HSC Software Engineering or Enterprise Computing? How to choose

NSW rewrote its senior computing courses for the 2022 syllabuses, replacing the old Software Design and Development and Information Processes and Technology. There are now two, and students routinely pick the wrong one.

Here is how to decide.

The short version

Software Engineering is the programming course. You will write a great deal of code.

Enterprise Computing is the systems and data course. You will study how organisations use technology, with much less programming.

Both are two-unit HSC courses examined on a computer, worth 80 marks, with roughly 20 marks of objective-response items and 60 marks of short-answer questions. Both include a substantial project.

What Software Engineering covers

Year 11: Programming fundamentals, the object-oriented paradigm, and programming mechatronics.

Year 12: Secure software architecture, programming for the web, software automation, and the software engineering project.

The mechatronics component surprises people. It involves hardware, sensors and control systems, and it is genuinely enjoyable for students who like building physical things.

The Year 12 content is noticeably more demanding: secure software architecture and software automation are serious topics, and this is where students who were coasting begin to struggle.

What Enterprise Computing covers

Year 11: Interactive media and the user experience, networking systems and social computing, and principles of cybersecurity.

Year 12: Data science, data visualisation, intelligent systems, and the enterprise project.

Do not mistake this for the easier option. Data science and intelligent systems are substantial, and the data topics involve more mathematics than students expect. It is a different kind of difficulty rather than less of it.

The cybersecurity and networking content is genuinely useful and directly relevant to a large share of actual IT employment.

Choosing

Take Software Engineering if:

• You already enjoy programming, or want to find out whether you do
• You are heading toward a computer science or software engineering degree
• You like building things and seeing them run
• You are comfortable with the frustration of debugging, which is most of the work

Take Enterprise Computing if:

• You are interested in technology but not specifically in writing code
• Data, security or networking appeals more than programming
• You are heading toward information systems, business, cyber security or data analytics
• You like understanding how whole systems fit together

Take both if you are genuinely interested and can fit them. They complement each other well and there is little overlap.

The mistakes people make

Choosing Enterprise Computing because it looks easier. It is not, and students who pick it to avoid work do badly in the data topics.

Choosing Software Engineering because of a vague interest in computers. If you have never written code and do not particularly want to, a year of programming will be a long year. Try some first: Python for a fortnight will tell you.

Choosing based on the teacher. Understandable, and it genuinely matters, but you will be living with the content for two years.

Assuming you must do computing to work in IT. You do not. A great many people in this field came through maths, science or nothing at all. It helps, and it is not a requirement.

What about VET IDT?

There is a third option that gets overlooked: VET Information and Digital Technology.

240 indicative hours, a Certificate III in Information Technology, a minimum of 70 hours of work placement, and it can count towards an ATAR if the student sits the optional HSC exam.

For a student who wants to be working in IT rather than studying it for another four years, this is frequently the strongest choice of the three, and it is rarely presented that way. The school subjects page has more.

Getting the choice right

If you are deciding now, the most useful thing is twenty minutes with somebody who has seen where each leads. It is a genuinely consequential choice and there is not much good information around it.

I tutor all three, and I am happy to talk it through before anybody commits. That conversation costs nothing. Get in touch.