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Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

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Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#31

Post by webartifex »

Waterluvian wrote: post #15
webartifex wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that this is important. My personal choice is to use pyenv together with poetry on a Linux machine. Yet, please understand that I teach this course to absolute (!) beginners. That is why I chose to use the Anaconda Distribution in class, which comes with every package installed that I want my students to study. Making your first steps in programming is hard enough and so I want to keep the "boiler plate" as s…

I hear you. There's probably no one "right" answer because as I type this, I'm already conflicted with my own opinion. There's already a mountain of important topics to teach. What's on my mind is that all of the "meta" parts of programming are usually seen as "boilerplate" when they make up such a critical part of "authoring" meaningful software. I'm approaching this concern from my personal experience in university…

Good idea. This will go into the course in the future.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#32

Post by webartifex »

idoby wrote: post #25
webartifex wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not allow this (It's Panopto). The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona? My plan is to incorporate the feedback everyone gives in the next weeks and do the recordings again in studio at the end of summer for the next semester. The videos a…

> The quality is actually high enough. Maybe that is due as YouTube is currently lowering the quality due to Corona? Maybe. Also, for newer videos YouTube takes a while to expose higher qualities. I see now that the videos have very few views and that only 720p is available. This could also be the reason. > Two videos have the hum. This cannot be changed because the lecture capture system in the lecture room does not…

The videos are actually available in 1080p.

If you can re-do the audio and tell me how I can do that in YouTube without re-uploading the video (it's embedded, for example, in the university's Moodle), I will gladly do that. If not, as I said, I'll do proper recordings once I got more time. I did up to 4x 2.5 hour videos a day last week to get the lectures up on time. You can actually hear that in my voice sometimes.

I absolutely agree with your approach to learning.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#35

Post by mywittyname »

ipnon wrote: post #26

Is it really this easy to become a data scientist today? Can you go from 0 to 1 with online programming tutorials like the original post and fast.ai?

You still need to know SQL, and algorithms are helpful unless you expect to be spoon-fed pristine datasets that are ready for analysis.

The applicant pool seems to be full of those who took an online course and whose "personal" projects consist entirely of projects ripped from fast.ai or similar. Anymore, I get seem to get more spam on LinkedIn from people looking to be hired as a data scientist at my company than I do from recruiters looking to hire me. And looking over their resumes, I can see why they need to hustle so much. Successful candidates need to know how to do more than classify pet images from the Oxford dataset.

So to answer your question...Maybe? I mean, these candidates are certainly trying much harder than I ever needed to for a job. But presumably they eventually get hired into roles with less discerning companies.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#36

Post by webartifex »

mywittyname wrote: post #35
ipnon wrote: post #26

Is it really this easy to become a data scientist today? Can you go from 0 to 1 with online programming tutorials like the original post and fast.ai?

You still need to know SQL, and algorithms are helpful unless you expect to be spoon-fed pristine datasets that are ready for analysis. The applicant pool seems to be full of those who took an online course and whose "personal" projects consist entirely of projects ripped from fast.ai or similar. Anymore, I get seem to get more spam on LinkedIn from people looking to be hired as a data scientist at my company than I…

Agree. I actually found that I set up a Postgres instance to put the data of an object and use pandas only via sqlalchemy. Most of the stuff pandas does, can be achieved a lot more efficient if done right in a real database.

I also agree about the algorithms part. For my research, I look into vehicle routing problems a lot and there is no sklearn for that or something alike. Maybe an idea for a future project.

An experienced data scientist with deep knowledge in the topics you mention easily replaces 10 of those "candidates". I feel the best way to train more serious programmers and data scientists is to teach kids to program earlier in high school. Maybe make it mandatory just as math is today. Then, a lot more students may choose CS or math as a major in college.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#37

Post by jonfw »

webartifex wrote: post #24
rahimnathwani wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note, this is intended for people who will use python for data science, not for future software engineers. Data scientists using python but not using jupyter notebooks is the exception.

That is correct. But even then, I think in the future the data scientist role and the data engineer role will converge and the person doing this must know virtual environments.

In the future we will likely have different tools to handle dependencies and environments. If these things aren't immediately useful, it might be worth teaching other stuff instead.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#38

Post by starpilot »

> The course's main goal is to prepare the student for further studies in the "field" of data science.

Does the material seem to have major gaps for DS to anyone else? There's no pandas, no matplotlib, no ML. It seems like more a tutorial with a computer science focus, with recursion and bit manipulation. Those are great programming topics but rarely used by data scientists. For that I would probably use .py files, not jupyter notebooks. It just doesn't align with my experience as a Python-based data scientist.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#39

Post by OJFord »

webartifex wrote: post #30
OJFord wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, OP says [0] they're a PhD candidate, so maybe take 'non-CS majors' quite literally, in terms of where it's hyphenated. 0 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22669091

I consider my course a thorough course. You really learn a lot of theory. This is usually what makes students at my university drop the course after two weeks of auditing. Just because the course assumes no prior CS contents (anything really, except high school math), does not mean they don't get introduced.

Oh I wasn't suggesting anything against the quality or content of your course - perhaps I misunderstood the comment I replied to, but I took it as:

> High schoolers are really just doing some web course and then getting data scientist jobs?

so my response was:

> No - or at least this isn't evidence of that - the author is a postgraduate student and the target audience appears to be other graduates/university students.

Re: Show HN: Intro to Python and Programming for non-CS majors

#40

Post by webartifex »

starpilot wrote: post #38

> The course's main goal is to prepare the student for further studies in the "field" of data science. Does the material seem to have major gaps for DS to anyone else? There's no pandas, no matplotlib, no ML. It seems like more a tutorial with a computer science focus, with recursion and bit manipulation. Those are great programming topics but rarely used by data scientists. For that I would probably use .py files, n…

Pandas and numpy & friends will be in Chapter 9 that I had not yet time to finish (the semester runs until end of April and is currently at Chapter 5).

Furthermore, it is a programming (!) course, not (!) a data science course.

Please define data science to me. Is it "only" curve fitting to you? Or also optimization (e.g., in logistics)? Then, dynamic programming (and because of that recursion) is super important.

I rely on Jupyter notebooks mainly because it is a course for people with absolutely no prior experience that also do not major in CS.

.py files are actually explained in Chapter 2 and will be used in a follow-up course.

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