This is a pretty bare-bones site at the moment. Since making good-looking and feature-rich websites is a skill that some of you might want to pick up, we're leaving it up to the future CS+ community to modify the look and functionality of this site.

CS+ @ Maties

Welcome to Computer Science Plus. This site is a collection of information about ways to get involved in Computing in and around Stellenbosch beyond any courses you are already doing. We would like to build up a community of people enthusiastic about finding out more about various aspects of Computing, and helping others to do so, too.

Maties Computing Club

The Maties Computing Club is currently co-ordinated by Willem Bester and Steve Kroon from Maties Computer Science. The club meets most Fridays during term-time, from 17h00 until about 18h30, usually for some kind of (hopefully interactive) lecture.

The aim is for this club to be as inclusive as possible, so feel free to attend regardless of your (lack of) technical background. School pupils and people from industry are encouraged to join in as well.

Please visit the club website for more details, and join the computing club mailing list to be kept updated with announcements, updates, etc.

Contests

Information about various contests is provided at http://contest.cs.sun.ac.za - join the mailing list for announcements about competitions and practice sessions.

Programming workshops

Maties Computer Science presents a crash-course on introductory programming in C and Java at the beginning of each year. This course is aimed at students who will be doing the first-year Computer Science course (Java) or an Engineering degree (C). For more information on the course, see the website at http://www.cs.sun.ac.za/brug/. Senior students interested in assisting with running this course should contact Jaco Geldenhuys at Maties Computer Science.

Student assistantships

Every year, there are opportunities for students to demi various Computing courses. Demi-ing provides a great way to cement the work of a previous semester in your mind, and also makes you more visible to the lecturers in the course. More senior students might also be appointed as tutorial co-ordinators or teaching assistants, and some students showing promise might also get part-time research assistant jobs even at undergraduate level. An example of this is the Computational Biology Research Workshop held in 2010 - see http://www.cs.sun.ac.za/news/computational-biology-research-workshop/. Work from this workshop was co-authored by the students, presented at international conferences, and one student even won an award for his work on this.

Jobs, holiday work and internships

Many companies say they struggle to find skilled programmers. Even among Computer Science graduates, the students have often still not got the skills the workplace is looking for. To really make a mark in your later career, it is really useful to develop your skills above and beyond what you are studying in class.

Opportunities like the Maties Computing Club and the various contests you can participate in allow students to prepare better for the workplace, while helping companies by providing a channel for finding promising students.

Another great way to develop your skills and get yourself noticed by employees is to do vacation work/internships at the various companies that support this. Previous students have done internships at international companies like Youtube and Google, while various local companies also run internship programs. Generally, internship placings depend on a referral process: someone interested in doing an internship must be recommended to the company by someone they trust, who in turn might pass on the recommendation of someone they trust... For this reason, it's useful to get involved in extra-curricular activities, and become known to your lecturers or other people in industry, since they are often approached for referrals. Last year, an internship broker focusing on the Western Cape emerged - see http://breaktherules.co.za/. If you're interested in getting referred for internships, contact Steve Kroon at the Computer Science division.

Finally, various full-time, part-time and holiday jobs opportunities get posted on our Computer Science jobs site, www.cs.sun.ac.za/wwwjobs. Check it regularly, or subscribe to the RSS feed for updates.

Also see:

Groups, mailing lists, etc.

Stellenbosch-focused:

Cape Town-focused:

Even more: see this list by Marco Gallotta...

Please report any suggestions for, or errors/inaccuracies on this page by emailing Willem Bester.