if you happen to be at cal, the single most functionally useful class I took there was hilfinger's programming for blood: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/D

if you happen to be at cal, the single most functionally useful class I took there was hilfinger's programming for blood: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/Data/701.html http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Courses/Data/701.html the premise of this class was to build a better team for the ACM programming contest, but I learned a ton about the actual mechanics of programming, rather than just the theory--- similar to the ideas vs. execution meme that floats around here. I think what made it so different from the rest of my courses were a) we spent lots of time reading code and looking at different solutions to the same problem and b) the competitive nature of the class.