

Ask HN: How hard are beginning college CS classes? - solipsist


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T-R
Depends a lot on the school, and how much prior experience you have. As far as
rigor and workload, that really depends on the professor. That said, intro
courses are usually designed to be at least survivable by someone with no
background at all.

Strictly talking about the difficulty of concepts, a curriculum based off of
SICP (or something with a similar emphasis on functional programming or math)
will probably be full of new concepts even for those who've had some
experience programming. I'd say this is a good thing for everyone involved,
because it both levels the playing field for those without experience, and
ensures that those who have some still get something out of the course.

Most schools, though, start with imperative concepts (as does AP Comp Sci),
which isn't a bad thing either, but someone with experience won't get as much
out of it until later in the course.

If you're applying to schools or about to start a class, it wouldn't be a bad
idea to dig through the department website and see if you can find the site
for the class to see what it entails.

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ibejoeb
* What school? They can be very different. Some curricula are highly theoretical, some practical, some hybrid, but most still are termed "Computer Science."

* What is your background? Have you been exposed to mathematical proofs, logic, discrete math, or computer programming?

* What is your purpose? Are you worried about filling a single freshman requirement, or are you planning on studying computer science?

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Wingman4l7
In my experience, CS 101 was easy to get into and seemed to be designed to get
students excited about computer science. Heck, one of the final projects was
to implement an Asteroids game. We even used a beginner Java IDE developed by
one of the professors -- <http://sourceforge.net/projects/jigsaw-ide/>

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Stythys
not very hard at all, at least in my experience.

