How should a computer science major keep up with the constant changes in the field and with technology itself ?

Hi Jeancarlo,

This is a wonderful question! Technology is changing so quickly in all fields it makes a lot of sense to join a professional organization in your major... even as a student.

Professional organizations work with their members and industry professionals to identify trends, provide training to members, and make the industry smarter, better, and more innovative. Hint: this is also a great place to find scholarships and intern opportunities: https://www.computer.org/web/students/scholarships.

One leading organization you might consider is IEEE Computer Society. Many professional organizations have a student membership with fabulous resources, networking opportunities, publications, libraries, job boards, and volunteer opportunities. This is such a valuable resource and well worth the membership (student memberships are often cheaper.) Once you graduate and start working, IEEE can help you stay updated through conferences, journals, and professional networking events.

"The IEEE Computer Society is the world's leading membership organization dedicated to computer science and technology. Serving more than 60,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the trusted information, networking, and career-development source for a global community of technology leaders that includes researchers, educators, software engineers, IT professionals, employers, and students."

source: https://www.computer.org/

Check out Student Benefits and Resources (there may be a chapter at your school or your city) to see if this organization could be useful to your education and career:

https://www.computer.org/web/membership/student-benefits/

and

https://www.computer.org/web/students/

My career has been more about Information Technology rather than Computer Science. See the quote below from the Internet about the difference.

"What is the Difference between Information Technology and Computer Science? ... An IT career involves installing, organizing and maintaining computer systems as well as designing and operating networks and databases. Computer science is focused entirely on efficiently programming computers using mathematical algorithms."

Yes I efficiently programmed computers but I also did many other things. This a little bit bought my career.

I graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in Management Information Systems 40 + years ago and have been working in IT since then. When I started working at General Electric they offered noon time courses to learn about the latest technical information in the IT field. I also bought books about the languages I wanted to learn since the Internet was just starting. GE also offered to pay for a course in my profession once a year.

I left GE and started working as a consultant for Perot Systems. Now the Internet was available with all sorts of information about IT. I was given a week off to learn about a new computer language--PERL. I went to Oregon and learned from the development team all I could learn in a week. When I returned to work I bought a number of books to learn more about PERL (Learning Perl, Programming Perl, Regular Expressions, Mastering Perl, Mastering Perl/TK and Perl in the .NET environment). The Perl language has developed to a new modern language PYTHON. I bought a book Python Programming and learned more about the language on www.python.org. I like buying books because I can mark them up with my own special comments.

Recently, I worked for Arbella Insurance and learned about Continuous Development (Jenkins) and Continuous Integration (Puppet) on my own time. After learning enough about the applications I installed and configured them at work and replaced the old manual applications with these modern applications. When time came for my yearly review a large part of the review and my raise came because of what I developed, tested and installed in the Release Management operation.

As you can see in order to become good at IT or Computer Science requires constant learning. Also, there is enough open source languages, etc. that you can get off the Internet for free. Google.com is a great resource just ask a question in the proper format and someone in the world will give you the answer.

Learning about IT is exciting and never ends because of the constant change.

You're absolutely right - the field is constantly changing and evolving and I think that's one of the things I like about technology. Definitely it's scary and intimidating at times but when we realize that's going to happen and it's not possible to be on top of every single new development, it's suddenly okay to take a step a back and decide on a niche you're excited about and learn more about that specifically.

For myself, I'm really interested in mobile application development and new patterns, paradigms and ideas that emerge in that area. To keep up, I follow a bunch of influencers on Twitter, watch video recording of conference sessions and listen/watch audio/video podcasts on new topics and ideas.

I'm sure you can find ways to organically get involved in your specific area of interest too.

Being in a constantly changing/evolving field is very exciting!  While in school, your studies are paramount but you can join student chapters of national technical societies, such as the ACM, IEEE, and IEEE-CS.  After graduating, many channels are available to you.