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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

#131

Post by Nitramp »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #124
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

That’s cool. Now, on to my possibly unpopular opinion: This isn’t what computer science is about. In fact, you don’t even need to use a computer to do computer science. Sure, some stuff you learn in CS can make you a better software engineer. CS cannot make you a software engineer. CS can definitely not make you adept at using computers and neither should it. That’s something earlier education institutions must tackl…

Science doesn't abstractly drop from the heavens, fully formed. Every science has practical enablers that are required to get stuff done. Astronomers use telescopes, physicists/chemists/etc use lab equipment, Mathematicians use various notations and other tricks (and nowadays proof assistants) to make their job easier.

MS Office might not be practical for computer science (also note how the OP doesn't list that), but learning how to write your papers in latex might, and knowing how to use a shell certainly is.

E.g. if you'd like students to learn about type theory, they will need to experiment with your compiler. You cannot expect students to miraculously be proficient in this, and explicitly teaching them (and requiring it as a prerequisite course to signal that yes, it's important) can turn weeks of frustration followed by a huge dropout rate into a productive course.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#132

Post by 0x445442 »

slumdev wrote: post #129
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

You use Vim in your example. Get your students out of it and into something like IntelliJ IDEA or VS Code or (at a bare minimum) Eclipse.

I think it's valuable to start with Vim, especially for non JVM or CLR languages. Learning Vim as a first step will allow the students to easily navigate and edit code on remote servers. Then, when working on a code base like Java or C#, they can install the Vim plugin for their IDE and have the advantage of a superior editing tool to go along with the tooling the IDE provides.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#133

Post by AstralStorm »

slumdev wrote: post #129
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

You use Vim in your example. Get your students out of it and into something like IntelliJ IDEA or VS Code or (at a bare minimum) Eclipse.

Or preferably all of the above and Vim, and also CodeBlocks and KEIL just in case.

Really? There's a point where you get to learn your IDE...

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#134

Post by olalonde »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #124
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

That’s cool. Now, on to my possibly unpopular opinion: This isn’t what computer science is about. In fact, you don’t even need to use a computer to do computer science. Sure, some stuff you learn in CS can make you a better software engineer. CS cannot make you a software engineer. CS can definitely not make you adept at using computers and neither should it. That’s something earlier education institutions must tackl…

> That’s cool. Now, on to my possibly unpopular opinion: This isn’t what computer science is about.

This is not an unpopular opinion at all, CS degrees do not typically cover what's in this class which is precisely why they called it "the missing semester".

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#135

Post by robterrell »

foobarian wrote: post #56
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

Since you mention scrolling using key repeat - it truly is painful to watch someone do it on default settings. And there are usually better ways to do that sort of thing. But sometimes, there is no substitute: going to the right spot in the middle of a word/line, moving around a page, browser title bars, etc. Here's the kicker though: most keyboard repeat rate settings around have a maximum that is pretty much unusab…

> There are ways to adjust this on OSX too but it's a lot more touchy

System preferences > Keyboard > Key repeat rate

Adjust the slider to your liking. Works in every app. It's been there since 1984, but to the topic, not many users poke around in system settings anymore. If you want faster than the slider allows, try this from the command line: defaults write -g KeyRepeat -int 1

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#136

Post by jblakey »

ip26 wrote: post #96
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." -- Bill Gates Some people just accept absurd drudgery interacting with computers; it never even occurs to them to seek an easier way. But if you can teach the students to be "lazy" when it comes to that kind of repetitive drudgery, they'll be set for life.

Three great programmer virtues, according to Larry Wall: 1. Laziness (figure a smart way to do it that is less work) 2. Impatience (figure how to do it faster) 3. Hubris (figure that what you're doing is important)

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#137

Post by fatnoah »

fuzzy2 wrote: post #124
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

That’s cool. Now, on to my possibly unpopular opinion: This isn’t what computer science is about. In fact, you don’t even need to use a computer to do computer science. Sure, some stuff you learn in CS can make you a better software engineer. CS cannot make you a software engineer. CS can definitely not make you adept at using computers and neither should it. That’s something earlier education institutions must tackl…

I learned tools the old fashioned way - by asking an upperclassman or TA.

I also remember taking a "Software Engineering" class and it bore little to no resemblance to any part of my 20+ year career.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#138

Post by huherto »

ip26 wrote: post #96
Jonhoo wrote: post #2

Over the years, we (@anishathalye, @jjgo, @jonhoo) have helped teach several classes at MIT, and over and over we have seen that many students have limited knowledge of the tools available to them. Computers were built to automate manual tasks, yet students often perform repetitive tasks by hand or fail to take full advantage of powerful tools such as version control and text editors. Common examples include holding…

"I choose a lazy person to do a hard job. Because a lazy person will find an easy way to do it." -- Bill Gates Some people just accept absurd drudgery interacting with computers; it never even occurs to them to seek an easier way. But if you can teach the students to be "lazy" when it comes to that kind of repetitive drudgery, they'll be set for life.

Sadly. It doesn't seem to be a real Bill Gates quote. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/02/26/lazy-job/

But you can quote Larry Wall on the three virtues of a programmer. http://threevirtues.com/

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#139

Post by swiley »

Nitramp wrote: post #131
fuzzy2 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s cool. Now, on to my possibly unpopular opinion: This isn’t what computer science is about. In fact, you don’t even need to use a computer to do computer science. Sure, some stuff you learn in CS can make you a better software engineer. CS cannot make you a software engineer. CS can definitely not make you adept at using computers and neither should it. That’s something earlier education institutions must tackl…

Science doesn't abstractly drop from the heavens, fully formed. Every science has practical enablers that are required to get stuff done. Astronomers use telescopes, physicists/chemists/etc use lab equipment, Mathematicians use various notations and other tricks (and nowadays proof assistants) to make their job easier. MS Office might not be practical for computer science (also note how the OP doesn't list that), but…

They should be writing them in asciidoc (or even markdown) and using style sheets if they really need complex formatting!!! (although at least latex is decent at typesetting and has nice defaults.)

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#140

Post by vonmoltke »

leetcrew wrote: post #36
vonmoltke wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

I didn't explain that very well. students who were seriously considering the cs major could certainly just take calc their first semester and then take the real intro course next semester. at the same time, the university basically considered having taken calc in high school to be a proxy for the overall quality of the student's stem education so far. so if you were one of those people, you were encouraged to take th…

Got it, thanks. Sounds like the "C for Engineers" class I took as a freshman EE. Mine sounds like it was better-designed, though, possibly because it was a gen-ed-type requirement for all engineering degrees.
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