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In addition to the lectures what has made the course interesting to me is the vibrant, active "Discussion Forum" associated with this course. Ullman himself fre
by sateesh 13y ago
In addition to the lectures what has made the course interesting to me is the vibrant, active "Discussion Forum" associated with this course. Ullman himself frequently posts explanation on some of the topics here. It seems there are some takers of this course who are well versed with Automata theory. Some of them are quite active in the discussion forum providing good explanation to many of the trickier concepts introduced in the course (which has been immensely valuable to me).
- brudgers 13y agoAutomata is the third Coursera course I've taken [the first session of Introduction to Systematic Program Design and the current session of Programming Languages are the other two]. One of the features [or bugs depending on how you look at it] is that a lot of the forum participation is by people who have largely mastered the course material. This can be great for someone who is ok when the smartest person in the room turns out to be someone else [HN helps me develop this habit]. But at times, it is intimidating for students coming to the material for the first time or who are struggling. The discussions in the Automata course are way out of my league...plus I'm not fully invested in keeping pace with the material right now. In the Programming languages course, I participate, but I find posts saying "this homework was really easy" unhelpful when I've spent twenty or more hours wrestling with the week's problem. I imagine that it can be downright discouraging to someone struggling just to pass and unable to devote as much time as it takes to solve it. That said, the discussions in Automata are first class - right down to the formatted mathematical expressions, and I find the topic fascinating in and of itself.