Choosing a major

>>18404251
My thoughts:

>take some CS and some math classes
>if you don't like math -> great, problem solved

>being a code monkey isn't the only type of job that is available

>most math majors I know either work in some underpaid research position or work as a software dev

>>18404251
The best programmers created their own jobs. We don't care how good you are doing parent and nested for loops. Or you that you can build an algorithm to suck your own dick. You need to build stuff that people want to pay for or you're useless. And that will end eventually.

We only have so many naive idiots with bank loans that want to "build an app and become a millionaire bro, it will be great bro, trust me it will happen overnight like Mark Fuckerberg bro"

>>18404390
bad advice, just try both OP

If you're good at math and like to stay around in the frame of CS, I suggest you read up on Data Analytics or Data Mining. It's kinda like statistics and algorithms put together. Companies like Amazon die for them as online companies are really strict on knowing how a customer behaves and algorithms on how to recommend products that a certain user might be interested in.

>>18404381
This is probably what I will do. I *think* I like math, but I haven't had enough experience with more advanced math to say that I would enjoy doing it for sure. Regarding money, I should say that it isn't a huge concern of mine. If I'm making at least 60k a year I'll probably be fine. I don't spend very much.

>>18404449
The thing with my math interest is that it is typically in the realm of pure math, i.e., stuff that isn't directly applicable to much of anything. Applied math tends to bore me. Still, I will look into what sort of classes my college has regarding that stuff. In fact, it would probably be a good idea to take a look at the higher-level classes for both majors, even if I can't enroll in them yet, just to get an idea of what's available.

>>18404251
>I'm also very interested in math, though I haven't self-studied it as intensively as CS. Looking down the road at a career, I feel like a job in math (probably research of some type) would be more meaningful to me than being some code monkey at a massive company.

Just graduated high school?
How much of math do you know now?
Look at the syllabus of this book www.math.harvard.edu/~shlomo/docs/Advanced_Calculus.pdf

Try the first few chapters. Are you comfortable with it?
If you can do most problems in it I'd say you definitely have a future in pure math.

As for choice of major, I would say choose math, it will get you through the basic path analysis, algebra (the two building blocks) and take CS courses as you need to fill your employable skills list (this is what most math students do nowadays anyway). This way you have certain flexibility and advantage: you can still find job in the industry (as long as you update your skills list every year) and if you decide to get a PhD in math, you won't lack the basics your peers already know in undergrad, and if it's a PhD not in math but in related fields like CS or EE, you have a huge advantage since majority of their syllabus is spent learning mathematical abstractions already available or obvious to math majors (I took EE's and CS's machine learning courses last semester).

If you are a CS major, your path is narrower, you either work in industry (which is a fine end goal by itself and many people believe a PhD in CS is useless) and it's pretty much impossible to do PhD in anything else but CS (unless you intend to spend extra year). For math if you start early it's a breeze and not at all time consuming, you have enough free time to do programming projects at weekends or term breaks and go to social events. (in fact, semester towards the end that's the only thing you do, go to parties or seminars, again, given that you started early and worked hard in the first few years).

>>18404390
Haha what? You've never worked in professional environment in your life. Programmers are not hired for their ideas or creativity. Any serious project will have all of that planned by a specialized software designer and the programmers job is to translate.

>>18404484
>The thing with my math interest is that it is typically in the realm of pure math, i.e., stuff that isn't directly applicable to much of anything. Applied math tends to bore me

Well, at your level there is no need to worry about pure vs applied, the core is the same.
The distinction of pure and applied math at higher level is mainly for the sake of qualifying exams. To be more practical, a paper in pure math and a paper in applied math both prove many theorems, the theorems in applied math are typically interdisciplinary (geometry-algebra-physics, optimization-engineering, analysis-probability), doesn't mean they aren't theoretical, or will definitely get you an industry job (lol). A Paper in pure math typically doesn't care about problems from other non math fields or even other math fields, i.e. a differential geometer (pure) doesn't know or care about algebraic number theory (pure) any more than a numerical analyst (applied). That is to say, the divergence within pure math specializations is sometimes greater than the divergence between pure and applied specializations.

E.g. this is without a doubt a paper in applied math
https://statweb.stanford.edu/~candes/papers/ExactRecovery.pdf
and the people involved pretty much invented their own abstractions to deal with the problem. as pure mathematicians would do.

>it would probably be a good idea to take a look at the higher-level classes for both majors, even if I can't enroll in them yet, just to get an idea of what's available

You can use this as a reference:
https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.maths.cam.ac.uk/files/coursesia.pdf
https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.maths.cam.ac.uk/files/coursesib.pdf
https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/sites/www.maths.cam.ac.uk/files/coursesii.pdf

Tripos is always a good standard to compare to.