6 ms·

I have this feeling that the kids who appear better at uni are the ones who happened to pick up certain not-quite-programming skills before they started. Basics

I have this feeling that the kids who appear better at uni are the ones who happened to pick up certain not-quite-programming skills before they started. Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. I looked over her shoulder as my wife was doing a CS degree, and I realised there's a bunch of these little things that make life a lot easier if you know them.

xwolfi 4y ago
And in non-English countries, well, knowing English long before uni helps a fuck ton.
joenot443 4y ago
In my class 5 years ago, the differentiating factor was whether the kids who grew up online or not. Students like myself or my roommate who’d spent their formative years in front of a computer, not because they had to, but because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I never realized how much I was learning during the time I spent scripting RuneScape bots and writing toy “viruses”, I did it because it was more fun.
- ccity88 4y ago
  I got my start writing RuneScape bots too! It's such a shame because speaking to the younger generation (I call them the TikTok generation) they don't have the same experience with the web the way we did. For them, the internet is closed off, a few big websites like Facebook, youtube, twitter. They use their phones primarily to access the web, and a laptop is exclusively used for school work; "A PC? Why would I need that when I can game on my XBox/PS5??". The internet really did change so much in the last decade, and in my honest experience computer literacy has gone down not up as we've all expected
rejectfinite 4y ago
>Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. um yea thats my job dude and i fought for it so other people should too these people waltzing in not knowing shot should not get into CS
- CodexArcana 4y ago
  There are a lot of students interested in CS who have very limited access to a computer. Most kids these days get a locked down ipad or Chromebook at school, and Windows' footprint in schools has massively shrunk over the years. It's not like how it was when I was growing up. We spent $2000 on a Gateway PC that I had full admin access to, and unfiltered internet. Now that kind of money is being spent on cellphones in the household. Because I had that kind of access I was bricking the OS (and reinstalling it), Mailbombing people's AOL inboxes, putting Sub7 on Kaza and Limewire and remotely messing with peoples computers. The computers at school were only networked my senior year. Even then they were basically wide open. Me and my friends effectively operated a screwdriver shop out of whoever's house we happened to be at. We were trying to host game servers on whatever we could cobble together. None of our families had cellphones because they were still only used by businessmen. Computing priorities were way different and how you were exposed to them was different as a result. None of those opportunities are anywhere near as common now. Kids get devices in schools but they're basically bricks that log everything you do. Computer Labs are rare and their access is fully locked down. Most students first personal computing device is a cellphone, and more likely than not it's an iPhone. All phones are super locked down but apple's even more so. The market has changed. The days of open computing are now relegated to the back of the line or for those who can afford it. So it's no wonder a class like this exists. We see similar issues in middle school where students don't understand what folders are or where their files are stored. Phones and tablets make it so easy you never have to think about it. This also extends to collage as well.
  - rejectfinite 4y ago
    >that kind of money is being spent on cellphones in the household Okay then dont.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  One of those cases that some people are so unreasonable, you can't tell what's sarcas m
  - ghaff 4y ago
ghaff 4y ago
There's definitely a thing with CS that, at least at more elite schools, there's an assumption that you more or less know how to program--at least a language like Python--and you also more or less know your way around a computer well enough to use it as a tool for programming. (Or you pick it up quickly on the side along with your full course load.) This is more or less unique among college majors outside of some arts disciplines like music. Yes, there's a requirement for some secondary school algebra and some basic science but an electrical engineering major could basically have never assembled a circuit before attending college and probably wouldn't be at any particular disadvantage. And, per the original post, MIT is certainly one of the institutions that does this. The 6.001 MOOC(s)--basically intro to algorithms--teaches a bit of Python on the side but clearly you're intended to mostly learn it on your own. (By contrast, back in the day, I took a FORTRAN course as part of a non-CS engineering major. The assumption was that you had never touched a computer before.)
- lordnacho 4y ago
  But is it common for kids to be taught how to code before they come to uni? I would imagine it's not that easy to find someone to teach that sort of thing, so then the only kids who graduate high school with any tech skills are the ones who did it themselves. Your point about engineering is exactly right. I built a working radio in my first term, having never done anything like it before, save for acing some physics exams with minimal electricity sections. When we came to coding, I had mucked about a bit with a computer, but I also found other students who'd worked at Microsoft. Wide wide range, and a lot of people of course ended up getting that fellow to email them the solution.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Even if it's more like hacking around in Python than being "properly" taught, I assume that it's pretty common for a technically-inclined and motivated high school student to play around with a Raspberry Pi. I imagine I'd be doing so if I were in high school today. In addition to books, there are also some pretty breezy intro to programming MOOCs out there that wouldn't be out of the reach of a smart high-schooler.
- 4y ago
mastax 4y ago
Yeah, I remember taking this machine architecture course with a friend who was getting a journalism degree and had never written any code or done anything more technical than playing StarCraft brood war before college. One of the later assignments they gave us this "bomb" executable and we had to use gdb to pick it apart and modify the instructions or find ROP gadgets or something to make the code not "explode". He was my partner in the assignment and I spent most of the time trying to teach him what I was doing in gdb. And trying to express that, sincerely, he wasn't stupid GDB is just really hard and he didn't have the background knowledge to make learning it easier.
eslaught 4y ago
This doesn't fit my experience. I mean, yes, this was me. I came in knowing most/all of this. I knew six (or more?) programming languages, had at least played with CVS/SVN, had installed Linux (read: fought with the Linux bootloader to get my AMD CPU to boot without crashing), had dipped my toe in a few open source communities. But I was a tutor in college and I interacted with a bunch of people who didn't come in with any of this experience. Many of those people struggled, but I also know a bunch of people who came into CS knowing nothing, loved it, and went from zero-to-sixty faster than even the people who came in knowing a lot. I'm still not sure I can identify what the ingredient was, but experience alone is not enough to explain it.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- matwood 4y ago
  I went to college in the late 90s. Didn't even own a computer until I was a freshman (used my loan money to buy one). Math and science had always been my subjects, so I started college pre-med. But, this new computer I just bought kept sucking me in. I'd stay up all night reading how to make it faster, learn all the tricks, and finally make it do what I wanted through programming. Next semester I took a programming class just to see how it went, then dropped everything, and switched majors. I got a part time job writing custom software for local companies as a sophomore/junior (late 90s dotcom was just ramping), and I guess it has all worked out ok.

xwolfi 4y ago

And in non-English countries, well, knowing English long before uni helps a fuck ton.

joenot443 4y ago

In my class 5 years ago, the differentiating factor was whether the kids who grew up online or not. Students like myself or my roommate who’d spent their formative years in front of a computer, not because they had to, but because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. I never realized how much I was learning during the time I spent scripting RuneScape bots and writing toy “viruses”, I did it because it was more fun.

ccity88 4y ago
I got my start writing RuneScape bots too! It's such a shame because speaking to the younger generation (I call them the TikTok generation) they don't have the same experience with the web the way we did. For them, the internet is closed off, a few big websites like Facebook, youtube, twitter. They use their phones primarily to access the web, and a laptop is exclusively used for school work; "A PC? Why would I need that when I can game on my XBox/PS5??". The internet really did change so much in the last decade, and in my honest experience computer literacy has gone down not up as we've all expected

rejectfinite 4y ago

>Basics of networking, how installation of programs happens, how to use the command line, that kind of thing. um yea thats my job dude and i fought for it so other people should too these people waltzing in not knowing shot should not get into CS

CodexArcana 4y ago
There are a lot of students interested in CS who have very limited access to a computer. Most kids these days get a locked down ipad or Chromebook at school, and Windows' footprint in schools has massively shrunk over the years. It's not like how it was when I was growing up. We spent $2000 on a Gateway PC that I had full admin access to, and unfiltered internet. Now that kind of money is being spent on cellphones in the household. Because I had that kind of access I was bricking the OS (and reinstalling it), Mailbombing people's AOL inboxes, putting Sub7 on Kaza and Limewire and remotely messing with peoples computers. The computers at school were only networked my senior year. Even then they were basically wide open. Me and my friends effectively operated a screwdriver shop out of whoever's house we happened to be at. We were trying to host game servers on whatever we could cobble together. None of our families had cellphones because they were still only used by businessmen. Computing priorities were way different and how you were exposed to them was different as a result. None of those opportunities are anywhere near as common now. Kids get devices in schools but they're basically bricks that log everything you do. Computer Labs are rare and their access is fully locked down. Most students first personal computing device is a cellphone, and more likely than not it's an iPhone. All phones are super locked down but apple's even more so. The market has changed. The days of open computing are now relegated to the back of the line or for those who can afford it. So it's no wonder a class like this exists. We see similar issues in middle school where students don't understand what folders are or where their files are stored. Phones and tablets make it so easy you never have to think about it. This also extends to collage as well.
- rejectfinite 4y ago
  >that kind of money is being spent on cellphones in the household Okay then dont.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
One of those cases that some people are so unreasonable, you can't tell what's sarcas m
- ghaff 4y ago

ghaff 4y ago

There's definitely a thing with CS that, at least at more elite schools, there's an assumption that you more or less know how to program--at least a language like Python--and you also more or less know your way around a computer well enough to use it as a tool for programming. (Or you pick it up quickly on the side along with your full course load.) This is more or less unique among college majors outside of some arts disciplines like music. Yes, there's a requirement for some secondary school algebra and some basic science but an electrical engineering major could basically have never assembled a circuit before attending college and probably wouldn't be at any particular disadvantage. And, per the original post, MIT is certainly one of the institutions that does this. The 6.001 MOOC(s)--basically intro to algorithms--teaches a bit of Python on the side but clearly you're intended to mostly learn it on your own. (By contrast, back in the day, I took a FORTRAN course as part of a non-CS engineering major. The assumption was that you had never touched a computer before.)

lordnacho 4y ago
But is it common for kids to be taught how to code before they come to uni? I would imagine it's not that easy to find someone to teach that sort of thing, so then the only kids who graduate high school with any tech skills are the ones who did it themselves. Your point about engineering is exactly right. I built a working radio in my first term, having never done anything like it before, save for acing some physics exams with minimal electricity sections. When we came to coding, I had mucked about a bit with a computer, but I also found other students who'd worked at Microsoft. Wide wide range, and a lot of people of course ended up getting that fellow to email them the solution.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Even if it's more like hacking around in Python than being "properly" taught, I assume that it's pretty common for a technically-inclined and motivated high school student to play around with a Raspberry Pi. I imagine I'd be doing so if I were in high school today. In addition to books, there are also some pretty breezy intro to programming MOOCs out there that wouldn't be out of the reach of a smart high-schooler.
4y ago

mastax 4y ago

Yeah, I remember taking this machine architecture course with a friend who was getting a journalism degree and had never written any code or done anything more technical than playing StarCraft brood war before college. One of the later assignments they gave us this "bomb" executable and we had to use gdb to pick it apart and modify the instructions or find ROP gadgets or something to make the code not "explode". He was my partner in the assignment and I spent most of the time trying to teach him what I was doing in gdb. And trying to express that, sincerely, he wasn't stupid GDB is just really hard and he didn't have the background knowledge to make learning it easier.

eslaught 4y ago

This doesn't fit my experience. I mean, yes, this was me. I came in knowing most/all of this. I knew six (or more?) programming languages, had at least played with CVS/SVN, had installed Linux (read: fought with the Linux bootloader to get my AMD CPU to boot without crashing), had dipped my toe in a few open source communities. But I was a tutor in college and I interacted with a bunch of people who didn't come in with any of this experience. Many of those people struggled, but I also know a bunch of people who came into CS knowing nothing, loved it, and went from zero-to-sixty faster than even the people who came in knowing a lot. I'm still not sure I can identify what the ingredient was, but experience alone is not enough to explain it.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
matwood 4y ago
I went to college in the late 90s. Didn't even own a computer until I was a freshman (used my loan money to buy one). Math and science had always been my subjects, so I started college pre-med. But, this new computer I just bought kept sucking me in. I'd stay up all night reading how to make it faster, learn all the tricks, and finally make it do what I wanted through programming. Next semester I took a programming class just to see how it went, then dropped everything, and switched majors. I got a part time job writing custom software for local companies as a sophomore/junior (late 90s dotcom was just ramping), and I guess it has all worked out ok.