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CS for All

cs.hmc.edu

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Re: CS for All

#61

Post by mstechfreak2 »

Retra wrote: post #42
morenoh149 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. I believe very strongly in the importance of touch-typing. I went to an inner city school for elementary and high school. And when I arrived at university computer science I felt like I was light years behind my peers. A lot of that stemmed from not being able to type as fast as them. Hunting and pecking typing while trying to wrap your head around making abstractions and recursion is enough to make anyone frus…

You learn touch typing by having something to type, not by having it drilled into at school. There are better things to teach.

I would like to suggest touch typing tool TypingStudy for everyone who think he wants to improve his or her efficiency. Strongly suggested - http://www.typingstudy.com

Re: CS for All

#62

Post by mdpopescu »

mathattack wrote: post #60
mdpopescu wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had people show up with Word and Excel on their resumes when I was advertising hiring C# programmers...

Are these long resumes playing Keyword Bingo, or shorter resumes? I've kept my resume to 1 page and avoid the table stakes skills.

One, two pages at most. They just had no clue about programming and had to put something in there. Ours is a strange field :)

Re: CS for All

#63

Post by mathattack »

mdpopescu wrote: post #62
mathattack wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are these long resumes playing Keyword Bingo, or shorter resumes? I've kept my resume to 1 page and avoid the table stakes skills.

One, two pages at most. They just had no clue about programming and had to put something in there. Ours is a strange field :)

Indeed. In this instance a negative keyword filter would be appropriate. :-)

Re: CS for All

#64

Post by rebekah-aimee »

mathattack wrote: post #53
rebekah-aimee wrote: post #49

What if colleges started offering this as an alternative to the basic MS Word class most schools make everyone take? Then people who didn't know how to use a computer would be too intimidated by it, but students who already knew the basics could move on to this more interesting course. You should still be able to test out, though. That way, if you're totally uninterested, you can test out of the MS Word class and mov…

Do schools really make people take an MS Word class? I've never seen anyone have the courage to put that on a resume or transcript.

Mine does. They called it "Intro to Computers" but it was really just a giant ad for MS Office. The only part of it that most people wouldn't already know was the Access databases... which they had in the curriculum for some reason. I don't know of anyone who actually uses it at work.

At least they let you test out. The only reason I know Access is in the curriculum is that I BSed my way through that part of the test. Probably the reason it was there was so more people would have to spend money on taking the class.

Re: CS for All

#65

Post by inevitable2 »

Zombieball wrote: post #13
mynameisvlad wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The University of British Columbia also has something similar, CS110 which uses a subset of Racket (Beginning/Intermediate/Advanced Student Language) to teach core CS concepts to a wide range of students. The course videos are all available on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7dEjIUwSxSNcW4PqNRQW8w/pla... and I believe the "Systematic Program Design" courses on EdX are an expanded version of the course.

Interestingly there is a common tie between Mudd and UBC: Maria Klawe (a truly inspirational woman). I would t doubt she had her part in both these courses.

As a general rule, college presidents don't get involved in course creation--even at small colleges like Harvey Mudd. In this case it would have been hard for her to have had a part since the course was created before she arrived.

Re: CS for All

#66

Post by hadas »

ufo wrote: post #25

The prime sieve algorithm in chapter 3 is not the real sieve of Eratosthenes. Which is kind of funny because the person who pointed this out to the FP community is also a professor at Harvey Mudd. http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~oneill/papers/Sieve-JFP.pdf

Thank you! We took a liberty here but have just updated the online book to clarify this.

Re: CS for All

#67

Post by hadas »

marincounty wrote: post #43
marincounty wrote: post #34

Great--I think every student should take a CS class! That said, this course suffers from so many CS courses. 1. It's too wordy! 2. As usual, I don't like the layout. 3. Funnel your subjects. (I'll give that a B.) 4. Funnel your paragraphs, or eliminate most of them? 5. Most people(students) find this material extremely dry. Introductory books should be "tight"! They should go through numerous edits? Take out every no…

I was too hard with my review--sorry! I was doing some yard work and felt really quilty. I know getting across computer science concepts/theories is terribly difficult. Part of my anger is I don't have a good grasp of CS theory, or why we do someting a particular way? I can get things done, but I'm missing the bigger picture--in many instances? My education into CS has just been following many steps, and listening to…

No offense taken! We value feedback. We've refined the book over the years based on feedback from undergraduates from the schools where this course is taught, but we also value other perspectives.
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