Live data from Hacker News

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education (2020)

missing.csail.mit.edu

151–160 of 347 posts

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

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well. a big part is curiosity, and apparently he isn’t curious not interested in what his tools do. I used to read every help file on windows / visual c++, the FreeBSD manual, plowed through the file system and tested this it. Just because I was curious

There’s limited time. One cannot vey curious about all the stuff related to programming, so we must be selective.

Sure.. that’s the story of the lumberjack with a blunt axe.

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

#152
post #138

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…

MIT has an expectation that students would cover their programming skills via internships or outside jobs, and thus they focus on teaching CS which is quite hard to pick up on your own. Unlike frameworks or trends which change every 2 years, fundamentals are quite hard to change and can carry you quite far if you know how to apply it correctly.

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

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Print debugging is one of the best ways to learn about buffering and the difference between stdout and stderr.

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

#154

I personally don't like the undertone of the class (tho very grateful that this material exists!!!) - this idea that universities are failing their students by not teaching them necessary material. I think a better phrasing is that students are failing themselves by not learning the material. I've personally never considered it the responsibility of my university to educate me - some of the classes are certainly usef…

"I've personally never considered it the responsibility of my university to educate me" - you're going to have to explain yourself

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

#155
We learned this exact stuff (okay, maybe not git, for obvious reasons) when I got my undergrad CS degree in the late 90s. I agree it's invaluable knowledge, but I don't think any reputable undergrad CS program is omitting this from their year 1 curriculum.

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

#158

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…

>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

One of those cases that some people are so unreasonable, you can't tell what's sarcas m

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

#159
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.

Am I unique in not romanticizing computer science?

I see it more as a trade. There can certainly be some beauty to it. I’m sure coal miners hold some of their own in special regard too.

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

#160
The "data wrangling" chapter goes off the rails around the time it starts massaging the regex to handle the edge case "What if the user's username is 'Disconnected from'?" In my experience if you are using sed or awk on the logs you should give in and write some Python, or start using an actual log tool like Splunk. You'll never remember the awk syntax anyway.

On the other hand, the idea of piping your log data to a statistics package or gnuplot is fascinating. It could have benefited from showing some output from those programs to illustrate the kind of things you can get from it.

Post reply on HN