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The idea that, if you have no experience programming going into college, you’ll struggle, is strange to me. About a third of my graduating CS class had no prior
by mjmahone17 8y ago
The idea that, if you have no experience programming going into college, you’ll struggle, is strange to me. About a third of my graduating CS class had no prior experience. Did we take more time to finish the first semester projects? Sometimes. But after the first semester prior experience seemed to have very little effect on class performance.
- ghaff 8y agoI think it does depend on the curriculum. I have experience programming, although I don’t really do it professionally. I’ve taken an intro programming MOOC course from an elite school and I have trouble believing someone coming in completely cold would have a chance. (Admittedly in a campus environment there would be TAs and other students but the contrast to when I took intro programming at school was night and day.)
- peoplewindow 8y agoYou're assuming CS class performance correlates with ability. Most of the people on my CS course hadn't programmed before, and they mostly all passed. But many of them couldn't code at graduation and went into non-programming jobs. They passed anyway because the university carefully rigged the course to ensure it was possible to get good grades despite being unable to write any sort of non-trivial program. After all what are they going to do, constantly fail 90% of their class and attract questions about their own competence as teachers?