving websites where the answer might be found like a search engine.

The website can compute the answer to an equation, it can produce truth tables of boolean logic and it can convert logical formulas to various logical normal forms which you'll find in every logic course for computer science. Have a look through the many examples because Wolfram Alpha can do so much!

• http://detexify.kirelabs.org
  

This website is particularly handy when you have to write a thesis or document using LaTeX, well-known software that is used by computer scientists to produce their research papers and other publications. It is also used in many other areas of science for the same purposes.

Sometimes you want to express a formula using a particular symbol but you don't know the code to type it. It would take ages to look through all the pages of mathematical symbols that are available for LaTeX so how are you going to find that code? Detexify was created to alleviate this problem. Simply draw the symbol and this tool will display a list of all the symbols that look like it along with the code you need to type. That makes life very easy!

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