I think characterizing the courses that replaced 6.001 as exercises in "pasting libraries together" is unfair. The new introductory courses 6.01 and 6.02, are

I think characterizing the courses that replaced 6.001 as exercises in "pasting libraries together" is unfair. The new introductory courses 6.01 and 6.02, are focused on introducing fundamental EECS design principles, in the context of mobile robotics and digital communication systems, respectively. Having just taken 6.01 and 6.02, I have mixed feelings. One the one hand, you had to write relatively little code within some larger skeleton that had been written for you. But the code you had to write emphasized important engineering design principles without making you write an entire mobile robotics system from scratch (which is not the point of the class). On the other hand, the problems were somewhat contrived, and didn't allow much room for creativity. There was only really one way to fill in the blank code. This required understanding the structure of the rest of the code to figure out exactly the way in which the professors might want you to write the missing code. The intention seems to be that this is a valuable skill, but for me it was at the cost of stifling any creativity. Time and again, I would be partnered with someone (we had randomized partners for 6.01) and I would say "this is interesting, maybe we can solve it like this" (and I would start proposing some ideas), and my partners would say something like "I don't think that's how they want us to do it." A lot of times, they were right --- and this was a successful strategy for the class. Ultimately, the final robot did cool things, but I didn't feel like I made a creative contribution to those cool things in any way.