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Er, my understanding is that MIT takes the approach that most people should learn to do programming, at least at a fairly basic level.
by calpaterson 15y ago
Er, my understanding is that MIT takes the approach that most people should learn to do programming, at least at a fairly basic level.
- kwantam 15y agoMaybe, but not via requirements. If you don't take a course that teaches you to code, you're expected to pick it up on your own when you need it (most non-EECS engineering majors end up with lots of Matlab coding experience, for example, but there's no class on using Matlab as such). When I was there, 1.00 was the "learn how to write programs" class, and it's a Civil Engineering class, not CS. 6.001 has been phased out in favor of 6.01 (unfortunately), and I'm sure as a result there's more "learn how to write programs" since they're using Python rather than Scheme. There are other classes like 22.00 (also offered under many other numbers), "Introduction to Modeling and Simulation," but again they don't expect to be teaching you concepts like loops and conditionals. On balance, I'd say most people come out of MIT knowing something about programming (even if it's just Matlab rather than a more general-purpose tool), and a decent portion of those learned it on their own.
- chris11 15y agoHow is that unusual? All the hard science, math, and engineering majors had taken at least one class on programming. And it's not like the majority of MIT students end up not majoring in some kind of engineering or science major.