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A Case for an Open Source CS Curriculum [pdf] (2018)

133 points by acqbu 4y ago

greyface- 4y ago
(2018) $ curl -sI https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tom/talks/edslides.pdf | grep Last-Modified Last-Modified: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 06:58:15 GMT
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
lukew3 4y ago
Is there a way I can follow the development of this?
pgcj_poster 4y ago
What About Copying/Cheating? * Reduce salience of project grades? – Exams can test whether student mastered the material Most of my CS classes didn't give exams and were graded entirely on projects. I found this to be one of the best features of my CS education. Projects are vastly more interesting, impactful, and representative of meaningful learning.
- ceasesurthinko 4y ago
  Pretty much all my CS classes had something akin to a midterm worth a third of your grade and a final worth half your grade, with projects only being like 20%. I wish I went to your school.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
tomcat27 4y ago
I'm glad an insider is thinking about this. But why do I have a feeling that it's written with an idea to make faculty life easy, not necessarily for a great student learning outcome, although that's what they say. Alan Kay (Turing Prize 2004) argues against current standard CS curriculum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFc379hu--8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFc379hu--8 Anyway few unrelated thoughts. --- The undergrad CS courses mostly do not deviate in content.The variance is in quality. "pick good professor over interesting course" paid off for me in university. Factors such as these matter: course pace, instructor and TA accessibility, course slides and other material quality, lecture interesting or boring etc. --- Isn't it surprising that one of the most watched courses is by an YouTube tutor with a credential no american university will ever take seriously for hiring even an adjunct teaching faculty? See Intro to Algorithms by Abdul Bari on YouTube
HidyBush 4y ago
I believe we should move to a world where programmers aren't required a degree and software engineers have very high requirements. Programming is very simple, turning a flow chart into code is as easy as mounting an IKEA furniture once you know the basic features of the language you are using. Architecturing a software on the other hand needs a level of understanding, rigor and effort such that we should seek good CS graduates to do it.
- throwaway17_17 4y ago
  I really like this view. But any time I have suggested something similar (I think I might draw a different separation point between programmers/engineers in the general case), I have been accused of gate keeping. The argument against is often phrased in such a way that enforcing, or even defining, separate ‘professions’ for individuals in software careers and those professions having differing requirements, is seen as a morally negative stance on its face. As a particularized example, one of the frequent arguments would be that a hierarchical structure would inevitably emerge among people potentially working on the same application. This argument is predicated on this stratification being inherently bad. I think the push back on separating roles like you propose would be instant and vitriolic. I got slammed hard for saying that a person who had no concern or any interest in how data structures in a given application were implemented should not be hired as a ‘system programming’ dev. I absolutely think you are correct at the theoretical level, but practical implementation of the idea is almost a non-starter.
  - HidyBush 4y ago
    For some obtuse reason people think software is some ethereal magic abstraction that somehow doesn't follow any rules or practices. We have to start pushing for the fact that yes, to engineer software you need a true engineer just like to engineer a house you need a true engineer. Nobody ever laments the fact that it's clear that basic construction workers could never engineer a building following all the best practices and regulations (and most importantly, know the pertinent laws of physics in detail). And yet we give basic programmers tasks such as developing a scheduler, a traffic management system and whatnot. I want programmers to have the right responsibilities and the right expectations, I want regulated proven industry standards that we can follow and I want software to suck less
nikhila01 4y ago
Here's a version of the slides which also has notes: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tom/talks/edreform.pdf https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tom/talks/edreform.pdf

133 points by acqbu 4y ago

(2018) $ curl -sI https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tom/talks/edslides.pdf | grep Last-Modified Last-Modified: Mon, 31 Dec 2018 06:58:15 GMT

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

lukew3 4y ago

Is there a way I can follow the development of this?

pgcj_poster 4y ago

What About Copying/Cheating? * Reduce salience of project grades? – Exams can test whether student mastered the material Most of my CS classes didn't give exams and were graded entirely on projects. I found this to be one of the best features of my CS education. Projects are vastly more interesting, impactful, and representative of meaningful learning.

ceasesurthinko 4y ago
Pretty much all my CS classes had something akin to a midterm worth a third of your grade and a final worth half your grade, with projects only being like 20%. I wish I went to your school.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

tomcat27 4y ago

I'm glad an insider is thinking about this. But why do I have a feeling that it's written with an idea to make faculty life easy, not necessarily for a great student learning outcome, although that's what they say. Alan Kay (Turing Prize 2004) argues against current standard CS curriculum. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFc379hu--8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFc379hu--8 Anyway few unrelated thoughts. --- The undergrad CS courses mostly do not deviate in content.The variance is in quality. "pick good professor over interesting course" paid off for me in university. Factors such as these matter: course pace, instructor and TA accessibility, course slides and other material quality, lecture interesting or boring etc. --- Isn't it surprising that one of the most watched courses is by an YouTube tutor with a credential no american university will ever take seriously for hiring even an adjunct teaching faculty? See Intro to Algorithms by Abdul Bari on YouTube

HidyBush 4y ago

I believe we should move to a world where programmers aren't required a degree and software engineers have very high requirements. Programming is very simple, turning a flow chart into code is as easy as mounting an IKEA furniture once you know the basic features of the language you are using. Architecturing a software on the other hand needs a level of understanding, rigor and effort such that we should seek good CS graduates to do it.

throwaway17_17 4y ago
I really like this view. But any time I have suggested something similar (I think I might draw a different separation point between programmers/engineers in the general case), I have been accused of gate keeping. The argument against is often phrased in such a way that enforcing, or even defining, separate ‘professions’ for individuals in software careers and those professions having differing requirements, is seen as a morally negative stance on its face. As a particularized example, one of the frequent arguments would be that a hierarchical structure would inevitably emerge among people potentially working on the same application. This argument is predicated on this stratification being inherently bad. I think the push back on separating roles like you propose would be instant and vitriolic. I got slammed hard for saying that a person who had no concern or any interest in how data structures in a given application were implemented should not be hired as a ‘system programming’ dev. I absolutely think you are correct at the theoretical level, but practical implementation of the idea is almost a non-starter.
- HidyBush 4y ago
  For some obtuse reason people think software is some ethereal magic abstraction that somehow doesn't follow any rules or practices. We have to start pushing for the fact that yes, to engineer software you need a true engineer just like to engineer a house you need a true engineer. Nobody ever laments the fact that it's clear that basic construction workers could never engineer a building following all the best practices and regulations (and most importantly, know the pertinent laws of physics in detail). And yet we give basic programmers tasks such as developing a scheduler, a traffic management system and whatnot. I want programmers to have the right responsibilities and the right expectations, I want regulated proven industry standards that we can follow and I want software to suck less

nikhila01 4y ago

Here's a version of the slides which also has notes: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tom/talks/edreform.pdf https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~tom/talks/edreform.pdf