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Students also have the rest of their lives to learn the sublime CS stuff. Getting as many students motivated to learn CS, with Python, is a perfectly reasonable
by argonaut 11y ago
Students also have the rest of their lives to learn the sublime CS stuff. Getting as many students motivated to learn CS, with Python, is a perfectly reasonable goal for a college.
- swiley 11y agoThat's a perfectly reasonable goal for a high school or someone performing self study. The whole point of a university is to impart knowledge of subtle things.
- argonaut 11y agoThe majority of CS students (including MIT) never studied CS before coming to college. Unless you propose MIT/CMU/Stanford/Berkeley/etc. only admit people to their intro CS classes who have studied CS before (chicken and egg problem, anyone?).
- thaumasiotes 11y agoWell, MIT's intro calculus classes are overwhelmingly for people who have studied calculus before. Making it an actual requirement wouldn't change much.
- hga 11y agoErrr, when did this happen? As of 1979, the 18.01 I took matched what I understand is the the AP Calculus BC sequence, and while having previous exposure to the calculus certainly helped, it wasn't assumed.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoHow many freshmen come to MIT having never studied calculus?
- argonaut 11y ago1) MIT definitely offers calculus classes for people who haven't taken calculus, although obviously these people are in the minority. 2) Most high schools don't offer CS. 99% of high schools offer some form of calculus.
- thaumasiotes 11y agoI'm just pointing out that there's no "chicken-and-egg problem" with MIT requiring CS exposure for its intro CS classes.
- Nav_Panel 11y agoThis is how CMU does it. First course: Python. Most people who already have a CS background (usually AP CS) and are ready to dive in skip it. People who aren't sure take it and typically have a phenomenal experience. Final project is "make something using a Python graphics library and spend at least 20 hours on it". Then they have a little demo day where they show off the best of the projects. Second course: data structures and algorithms and C.