I took a functional programming in Haskell course first year in Uni without having much previous programming experience at all. Quite early in the course we were tasked with implementing a huge bidirectional graph and an efficient shortest path algorithm for finding the fastest way between any two nodes.
I hadn’t taken any DSA course and was totally unaware of graphs and shortest path algorithms and the course material was pure Haskell syntax.
I failed miserably and so did most of the others.
Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
61–70 of 83 posts
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#62Formal methods in Z notation or predicate logic in prolog... Still have nightmares 20 years later.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#63Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#64Formal methods in Z notation or predicate logic in prolog... Still have nightmares 20 years later.
+1 for formal methods in Z. I've still got the book at my dad's house.
My first year of uni also had a pretty evil pure maths course which was worth a high percentage of the year. Not much fun.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#65Uni would've been way easier if they taught us TDD in the 1st semester instead of the 5th
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#66Either my Ocaml course or my prolog course. In the end, I managed to use Ocaml, but endofunctors are still a mystery to me, while I managed to build half a prolog in common lisp (the inference engine part), so I'll say Ocaml.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#67I would not call it challenging, but it was a fun and interesting experience. Learning functional programming through the CS 3110 course at Cornell University Here is the link: https://courses.cs.cornell.edu/cs3110/2021sp/textbook/ The OCaml part is free, well structured and does not take long to complete.
I'm taking this right now. Super fun!
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#68got a book Low Level Programming by igor zhirkov. IT's not technically a course, but he wrote it for his teaching (his classes won a lot, a lot of prizes). It's ofcourse, about low level programming, but since, the lower levels underpin the higher ones, for me the most useful thing was this book. It was a super challenge for me personally (no degree in computing or anything), and working through it i felt more things…
I have some project ideas but they are too complex for me. I have domain knowledge but my programming skills are lacking + lots of ambiguity/confusion/uncertainty/fuziness while implementing. I haven't delved into low level programming much but I will give it a shot. I do mostly scripting and automation - I want to improve my programming skills to the next level.
Feed your idea to ChatGPT and it can give you some basic ideas about what to learn.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#69Not programming, but all the math classes that were required as part of the major. Most of the programming classes were challenging in that type 2 or type 3 fun way, where they are challenging but you lowkey enjoyed the challenge. That said, I went to a bit of 'java school' so the programming classes weren't as tough as some other schools.
Automata is a good one to give you some understanding of how things work 'underneath'. The different algorithm ones are good because by implementing algorithms from scratch you learn how they actually work and that helps inform when you'd choose specific ones. I find that a decent background in algorithms is what really separates the self taught folks from the college educated ones.
Database programming was kinda tough, at least the theory side of it, because relational algebra and relational calculus are complicated and the whole normalizing databases during the design stage of things.
Re: Ask HN: What is the most challenging programming course you have taken?
#70Check out cses.fi not a programming course per se but still relevant.