4 ms·

Every topic has plenty of literature published. Scantron was founded in 1972. Self-directed learning has always existed. CS isn't special. A bachelor's degre

Every topic has plenty of literature published. Scantron was founded in 1972. Self-directed learning has always existed. CS isn't special. A bachelor's degree once meant more than passing a sufficient number of tests. Now that everyone treats it like a ticket to employment, it barely even means that.

cf141q5325 8y ago
I would agree, that CS isnt special here, its something common to at least STEM. And personally I dont know why the first 1 year isnt optimized for that. I dont think for example, that there is any reason to teach Math 1 for CS every semester with a Prof in a room limited by how ever many students might fit in. Its simply basic knowledge, that just doesnt change but that you need to know as a prerequisite for understanding later stuff. There is absolutly no reason to waste the time of Professors, or students for that matter, on that. Instead of making admission to college dependent on prior work, why not simply provide the necessary books and film it once. You learn the fundamentals yourself. Admission would be a lot fairer, we wouldnt waste an incredible amount of time of Professors and they could in turn teach actually interesting stuff. The whole thing got quite apparent when a former roommate of mine studying mechanical engineering asked his father to help him study for a first year course and they figured out, that his father used the exact same literature in his college days as my roommate did at the time. The content hasnt changed, yet we keep throwing time at manually repeating it or going even as far as reinventing it with everyone writing their own script on the topic.
BeetleB 8y ago
>Every topic has plenty of literature published. ... CS isn't special. Not as nicely made video lectures. I doubt I can find video classes of some of the upper electives I took in engineering. Sure - textbooks have always been available. But they are dense, and rarely does a class cover the whole book. It helps to have a professor point out "You should know this" and "Don't bother with this - it's just academic detail."

cf141q5325 8y ago

I would agree, that CS isnt special here, its something common to at least STEM. And personally I dont know why the first 1 year isnt optimized for that. I dont think for example, that there is any reason to teach Math 1 for CS every semester with a Prof in a room limited by how ever many students might fit in. Its simply basic knowledge, that just doesnt change but that you need to know as a prerequisite for understanding later stuff. There is absolutly no reason to waste the time of Professors, or students for that matter, on that. Instead of making admission to college dependent on prior work, why not simply provide the necessary books and film it once. You learn the fundamentals yourself. Admission would be a lot fairer, we wouldnt waste an incredible amount of time of Professors and they could in turn teach actually interesting stuff. The whole thing got quite apparent when a former roommate of mine studying mechanical engineering asked his father to help him study for a first year course and they figured out, that his father used the exact same literature in his college days as my roommate did at the time. The content hasnt changed, yet we keep throwing time at manually repeating it or going even as far as reinventing it with everyone writing their own script on the topic.

BeetleB 8y ago

>Every topic has plenty of literature published. ... CS isn't special. Not as nicely made video lectures. I doubt I can find video classes of some of the upper electives I took in engineering. Sure - textbooks have always been available. But they are dense, and rarely does a class cover the whole book. It helps to have a professor point out "You should know this" and "Don't bother with this - it's just academic detail."