Required Skill Set

I just graduated from University of Wollongong from SIM campus with Digital Security Systems. In this blog, I will give some suggestions to those who are going into the univerity of wollongong (UOW in short) in singapore campus and taking the same course as I did. This information might not be 100% accurate, but it is to my best knowledge.

This course requires you to have some programming skills (either Java or C++). This two programming are mainly used for this course. C++ is in fact the most favourite in this course since you have to do the programming in Window and Linux OS. Some courses are explained based on C++ coding and the assignments are in C++ as well. I didn't know Java programming until my FYP since i am using C++ for all the courses. Most importantly, you will also learn the shell programming, simple perl coding, as well as some SQL commands. The choice of programming should not be your problem if you are a good programmer. Programmer should be able pick up any programming language since the basis idea and the fundenmental remain the same.

There are some mathematics involved. CSCI466 was the one, but recently, it was abandomed by the university. It involves understanding of probability - such as a signal "1" passing through a medium might change to "0" accidentally due to some noise. Understanding of this will help the programmer to write his program such that the code can automatically recover the corrupted data. It is a good course to learn, but some people hate it. Computer is like complicated calculator. It defintely involve the mathematics and the software student should know about it.

Some theroies like Network Attack, Distributed System, Buffer Overrun, System Administration and some Crytotography will be involved. Crytography is complicated, but try to admire it by understanding - you will love the crytography if you like to understand some puzzles.

Basically, this is for year 2 and year 3. For year 1, it is the fundemental and if you had the diploma in related field, you could be exempted. For year 3 bridge students (directly to year 3), it might be some struggles initially because some of you has left the schools for some times and didn't remember. Some might not have learn Linux in their diplomas and it is hard for them.

After all, this degree is not easy, but very interesting. The most most important thing - your learning attitude towards new things - accept it, learn it, acquire it and love the way it is..