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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

#181

Post by fao_ »

gowld wrote: post #170
fuzzy2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is exactly this naming that somehow irks me. It somehow seems to imply that this should be part of the regular CS curriculum. It should not. Indeed, universities should once again become a place where you go to pursue a career in science. Not a half-baked vocational training center. That’s why I’m against excessively accommodating this misuse.

Are you saying that you completed a CS degree without writing programs on a computer? There are many great experimental physicists (including Richard Feynman), chemists, biologists, and engineers who used real hardware. Why shouldn't computer scientists use real hardware?

Wasn't it Sussman and Ableson that said that Computer Science is both not a science, and not about computers?

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#183

Post by mchaver »

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…

It isn't at the core of the CS curriculum, and neither are general requirements, but it is highly relevant to the course work and I am willing to bet it does not only help people interested in software engineering, but also people who want to be CS academics.

Making sure students are familiar with a full featured text editor, document preparation system, a version control system, the command line, etc. will go a long way. I don't think those are topics regularly covered in earlier education institutions.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#184

Post by cuttlebit »

ladberg wrote: post #97
gen220 wrote: post #40

I graduated a top 50 school, that gave us an “engineering” degree but had no such similar course. There were no more than 20 students, out of 300ish, who understood the material of this course well enough to teach it. From my perspective, this knowledge was generally inversely correlated to GPA and strongly correlated to postgrad performance. Take my anecdata for what it is, but I think these skills are strongly unde…

Interesting that you think it's inversely correlated with GPA. At my school, I feel like the people who are experts with the terminal and *nix stuff are the ones who have high GPAs because they are at the top of all the CS classes.

I think it’s a bimodal distribution. The people with a lot of practical skill are also often busy with their own projects or working part time.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#185

Post by fuzzy2 »

gowld wrote: post #170
fuzzy2 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it is exactly this naming that somehow irks me. It somehow seems to imply that this should be part of the regular CS curriculum. It should not. Indeed, universities should once again become a place where you go to pursue a career in science. Not a half-baked vocational training center. That’s why I’m against excessively accommodating this misuse.

Are you saying that you completed a CS degree without writing programs on a computer? There are many great experimental physicists (including Richard Feynman), chemists, biologists, and engineers who used real hardware. Why shouldn't computer scientists use real hardware?

I didn’t, because I switched to a different type of university. I could have, though.

I’m not saying science should be only in the mind or maybe pen and paper. I’m saying CS should not have a “how to computer” course.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#186

Post by dirtydroog »

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…

We shouldn't really be encouraging people to program in vim. I mean, an 80 char line length limit is very 1995. People have massive monitors now.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#187

Post by gjm11 »

fao_ wrote: post #181
gowld wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that you completed a CS degree without writing programs on a computer? There are many great experimental physicists (including Richard Feynman), chemists, biologists, and engineers who used real hardware. Why shouldn't computer scientists use real hardware?

Wasn't it Sussman and Ableson that said that Computer Science is both not a science, and not about computers?

Yup.

'Underlying our approach to this subject is our conviction that “computer science” is not a science and that its significance has little to do with computers.' -- from the preface to SICP.

There's a similar quotation often attributed to Dijkstra, but it seems doubtful whether he actually said it.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#188

Post by geofft »

fao_ wrote: post #181
gowld wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you saying that you completed a CS degree without writing programs on a computer? There are many great experimental physicists (including Richard Feynman), chemists, biologists, and engineers who used real hardware. Why shouldn't computer scientists use real hardware?

Wasn't it Sussman and Ableson that said that Computer Science is both not a science, and not about computers?

Yes, and MIT (correctly) dropped Sussman and Abelson's head-in-the-clouds intro class in favor of a practical one that actually teaches you about computers.

I took Abelson and Sussman's class myself, as an MIT undergrad, just before it was phased out. I got a lot out of it, because I had already been using UNIX and writing code for years at home as a teenager. If you didn't have that background it would be useless to you.

"Computer science isn't about computers" is a similar statement to "English composition isn't about pens or keyboards." If you can't use the tools, you won't get very much work done. A writer is fortunate that our grade schools generally teach handwriting and/or typing - but if they didn't, a college degree on how to tell compelling stories and understand the monomyth isn't going to help you actually write books. Computer science isn't about using editors or shells, but if you don't come in with knowledge of editors or shells, you won't get very much done.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#189

Post by godshatter »

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 would go one step even more basic and teach touch typing. It amazes me when I watch someone code by laboriously copying some other code from somewhere else, from a full code snippet to a single variable name, paste it in and begrudgingly type what needs to be typed, slowly.

The thought that always goes through my mind when I see this is "this is your interface to code, people, shouldn't you spend a little bit of time at least trying to master it?"

Forget vim, if people just learned to type they could be twice as productive in simple notepad. Vim (which I use) raises this to another level still.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

#190

Post by godshatter »

dirtydroog wrote: post #186
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…

We shouldn't really be encouraging people to program in vim. I mean, an 80 char line length limit is very 1995. People have massive monitors now.

Your entire file can be one line in vim, regardless of it's size.
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