

Zuckerberg visits Stanford CS106A third year in a row - mmzc
https://www.facebook.com/schrep/posts/481910535186920

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tinco
Heh that's interesting, I just watched 106A yesterday to get an idea of how
the programming introduction course is compared to my university (utwente.nl).

I actually was a bit disappointed to see that it is very much like our
introduction course, except that this teacher is a bit more enthousiastic, and
perhaps the course starts at an even more basic level I think.

I think for real CS enthousiasts 6.001 at MIT is much more interesting (and
fun) to watch: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Op3QLzMgSY>

(it teaches scheme and the lecturer has an awesome way of explaining it)

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AustinGibbons
While not being able to comment on 6.001, at Stanford there is an alternative
for ``enthusiasts'' called 106X, which is a sort of more intense version of
the 106B class and is taught in C++ I believe. Some students skip A/B and just
take X. A, B and X all get really good reviews.

~~~
yifanlu
I took CS106X this quarter and while I enjoyed the lecturer and the
assignments, as an "enthusiast", I did not feel challenged. It was more of
"let me get some more experience with programming" and not "wow, that's nice
to know". The class just teaches some more data structures not covered in
CS106A and recursion and touches on inheritance. From what I hear though
CS140/143 (os & compilers) seem more interesting to me.

~~~
rawatson
I'm one of the TAs (section leaders) for 106X this quarter. We get a pretty
wide diversity of skill levels in the class, so it's tough to ensure that we
challenge the experienced students while not scaring off everyone else.

However, the goal of 106X isn't to teach all of the complexities and nuances
of algorithms (take CS161), fundamental principles of computing (take 103), or
OS/low level understanding (take 107/140/143). Sure, we'd like students to
think about these things, but we really want to make sure that students know
how to program with

* Proper decomposition

* Sensible commenting/documentation

* Use of appropriate data structures/knowing when to employ recursion

If you want to get more "huh, that's cool", try taking 107 in the winter
(Jerry is teaching that course as well).

