Re:How Harvard's CS50 Renewed My Hope For Online Education
by jacobolus on Monday January 07, 2013 @05:48PM
(#5023745)
> only four or five kids a year will skip 50.
This is not true at all. There were maybe 4–5 who skipped CS50 in just my entryway freshman year (and took more advanced CS courses), though to be sure most of those ended up concentrating in physics, math, economics, etc. rather than CS.
Admittedly this was ~8 years ago, but I’d guess the number who skip CS50 is at least several dozen each year.
I entirely agree with you though that CS50 is inappropriate to meet the needs of all or even most incoming students, and in particular throws too much unnecessary stuff at programming novices who lack sufficient other technical background (at least, it was inappropriate for the 6 or 8 students I tried to help with it over the years). But then, I think C is a terrible first programming language for nearly any student.
This is not true at all. There were maybe 4–5 who skipped CS50 in just my entryway freshman year (and took more advanced CS courses), though to be sure most of those ended up concentrating in physics, math, economics, etc. rather than CS.
Admittedly this was ~8 years ago, but I’d guess the number who skip CS50 is at least several dozen each year.
I entirely agree with you though that CS50 is inappropriate to meet the needs of all or even most incoming students, and in particular throws too much unnecessary stuff at programming novices who lack sufficient other technical background (at least, it was inappropriate for the 6 or 8 students I tried to help with it over the years). But then, I think C is a terrible first programming language for nearly any student.