

A Practical Computer Science Primer (2008) - barce
https://learn-cs.pbworks.com/w/page/15774601/FrontPage

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205guy
That seems like a fairly complete syllabus, quite like what I spent 4 years
learning in school (2 undergrad, 2 post-grad), minus the internships and
actual work (and the mobile and web apps that we didn't have back in the
day...). I wonder if these courses really took place and how they turned out.

Some minor topics missing are things like compression, multi-threading and
locking, etc, but I suppose those are oversights, or there's just not enough
time.

I think one glaring omission is the UI/UX. It's the last topic under
"graphics," and I really wonder if they'll reach those last topics. I think
usability, windowing, design, typography (as seen today on HN), and new
interfaces (touch screen, Kinect, etc.) could be a topics for an entire lesson
of its own. If only because I expect people who take such a course to be more
practically oriented (as in teach myself to program so I can develop my app
idea).

Also, given such an audience, I think an extra lesson covering real-world
examples would be very helpful. The lesson on web apps and mobile probably
covers a lot of the end-user cases, but I'm thinking about industrial
applications, modern airplanes, big installations such as banking or stock
exchanges, a mainframe that's still running somewhere, drawing-board to
release of a Pixar movie, a data center or just a colocation facility (field
trip!). And it might make sense to put this lesson as an intro, where even if
the students don't understand the details at first, the rest of the course can
be mapped to real-world examples.

But I do wonder about the OP's final intent of compressing years of learning
into weeks of lessons. I'm not sure people can retain and make good use of so
much information without putting it into practice. I would love such a course
for some other topic (civil engineering, political science, etc.) but it would
be more about expanding my general knowledge, much like I read wikipedia for
fun, than about being able to do something with it.

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dweekly
OP here, some 5+ years after having authored that content and taught the
class. Astonishing that this got surfaced - I was very surprised to receive a
flurry of inbound requests to join a class I ran half a decade ago. I'd love
to know how best to package the material - what would folks like to know? And
how would folks like to learn it? Where are existing systems like Khan Academy
and Codecademy falling short?

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barce
Right now it seems there's a great interest in building mobile apps, even if
they are just web based. Ideally, I'd like to use the time commuting to learn
on a mobile device or tablet. This is exactly where existing systems like Khan
Academy & Codeacademy are falling short, but they are still really excellent
systems. Thanks for teaching those classes, I went to a few of them and
learned lots.

~~~
dweekly
Thanks, barce. I'm curious - by "using time communiting to learn" does that
imply that a podcast would be the right form factor?

~~~
barce
Yes, I think a podcast would work for commuters who are coders - definitely
the right form factor.

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caycep
Neal Stephenson novels required reading eh?

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mathattack
That's one heavy duty course! Looks like it covers almost all of my 4 years of
undergrad.

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sikhnerd
I wish there was something like this near me, I'd do it in a heartbeat

