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The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

missing.csail.mit.edu

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Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#141

Post by ModernMech »

fsociety wrote: post #118
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.

I agree you should know how to use a debugger, however will also note that some companies mandate use of a specific IDE (or heavily encourage). I have seen devs scoff at the thought of print debugging, but I recall that in systems programming there are many times you can’t use a debugger or need to rely on other tool. I’d rather schools teach the concept of step debugging vs runtime debugging. Teach students to try t…

> I have seen devs scoff at the thought of print debugging

Next time they do, ask them to recommend a better method of debugging that works across generally all languages, compilers, IDEs, and platforms with next to zero configuration.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#142

Post by lizknope »

I started college in 1993 and my school had a mandatory "Introduction to Unix Computing Environment" class for all incoming engineering freshmen.

We learned the basics of the shell, file system, file editing, AFS ACL's for group projects, and more. It looks very similar to this MIT course which makes sense as our school's computing environment was based on MIT's Project Athena and AFS (Andrew File System)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Athena

I looked and the same course is still mandatory for incoming engineering students.

I'm in the semiconductor industry and everything runs on Unix / Linux. Back in 2000 we would get new grads that knew very little about Unix, command lines, or scripting. That kind of stuff is half my job. These days Linux is so popular that most of the new grads know this stuff.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#143

Post by BeFlatXIII »

tkiolp4 wrote: post #135
bmitc wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't consider paying tens of thousands of dollars as creating responsibility to educate? Of course, students need to be active in the learning process. But in my experience, it is more likely that professors and departments are terrible at educating than it is for students to not be motivated to learn.

A degree takes already 3 or 4 years. In order to incorporate this “missing semester” universities would have to either a) remove existing material to make space for it, or b) extend the degree one more semester. I don’t think universities should remove existing material in general to incorporate “bash 101”. Mainly because learning bash is easy and one can learn it by oneself without a professor. Extending the degree…

Half the value of having the material in a course is that it specifically highlights what should be learned.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#144

Post by nradov »

lordnacho wrote: post #90
Transfinity wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I'm that person! Senior engineer, decade of experience. I've used debuggers in the past, both for running code and looking at core dumps, but I really don't find them to be cost effective for the vast majority of problems. Just write a print statement! So when I switched from C to python and go a couple jobs ago, I never bothered learning how to use the debuggers for those languages. I don't miss them.

I find I use the stepping debugger less and less as I get more experienced. Early on it was a godsend. Start program, hit breakpoint, look at values, step a few lines, see values, make conclusions. Now I rely on print statements. Most of all though, I just don't write code that requires stepping. If it panics it tells me where and looking at it will remind me I forgot some obvious thing. If it gives the wrong answer…

I find I use the stepping debugger more and more as I get more experienced. Watching the live control flow and state changes allows me to notice latent defects and fix them before they ever cause actual problems. Developers ought to step through every line of course that they write.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#145

Post by Kwpolska »

fsociety wrote: post #118
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.

I agree you should know how to use a debugger, however will also note that some companies mandate use of a specific IDE (or heavily encourage). I have seen devs scoff at the thought of print debugging, but I recall that in systems programming there are many times you can’t use a debugger or need to rely on other tool. I’d rather schools teach the concept of step debugging vs runtime debugging. Teach students to try t…

> I agree you should know how to use a debugger, however will also note that some companies mandate use of a specific IDE (or heavily encourage).

The debuggers in most popular IDEs (IntelliJ IDEA/any JetBrains IDE, Visual Studio, VSCode, Eclipse) work the same way. You set breakpoints (typically by clicking somewhere around the line number), step into and out of functions, and look at the memory state. If you learned how debugging works in IDE X, you can easily switch to IDE Y without having to learn much.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#146

Post by ghaff »

lizknope wrote: post #142

I started college in 1993 and my school had a mandatory "Introduction to Unix Computing Environment" class for all incoming engineering freshmen. We learned the basics of the shell, file system, file editing, AFS ACL's for group projects, and more. It looks very similar to this MIT course which makes sense as our school's computing environment was based on MIT's Project Athena and AFS (Andrew File System) https://en.…

Even though a lot of incoming students would have had PCs by that time, they'd mostly have been running Windows. As you suggest, as I understand it MIT really focused on Project Athena clusters for engineering work and people used PCs more for word processing, etc.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#147

Post by bjourne »

ghaff wrote: post #138
lordnacho wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this feeling that the kids who appear better at uni are the ones who happened to pick up certain not-quite-programming skills before they started. Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. I looked over her shoulder as my wife was doing a CS degree, and I realised there's a bunch of these little things that make life a lot easier if you know th…

There's definitely a thing with CS that, at least at more elite schools, there's an assumption that you more or less know how to program--at least a language like Python--and you also more or less know your way around a computer well enough to use it as a tool for programming. (Or you pick it up quickly on the side along with your full course load.) This is more or less unique among college majors outside of some art…

I had a guitar tutor once and I asked him if I honestly had a chance to get into the Royal College of Music. He said absolutely, no problem, as long as you practice for at least two hours per day. Every day. For the next ten years... High-level CS is the same and I don't see any reason why it should be different. There is just no, or very little, time to teach introductory programming classes at most universities.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#148

Post by imetatroll »

theonething wrote: post #33
6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I sat with a talented developer whilst we wrestled with a threading issue this past week. I wanted to inspect the value of a variable within a method during execution and asked him to set a breakpoint. He didn't know how to do that in the IDE, which he'd been using for over a year. Debugging is indeed a skill which needs learning.

A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.

I don't usually use breakpoints in part because I use neovim and in part because... I seldom truly need them. Who are these people and what are these problems where stepping through method calls etc is actually necessary? I find it hard to believe. I've been successfully programming and problem solving this way for over 15 years.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#149

Post by softsound »

Transfinity wrote: post #42
theonething wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A talented developer who doesn't know how to set a breakpoint sounds contradictory to me.

Hi! I'm that person! Senior engineer, decade of experience. I've used debuggers in the past, both for running code and looking at core dumps, but I really don't find them to be cost effective for the vast majority of problems. Just write a print statement! So when I switched from C to python and go a couple jobs ago, I never bothered learning how to use the debuggers for those languages. I don't miss them.

Most of what I worked with code wise growing up was either very niche or setup in such a way that debuggers weren't an option so I never really used them much either. I don't understand their appeal when print statements can give you more context to debug with anyway. I'm definitely no senior but I'm used to solving things the "hard way" as one developer told me. He wondered how I could even work because of how "bad" my tools were but I didn't know any better being self taught and with certain software it's just not compatible with the tools he mentioned.

Re: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

#150

Post by ghaff »

bjourne wrote: post #147
ghaff wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely a thing with CS that, at least at more elite schools, there's an assumption that you more or less know how to program--at least a language like Python--and you also more or less know your way around a computer well enough to use it as a tool for programming. (Or you pick it up quickly on the side along with your full course load.) This is more or less unique among college majors outside of some art…

I had a guitar tutor once and I asked him if I honestly had a chance to get into the Royal College of Music. He said absolutely, no problem, as long as you practice for at least two hours per day. Every day. For the next ten years... High-level CS is the same and I don't see any reason why it should be different. There is just no, or very little, time to teach introductory programming classes at most universities.

With the performing arts--perhaps music in particular--it's certainly the case that you mostly can't decide you want to do the music thing, except as maybe a very recreational activity for the first time in college. However, I'm not sure I'm sold that CS--more or less uniquely among technical fields (including electrical engineering)--needs to have the same level of informal prerequisites.
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