Probably compiler class focused on the theory aspect of it. It was much more interesting/useful the other compiler class I took which actually had me create a parser+compiler for a made-up language. Still somewhat challenging to think in that way, as it's not the usual way to process data.
Why was the theory more interesting? I didnt enjoy it at all nor found it very useful, meanwhile practice was really useful and satisfying
Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
21–30 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#22It wasn't one of those "memorize the textbook and you'll be fine" type of classes. It was a "do a bunch of independent research and figure a whole lot of things out for yourself" type of class.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#23Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#24Ed Lamagna's "Algorithms and Data Structures" course at Univ. of Rhode Island. I really had to work for that class, but the payoff was tremendous.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#25[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_interpretation
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#26I don't know how much this applies to other institutions, but speaking personally, my undergrad Operating Systems course very much threw the students to the wolves. It wasn't one of those "memorize the textbook and you'll be fine" type of classes. It was a "do a bunch of independent research and figure a whole lot of things out for yourself" type of class.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#27Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#28I don't know how much this applies to other institutions, but speaking personally, my undergrad Operating Systems course very much threw the students to the wolves. It wasn't one of those "memorize the textbook and you'll be fine" type of classes. It was a "do a bunch of independent research and figure a whole lot of things out for yourself" type of class.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#29Programming is something you will get better at as you do it, so I wouldn't worry too much about it. Instead I would look for computer science courses that interest you and a course outside of comp sci that requires a lot of writing. Although technical writing is probably what you will be mostly doing, consider taking a creative writing or a critical reading course.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#30Logical programming (prolog). I'm not sure I would call it the most challenging class, but it's the one where the most amount of people failed to learn anything. If I had to guess then 90% of the students (or more) ended up not being able to do anything with prolog. I haven't seen any other class that had such an abysmally low rate of successful learning. I think the only knowledge most people took away from this cla…