Why choose IP?

This post is intended towards class 10th students but the ideas can also be applied to others who are interested in field of computer science.

My introduction

My name is Udit Gulati. I am currently a final year CS student at Indian Institute of Information Technology, Una. I did my 12th from DAV, Rohtak and took IP as optional subject.

Target audience

I intend to write this post for 10th class students who are deciding on which optional subject to choose during their 11th and 12th class. Especially for those students who are interested in taking non-medical and then do Engineering after 12th class. This post will give you details on the pros and cons of taking IP as optional subject.

Possibilities and their benefits

There a few subjects that can be taken as optional subject like IP, fine arts, music, psychology, physical education etc. Each one has some benefits and some are primarily taken by students of some streams. For example, psychology is primarily taken by medical students as this subject has relevance in field of medical science.

The purpose of optional subject is to give an idea of the field one wants to study in college. If you want to study Computer science, studying IP will give you a perspective of it. If you want to study performing arts, studying music will give you that perspective.

How IP is beneficial before college

IP stands for Information Practices. It touches some basic concepts of computer programming (Java or Python). It teaches you how to think in terms of computer programming. One gets to learn how to convert logic into program and also gets to learn about basic algorithms and data structures.

Taking IP as optional subject will help a lot if one is a non-medical student as most non-medical students end up opting Engineering and most of those wants to go for Computer science, some get it but those who don’t end up taking some other specialization that does not interest them much and still learn computer science as a self-study. So, if anyone who has interest in studying Computer science or have plan to study it should definitely take IP as optional subject. This will not only give you an idea of the field but will also get you comfortable with basic programming paradigm which will give you a head start during first year of college and will understand those concepts even better during college.

Why learn to code?

If you want to pursue engineering then computer programming is the most helpful skill to learn during the college period. It not only helps in securing a good job but also helps to improve logical thinking. It is very important to be fluent in coding when the specialization is Computer science. Even with specialization other than Computer science may it be Electronic, Electrical, Civil or Mechanical, most students end up working in tech companies where most of their work involves using computer programming skills. So, if one wants to be successful as an engineering, learning to code is the most sane thing to do.

For fields other than engineering, like biology and commerce, the skill of coding still helps a lot as if one knows how to code can easily write small scripts to automate most of the work. In both of these fields, there is a lot of work related to processing and analyzing data and such work can be done easily and quickly using simple python scripts.

Final thought

It may be that you are not sure about if you want to do engineering or not or if you want to pursue Computer science or not. It is best to atleast giving IP a try during 11th if there is a possibility of you ending up taking engineering. You’ll also get the understanding that if Computer science is really one of your interests. If that is not the case, then you can change to some other optional subject in 12th. Even if you do not end up taking engineering or working in a tech company, the skill of coding would still be helpful in other fields as logical thinking applies to essentially every field.