Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Free MIT Online Class teaches CS fundamentals using Python

ocw.mit.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 16 posts

Re: Free MIT Online Class teaches CS fundamentals using Python

#3

Post by jiggy2011 »

Python is such a better language for teaching programming and CS fundamentals than Java or C++.

There is of course a case to make for teach C , ASM or LISP first.

Trying to teach something like OO best practices will be lost on students if they haven't done enough programming to understand code complexity and why OO might be a useful paradigm.

Java is especially bad because you need to use the static keyword as well and the System.out object just to get "hello world" working

Re: Free MIT Online Class teaches CS fundamentals using Python

#5

Post by emptyaccount »

melvinng wrote: post #4

It will be a dream come true if Waterloo taught CS with Python.

While Python is my language of choice, I'm happy Waterloo starts off with Racket (Scheme/Lisp family language). Very little syntax to learn and great for recursion. I'm not really qualified to comment whats best, I just know I enjoyed it.

Re: Free MIT Online Class teaches CS fundamentals using Python

#8

Post by RodgerTheGreat »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #3

Python is such a better language for teaching programming and CS fundamentals than Java or C++. There is of course a case to make for teach C , ASM or LISP first. Trying to teach something like OO best practices will be lost on students if they haven't done enough programming to understand code complexity and why OO might be a useful paradigm. Java is especially bad because you need to use the static keyword as well…

While it might be unnecessarily punishing, Forth could be an interesting introductory language. I think it says something very positive about a language when the first thing[1] you learn to do isn't how to write an expression, make a loop or describe a conditional branch- it's how to define a procedure and break a task down into parts.

[1]http://www.forth.com/starting-forth/sf1/sf1.html

Re: Free MIT Online Class teaches CS fundamentals using Python

#9

Post by jiggy2011 »

wyclif wrote: post #6

Dear HN, what is the conventional wisdom here on the merits of this course vs. other Python methods of learning, tutorials, classes, &c?

I don't know about conventional wisdom but I can give you my opinion.

Disclaimer: I have not taken this course, neither am I a python Wizard.

Their stated goal:

"It aims to provide students with an understanding of the role computation can play in solving problems.

It also aims to help students, regardless of their major, to feel justifiably confident of their ability to write small programs that allow them to accomplish useful goals."

The point here is that teaching python is not the primary goal so if you are already a competent programmer you may find it more efficient to pick up a more reference style book.

However, I can imagine this course explaining principles such as turing machines, possibly some data structures and computational logic.

Thus I can imagine it might be useful to people who are not going to be programmers but need an appreciation for the type of work that a programmers might do and what is possible with a computer. So maybe a business person or a designer.

It might also be useful for self taught programmers who want an introduction to the more rigorous aspects of CS and a more formal way of thinking about their programs.

Post reply on HN