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"There's no "intro to programming" course at Harvard—this is it [...] I think CS50 is great for the first two-thirds, but completely lacking for the last third.
by objclxt 14y ago
"There's no "intro to programming" course at Harvard—this is it [...] I think CS50 is great for the first two-thirds, but completely lacking for the last third. There's just too much material in too little time."
There is actually a course for the last third, it's CS1. I used to Head TF it: like CS50 it counts for Gen Ed credit, but it is designed primarily for that last third you talk about that may find CS50 too fast paced. It uses Java rather than C. No plans to take it to edX though (with both MIT and Harvard's Intro CS classes the space is crowded enough!).
CS1 was originally designed pre-Malan when CS50 was basically only taken by those majoring in CS, and it is somewhat less popular now as many students want to take CS50 for the 'experience'. The massive success of CS50 at Harvard (now one of the top three most popular classes across the entire undergraduate catalog) is both a blessing and a curse: it's great that more students are interested in learning to program, but it's also meant the department is having to rethink what it offers post-CS50.
- 2arrs2ells 14y agoFormer CS1 (and CS50) TF here. I wish CS1 would rebrand itself - maybe focus on web programming with a framework (like Hartl's Rails Tutorial) or computational thinking with Python. As is, Java has nearly as much syntactic overhead as C (at least no pointers, thank god), which makes it hard to get into useful & exciting things.
- benesch 14y agoReally? That's certainly not the way it's perceived today. The course is called "Intro to CSII" [1], it's offered spring term only, and Malan's CS50 FAQs explicitly discourage skipping to CS51. [2] Sounds like it could be a shame if the CS51 material hasn't changed. As of now there's a big emphasis on functional programming and ML—was that added after CS50's shift? [1] http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/computer-science http://www.registrar.fas.harvard.edu/computer-science] [2] "Should I skip CS50 if I took AP Computer Science? Probably not. You will likely find yourself at a disadvantage if you skip ahead to, e.g., CS51 or CS61, if only because many courses in computer science at Harvard assume familiarity not only with C but also with other concepts introduced in CS50. The differences between CS50 (which focuses on C) and AP Computer Science (which focuses on Java) do extend beyond the courses’ choice of languages. If you cannot complete past quizzes quickly and correctly, you should not skip CS50." https://www.cs50.net/faqs/ https://www.cs50.net/faqs/