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

Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

huntnewsnu.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 189 posts

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#11

Post by AnimalMuppet »

chrisaycock wrote: post #6

This op-ed was written by an undergrad and complains that Northeastern's switch to Python (from Racket) for its introductory classes will prevent students from learning fundamentals of computer science. But that complaint can be made about any language! "This dynamically typed language won't allow students to understand type safety." "This high-level language won't allow students to learn pointers and systems program…

Does anyone else question whether an undergrad is best able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum?

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#12

Post by wombatpm »

SolarNet wrote: post #7
chrisaycock wrote: post #6

This op-ed was written by an undergrad and complains that Northeastern's switch to Python (from Racket) for its introductory classes will prevent students from learning fundamentals of computer science. But that complaint can be made about any language! "This dynamically typed language won't allow students to understand type safety." "This high-level language won't allow students to learn pointers and systems program…

Tell me you haven't read the article (or used racket) without telling me. > I believe that an intro course should get students coding since the first major hurdle is learning how to construct any kind of program at all. The switch to a more "employable" language isn't going to make education worse. None of this is the issue at hand. The switch to python is because industry uses it. The article correctly makes the poi…

Python supports imperative, OO and functional programming paradigms. And to start you can use any text editor, an IDE is not required. In fact you can start working in the REPL right away, in which case you need a terminal and the command “Python”.

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#13

Post by theodpHN »

Also expressing concerns about the selection of suitable languages for novice programming is King's College CS Prof Michael Kölling, who explains, "One of the drivers is the perceived usefulness of the language in a real-world context. Students (and their parents) often have opinions which language is 'better' to learn. In forming these opinions, the definition of 'better' can often be vague and driven by limited insight. One strong aspect commonly cited is the perceived usefulness of a language in the 'real world.' If a language is widely used in industry, it is more likely to be seen as a useful language to learn." Kölling's recommendation? "We need a new language for teaching novices at secondary school and introductory university level," Kölling concludes. "This language should be designed explicitly for teaching [...] Maintenance and adaptation of this language should be driven by pedagogical considerations, not by industry needs."

While noble in intent, one suspects Kaplan and Kölling may be on a quixotic quest in a money wins world, outgunned by the demands, resources, and influence of tech giants like Amazon — the top employer of Northeastern MSCS program grads — who pushed back against NSF advice to deemphasize Java in high school CS and dropped $15 million to have tech-backed nonprofit Code.org develop and push a new Java-based, powered-by-AWS CS curriculum into high schools with the support of a consortium of politicians, educators, and tech companies. Echoing Northeastern, an Amazon press release argued the new Java-based curriculum "best prepares students for the next step in their education and careers."

Links at: Should First-Year Programming Students Be Taught With Python and Java? https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/01/05/1853210/shoul...

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#14

Post by jcgrillo »

dickfickling wrote: post #4

I attended Northeastern from 2010-2013. Fundies (the freshman-level functional programming courses) was fundamental (ha) to my growth as a software developer. It taught me how to reason about data and how to design programs (the literal name of the textbook). I know a lot of students hated it—frankly those were mostly the students that it seemed were only doing computer science programs because they’d heard they coul…

> I know a lot of students hated it

That's a good thing. I don't know whether your assertion about the breakdown between "real nerds" and the other camp is accurate or not, but I think this point stands on its own regardless--learning is hard. It's uncomfortable. It's unpleasant. If it isn't, you're not being pushed hard enough. So what's the point of asking students how they feel about it? Why make strategic decisions based on those data?

I'm genuinely curious, not trolling or anything. It seems completely baffling to me that educators behave this way, and I'd really love to understand why.

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#15

Post by thot_experiment »

ideashower wrote: post #8

It's funny, my friends and I all entered CS around the same time (2010-2013) and I remember thinking it was weird for NEU to be using Racket. Clearly it's successful, and has proven itself to be a great place to start a CS career. I always advocated a C based language, like C or C++. That's where my program (not NEU) began and I hated it but am grateful. We eventually moved onto Java. Later courses through my 3rd yea…

Agreed, LLMs mean that it's MORE useful and important to learn Racket and C, the LLM will help you much more with knowing the specifics of python/js/go/java or whatever human-focused language you end up working with for your job. If you want to be a stellar developer in 2025 you want to learn the things the LLM ISN'T good at, understanding the fundamentals of computer science is way more useful now than it was 5 years ago because the baseline for being good at a language is so much lower with an LLM aiding you.

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#16

Post by fn-mote »

I fourth-year undergraduate argues against the change like a professor. Honestly, this shows the strength of NEU's current (former) curriculum.

Without knowing the new curriculum, I guarantee you that one of the biggest daily complaints about the old curriculum was the requirements that they write unit tests ("check-expects"). Do you think that's going away? Hahahaha. The laugh will be on students who think they're getting something different because the label on the can changed.

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#17

Post by juliangamble »

The University that hosted "The Little Schemer" and all its derivatives. Those books were a delight and taught me to think about programming in a way that other languages had not. (Even if I didn't go to that University). https://prl.khoury.northeastern.edu/teaching.html

I had been to a Scheme conference in Washington, adjunct to the Clojure Conference one year, and it was attended by many undergraduates from Northeastern, (and the authors of those books that I got a photo with.)

I have to feel sympathy for those undergraduates I spoke to. They gave a strong feeling, even then (8 years ago), that it was time for the University to move on in language choice.

I had a similar experience in the late 90s when the world was picking up Java, and our University insisted on teaching in Eiffel.

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#18

Post by 000ooo000 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #11
chrisaycock wrote: post #6

This op-ed was written by an undergrad and complains that Northeastern's switch to Python (from Racket) for its introductory classes will prevent students from learning fundamentals of computer science. But that complaint can be made about any language! "This dynamically typed language won't allow students to understand type safety." "This high-level language won't allow students to learn pointers and systems program…

Does anyone else question whether an undergrad is best able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum?

Yeah.. Undergads leave school and are barely trusted to write CRUD apps.

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#19

Post by fn-mote »

asimeqi wrote: post #5

15 years after MIT made the same switch from Scheme to Python. Since CS at MIT seems to be fine, so will CS at NEU.

"Everything will be OK" - people will succeed in any system. Nobody will ever compare the outputs of the two systems, so nobody will ever know.

Let me instead suggest that one question we should ask is: What kind of students will be successful in the new system? What kinds of students will not?

One interesting thing aspect of the former curriculum is that (IMO) it provides an entry for students who are not entering with a lot of pre-existing knowledge. One of the criticisms of "old school" computer science teaching is that it privileges students who already have exposure to the material... The former curriculum is not the only way to level the playing field, but it certainly does provide a more level playing field for students who might not even be sure about the major.

I will stop with the suggestion that (IMO) pre-existing experience is definitely not the best indicator of future developer quality, so I value a curriculum that does not select for this.

(Caveats: never saw the new curriculum, it could be just fine, there are lots of other ways to accomplish this goal, but still... I am concerned.)

Re: Northeastern's redesign of the CS curriculum

#20

Post by fn-mote »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #11
chrisaycock wrote: post #6

This op-ed was written by an undergrad and complains that Northeastern's switch to Python (from Racket) for its introductory classes will prevent students from learning fundamentals of computer science. But that complaint can be made about any language! "This dynamically typed language won't allow students to understand type safety." "This high-level language won't allow students to learn pointers and systems program…

Does anyone else question whether an undergrad is best able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum?

In this case, you can find the same criticisms in published articles and books. I expect this student heard them straight from the source (author of the articles or books). That does not lessen their impact or correctness in my opinion.

Also, see SolarNet's comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42677918

Post reply on HN