341–347 of 347 posts
* CS251 - Computing Laboratory - 1 - https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/pages/CS251.html
* CS252 - Computing Laboratory - 2 - https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/pages/CS252.html , and
* CS253 - Software Development And Operations - https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/pages/CS253.html
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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…
This was my "back in the day" experience as well, though I had a choice between C and Pascal. There was no expectation that anyone had any programming experience. I only had a touch of C64 BASIC knowledge going in.
> 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.
This one really stood out to me and highlights a change in things since then. That describes ALL of the CS kids during my time. We were the ones who a) had computers and b) did weird things like rebuilding kernals or futz around forever trying to get remote X sessions running.
A fact that blew my mind a few years ago was that, of the 13 software engineers on my team, only 3-4 actually owned a computer other than the work-provided one.
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I am also this person. I'm a systems programmer (kernel and systems software, often in C, C++, golang, bit of rust, etc) What I find is that if my code isn't working, I stop what I'm doing. I look at it. I think really hard, I add some print statements and asserts to verify some assumptions, and I iterate a small handful of times to find my faulty assumption and fix it. Many, many times during the 'think hard' and lo…
Your list of programming languages excluded Java. Please ignore this reply if Java is included. Are you aware of the amazing Java debugger feature of "Drop to Frame"? Combined with "hot-injection" (compile new code, then inject into current debug'd JVM), it is crazy and amazing. (I love C#, but the hot-injection feature is much worse than Java -- more than 50% of the time, C# compiler rejects my hot-injection, but ab…
The plus side of less capable tooling is it tends to limit how complex software can be--the pain is just too noticeable. I haven't liked java in the past because it seems very difficult without the tooling and I never had to do enough java to learn that stuff. Java's tooling does seem quite excellent once it is mastered.
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>Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. um yea thats my job dude and i fought for it so other people should too these people waltzing in not knowing shot should not get into CS
There are a lot of students interested in CS who have very limited access to a computer. Most kids these days get a locked down ipad or Chromebook at school, and Windows' footprint in schools has massively shrunk over the years. It's not like how it was when I was growing up. We spent $2000 on a Gateway PC that I had full admin access to, and unfiltered internet. Now that kind of money is being spent on cellphones in…
Okay then dont.
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Your list of programming languages excluded Java. Please ignore this reply if Java is included. Are you aware of the amazing Java debugger feature of "Drop to Frame"? Combined with "hot-injection" (compile new code, then inject into current debug'd JVM), it is crazy and amazing. (I love C#, but the hot-injection feature is much worse than Java -- more than 50% of the time, C# compiler rejects my hot-injection, but ab…
Yes, that sounds pretty cool and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the utility in this. I've done a lot work on lower level software, often enough on platforms where the debuggers are tough to get working well anyway. The plus side of less capable tooling is it tends to limit how complex software can be--the pain is just too noticeable. I haven't liked java in the past because it seems very difficult withou…
If you are a low level programmer, I understand your sentiment. A piece of advice, when you need to use Java (or other JVM languages), just submit to all the bloat -- use an IDE, like IntelliJ, that needs 4GB+ of RAM. The increase in programmer productivity is a wild ride coming from embedded and kernel programming. (The same can be said for C#.)
My university had Dijkstra's quote "Computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes". They made us aware of tools and we were free to use them as little or as much as possible to do the science. I always assumed that software engineering degrees focused on tools more than computer science degrees (among other differences).
The following isn't aimed at you in particular, but in HN threads about the Missing Semester there will always be someone who earnestly repeats this stinking turd of a Dijkstra quote, so I'll put my rant here: Dijkstra was full of it. He wanted CS to be just a branch of abstract mathematics but that's never been the case. That's a retconning of history by people with math envy. Before Alan Turing had ever heard of th…
I estimate that astronomers need to know about tradeoffs on a telescopes' settings for the data they are looking at. But I'm unconvinced that they necessarily need to know how to operate it (would depend on the workplace) and I certainly disagree that how they are constructed is absolutely necessary for all astronomers.
More knowledge is always good, so of course learn what you want. But it's not being "ashamed of tools" to say that a CS degree should "do one thing and do it well".
Additionally, we can simultaneously say that a university should encourage tool mastery while also saying that they don't need to teach entire courses on it.
Instead of a whole lecture on Vim they should rather teach a modern editor like VS Code or how to use a real IDE like IntelliJ. With these modern editors you also get refactoring and a Gui for Git, which makes it much less painful to use.
So all in all its a good start, but already outdated on several topics.