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The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

missing.csail.mit.edu

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Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#21

Post by sumoboy »

leetcrew wrote: post #13
sumoboy wrote: post #12

It's sad to see freshman CS students getting thrown into this unknown world of programming with zero understanding of basic programming principle such at simple logic, tools, and even a book. I just witnessed this last semester where the students first class was basically 'intro was a C++'. No books or resources supplied or referenced. So it even gets better when the instructor implies don't get help from the interne…

it's even worse at the school I graduated from. the intro level course for cs majors is in python, but calculus I is a prereq. so the students who are catching up in math and/or don't quite feel ready for the real intro course have to take the remedial course, which is in c. I was a TA/grader for that course and what a shitshow it was. I don't think the professor ever explained the concept of undefined behavior. the…

Definitely more value in taking a udemy type instruction prior just to get introduced to the concepts at your own pace. Nothing has really changed after decades, incredible.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#22

Post by mandelbrotwurst »

jsd1982 wrote: post #20

I think the reason you don't see this kind of course offered is because it is primarily concerning training and not education. Imagine if your training course 25 years ago focused on the Turbo C IDE and that's all the University offered. You would be amazingly proficient at Turbo C and know all its keyboard shortcuts but that wouldn't be too relevant in today's market. Keeping such training material up to date with t…

Sure, or it could have focused on bash, terminal, Unix, vim, etc and still be relevant today.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#23

Post by 0az »

arman_ashrafian wrote: post #18

At my school there is a 2 unit class that you must take along with the intro DS&A course that teaches bash, vim, git, testing, etc. It was definitely the class that helped me the most in my internship and also made me a Vim user. http://ieng6.ucsd.edu/~cs15x/

I too use (Mac)Vim.

In my experience, most CS majors at UCSD that I've met complain about the course. On the other hand, DSC doesn't have an equivalent, which I find disappointing but understandable. Maybe it'll get one in the future.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#24

Post by vonmoltke »

leetcrew wrote: post #13
sumoboy wrote: post #12

It's sad to see freshman CS students getting thrown into this unknown world of programming with zero understanding of basic programming principle such at simple logic, tools, and even a book. I just witnessed this last semester where the students first class was basically 'intro was a C++'. No books or resources supplied or referenced. So it even gets better when the instructor implies don't get help from the interne…

it's even worse at the school I graduated from. the intro level course for cs majors is in python, but calculus I is a prereq. so the students who are catching up in math and/or don't quite feel ready for the real intro course have to take the remedial course, which is in c. I was a TA/grader for that course and what a shitshow it was. I don't think the professor ever explained the concept of undefined behavior. the…

> the intro level course for cs majors is in python, but calculus I is a prereq. so the students who are catching up in math and/or don't quite feel ready for the real intro course have to take the remedial course, which is in c.

I don't understand, why would students who need to take Calc 1 not just take the normal course the following semester?

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#25

Post by cosmotic »

Learning about a command-line debugger and command-line profiling tools would be helpful for those that find themselves in the past. IDEA and Visual Studio have had these things integrated for decades. I find the likelihood of knowing how to use a debugger or profiler is inversely proportional to the amount of time someone spends in the terminal.

It's astonishing how many developers rely on logging/print statements for debugging. The learning curve of using a tool like PDB or GDB is just too steep for most people.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#26

Post by xkemp »

sombremesa wrote: post #19
jedberg wrote: post #17

It's funny, when I was in school, I was always told the difference between a good CS school and an ok school was that the good school only taught you theory and left the practical application to the reader. The ok school had courses on tools and language syntax. It's kind of awesome to see this coming out of MIT.

The world's best CS school is an internet connection.

I'm entirely self-taught and can entirely understand wanting that belief to be true, but it just isn't. A university can give you so much more than just learning some programming language. At the very least, it's going to force you to dabble in some languages you wouldn't ordinarily touch. The same obviously goes for theory.

Assuming there are at least some things that require a minimum effort that is uncomfortable before allowing you to see their benefits, you will discover more guided by qualified people and well-designed curricula than on your own.

Then, there are the people: from my experience especially with Ivy-League faculty, these schools seem to do something right. Remember that one teacher from school that really got you into (reading shakespeare/track/organic chemistry)? Yeah, they aren't all like that, but a rather significant number seems to be.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#27

Post by Ah2No5Wrong »

sombremesa wrote: post #19
jedberg wrote: post #17

It's funny, when I was in school, I was always told the difference between a good CS school and an ok school was that the good school only taught you theory and left the practical application to the reader. The ok school had courses on tools and language syntax. It's kind of awesome to see this coming out of MIT.

The world's best CS school is an internet connection.

Going to Stanford doesn’t mean you lose internet connection while you’re there

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#28

Post by Aperocky »

lkbm wrote: post #4

In the lab for my second or third CS course, the professor was walking us through intro Unix usage, but he didn't take attendance so it ended up being just 2-4 of us showing up. After a few weeks, he cancelled the lectures and told us he'd just be around to answer questions, help with homework, etc. The last lecture before he cancelled things was an intro to Vim. The next would've been Emacs. And that's the story of…

Life long vim user that was initiated by the terminal here, vim has a special place in my heart, not because the amount of customization that I was able to add, but because it enabled me to write actual diary.

Here's the script.

https://github.com/Aperocky/termlife/blob/master/diaryman.sh

All I had to do was to type $diary in the terminal and I'm writing my diary in vim. I had never had more extensive record of my life. My distracted ass would never have managed this without that kind of access.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#29

Post by fiblye »

leetcrew wrote: post #13
sumoboy wrote: post #12

It's sad to see freshman CS students getting thrown into this unknown world of programming with zero understanding of basic programming principle such at simple logic, tools, and even a book. I just witnessed this last semester where the students first class was basically 'intro was a C++'. No books or resources supplied or referenced. So it even gets better when the instructor implies don't get help from the interne…

it's even worse at the school I graduated from. the intro level course for cs majors is in python, but calculus I is a prereq. so the students who are catching up in math and/or don't quite feel ready for the real intro course have to take the remedial course, which is in c. I was a TA/grader for that course and what a shitshow it was. I don't think the professor ever explained the concept of undefined behavior. the…

What kind of intro course was this? Just an intro to programming, or something like data structures?

If it's the former, calculus as a prerequisite makes zero sense. It's bizarre that anyone would approve that idea.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#30

Post by Aperocky »

Non CS graduate here, funny how my learning curve has been basically what y'all are saying.

I had one java class before I officially kick started my programming career by wiping windows off my laptop and installing ubuntu. Then proceeded to force myself to do everything from the command line, not that there were many other options. It escalated quickly from there.

Starting from the terminal is much more intuitive than writing 'int main/ public static void main' in an IDE.

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