
Peter Norvig to teach 'Design of Computer Programs' at Udacity - cgopalan
http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs212
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msg
I'm a programmer. I'm really enjoying CS 373 (Thrun's robots). I haven't done
much Python but I haven't found anything too taxing.

The lectures are deceptively well-designed, with lots of (asynchronous)
interaction. Try a course, you'll see what I mean.

The homework is a little more brain-stretching. It usually involves some code
reading and intuition that was not served to you on a plate during the
lecture. I have found them very valuable.

Often you are filling in some mostly-working code provided by the instructors.
My only quibble is liberal use of globals, which violates some of my instincts
about how their code works and causes me to spend more time hunting odd bugs
than doing the actual content. On the bright side they usually provide some
test harnesses so you're not dead in the water.

I've really enjoyed it so far. Signed up for Norvig and another one next time
around.

~~~
msg
One thing I forgot to mention. You can enter the course now and still get a
good grade!

At least for CS 373, and I think for the other ones, they changed the grading
scheme.

We have already had three homeworks due and are now on week 4. In the old
scheme, you could drop one homework (out of seven). Homework was half the
grade and the final the other half. So you could currently get a max of 66% on
the homework.

They added a grading scheme that counts the final at 100%.

They will give you the better of your grade under the two schemes, to not
disadvantage people who did well on the homework.

Join in today!

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graeme
That's correct, and it's true for CS 101 too. The final is 100% if you join
late.

It's worth doing just to see how they're handling online education. Exciting
times.

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mark_l_watson
I have a question perhaps someone knows the answer to: is Udacity
concentrating on short, relatively easy classes for mass appeal and Coursera
concentrating on more difficult and rigorous classes?

I am currently taking two Coursera classes (one is on probabilistic graphical
models and the other on NLP) and so far at least, I am impressed by the depth
of material covered and general quality. I will probably need to spend 10 to
15 hours a week on each class.

There are some subjects that I am interested in that I would like just a
lighter weight overview, get a lay of the land - I think that this is what
Udacity is for.

~~~
abecedarius
I'm not with Udacity (though I did talk to the team last year before they
launched). The difference with the Coursera courses I'm seeing is they're more
conventionally lecture-heavy with a few questions mixed in, while the Udacity
ones try to exploit the new medium for more interaction and to encourage
people to think more on their own. I see no reason that style can't work for
harder courses; I don't know if they intend to go that way. (I can say the CEO
had lots more in mind to do, and what we see in the courses now is just a
start.)

I'm taking the PGM class too and in fact right before I switched to this tab I
was stuck on the d-separation question because I hadn't had enough practice on
the active-path stuff, apparently. So I'd like to see Coursera work more
towards the Udacity interactivity, while keeping their greater polish.

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nimrody
Too many very similar or related courses...

I'd love to take Norvig's course, but am already committed to Coursera's
"Design and Analysis of Algorithms". Came here to recommend it. Tim
Roughgarden is an excellent instructor and the videos are well presented.

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waiwai933
Dr. Norvig is no doubt a genius in computer science, and Udacity is certainly
looking promising considering that it's able to hire such influential
people... but that said, it doesn't look like he has any actual teaching
experience, and educating is made up of a different skill set than computer
science. Every teacher has to start off having never taught before, but
nevertheless, this makes me a little hesitant—are my concerns legitimate or
not?

~~~
Homunculiheaded
I have to agree, I love Norvig's writing, but I was really underwhelmed with
his teaching ability in ai-class. I though Thrun was a much more enthusiastic
and elucidating teacher. It's also possible that Norvig and Thrun placed
different priority on the course. PAIP is one of my favorite programming
books, so I'm really surprised that someone that would write a text so well
would have such a hard time getting that same energy to come across teaching.

~~~
ramkalari
I actually liked Norvig's teaching style. His ability to get to the essence of
a topic quickly is quite remarkable.

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gatlin
I'm interested in this material. After talking with a UT professor I get the
impression that a big challenge for students is forming a good model in their
heads of just what computation is.

I plan on teaching a local Skillshare class in this soon and currently I'm
keen on using Dr Racket and stressing the importance of referential
transparency; however I get the feeling that people are going to want to use
Python.

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systemtrigger
Enrolled! Is it possible to "audit" the course and just watch the 50 minutes
of promised video or will I have to complete homework assignments and such in
order to proceed through the lectures?

~~~
MaxGabriel
You can audit

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moizsyed
So many courses, so little time!

~~~
vibrunazo
So many new awesome courses this year. I enrolled in so many of them. No way
I'm gonna be able to follow half of them. But it's still worth to try. Since
these are easy to follow videos, you can just watch them during your lunch or
just before going to sleep anyway. Way much better than watching TV at least.
:)

~~~
paulovsk
It's kinda frustrating, though. Coursera PGM, for example, takes something
like 10h/week.It's too much.

But I'm happy and grateful because it exists; don't get me wrong.

Exciting times.

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ohyes
The nice thing about college is that it provides an easy way to find a lot of
other smart people who are about your age.

Also, teaching someone else solidifies knowledge a lot more quickly than
straight lecture or exercises.

So it is too bad to me that there is no social aspect of this course and these
types of programs. Udacity study group on google+ or whatnot would be neat.

~~~
angrycoder
Peter fucking Norvig is going to sit you down and teach you some shit for free
and all you have to say is 'argle bargle...social'?

Social: IRC, message boards, facebook, google+, skype, mumble, news groups,
facetime, instant messenger, etc.

Try to teach someone something: Stack Overflow, reddit, hacker news, your own
blog, also, all of the above under social.

Collaboration: google docs, drop box, ftp, gliffy.

~~~
ohyes
First off, I get that Norvig is a celebrity. Celebrity has little to do with
teaching ability.

Secondly, I think reducing my point to 'argle bargle...social' is a little
unfair.

This may just be coming from my psyche as someone who has been in a fairly
lonely job with few peers, but one of the best things about going to college
was getting to know smart and interesting people.(On the other hand, learning
to deal with people who have difficult personalities was also useful).

To really get to know someone you have to be in a community with them. I'm not
sure that 'social solutions' on the internet would really fulfill this need.
They are all the things that you do to kind of numb yourself at the end of the
day so you can sleep... there isn't really an intention to engage.

~~~
irahul
> First off, I get that Norvig is a celebrity. Celebrity has little to do with
> teaching ability.

Perter Norvig is a celebrity because of his technical accomplishments and
teaching prowess. He is the author of PAIP which is regarded as one of the
best books on programming. If you haven't already, check out his articles:

<http://norvig.com/lispy.html> <http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html>
<http://norvig.com/sudoku.html>

So yes, when someone of Norvig's caliber wants to teach me something, social
be fucked, I settle down and listen.

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jiganti
I'm beginning to learn programming this year and have tackled a number of
tutorials- Udacity's CS101 has been far and away the most helpful. This is the
best format in my opinion- extremely short videos and regular quizzes with
more complex homework problems at the end of each unit.

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alpb
There's no content on the website, yet – except Norvig's 1 minute speech. It
looks like a data structures oriented course but I'm not sure at all. Hope it
becomes something tempting about designing program architectures besides
shuffling poker cards.

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marcovaldo
Will Udacity courses be accredited? Will their accreditation be taken
seriously? If not them, then some new startup in this space will be. They will
spike the money-hose directed at HarvardYaleOxfordCambridge.

~~~
viscanti
With version control software like git (and especially github), and the
ability for anyone to build anything on their own, accreditation doesn't
matter much. Not every company agrees, but enough do that it's not a big deal.
The real question is "can you do the job", and with programming, it's not too
difficult to show that you can, if you can.

~~~
marcovaldo
I think we can agree most people reading this site and competing in the
startup space know accreditation isn't too important. Aside from us, there is
the 99.999% of the professional workspace where this idea is heretical. For
them, a reasonably credible system of accreditation carries a lot of weight.
The post-Uni startup that addresses these concerns will take most of the pot.

~~~
randomdata
"The post-Uni startup that addresses these concerns will take most of the
pot."

I don't know. It will be pretty interesting to see how it plays out. It was
said above that Udacity's business model is to connect students with
employers, so there will be a big push to make that happen. Contrast that with
a school who focuses on accreditation. There will be less push to make sure
you are employed at the end. You will, however, have the all important (to
99.999% of the population) accreditation.

If you are going in with the goal to get a job at the end, it seems like the
former is going to yield better results, in my humble opinion. And if you are
studying the subject just out of enjoyment, neither model matters, because who
cares if you have a job or accreditation at the end?

I feel we're a long way from claiming one business model the victor.

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zackattack
I can't wait til Paul Graham teaches a class. Holy shit I am so there.

