

How many of you don't use Google CS Curriculum search? - darwinGod
http://code.google.com/edu/curriculumsearch/
I was surprised when I met several CS grads  who were not using this, because they hadn't heard about it!
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tptacek
Interesting.

The first 4 results on the standard SERP for "trie" are Wikipedia, a pretty
decent BU article on Tries with Sedgewick-style source code, an intro-to-tries
article, and an article about using Tries for spellchecking.

The first 4 results on the CS SERP are a Princeton CS PPT on tries, Java
source code for a trie, a paper on inductive logic programming using tries,
and a tech report on "Nye's Trie" which looks like an interesting distributed
systems solution modeled on tries.

The results for the two searches for "red-black tree" are approximately the
same; all tutorial material.

The results for "bloom filter" are like those for "trie": the standard SERP is
all tutorial material, and the CS SERP is mostly research.

CS search looks like an interesting middle ground between Scholar (which I use
all the time) and standard Google. Thanks!

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bretpiatt
Bit of a link-bait title, this along with various other of the labs search
projects are interesting but hard to find.

I wonder if they build separate data sets for these lab searches or if it is
just a special tag that could also be passed to your main Google search box
like labfilter:csci or something?

~~~
darwinGod
I agree it does look like link-baiting-after all this is a link to Google's
own site.

But since there are two places to search- Code, and curriculum,PERHAPS
Curriculum search is somewhat overlooked. I didnt know about filter:csci
before.. I often dont type in 'filter' in my searches. Also, if this was very
widely used, I would have expected to see some mashups,competitors- which I
didnt. Anyways, if there is even one CS grad who got to know about CS
Curriculum search through this post, I think it will increase my real life
karma tremendously :-) :-)

~~~
kgermino
If you agree that the title is link-baity and it's your title why don't you
change it? (Or for that matter why would you submit it with a link-bait title
to begin with?)

A better title would be something along the lines of Google CS Curriculum
Search.

~~~
darwinGod
What is really interesting is that, Curriculum search is not new- I have been
using it for around 2 years. I just happened to discover from course of
conversations, with some of my friends, that they haven't heard about google
curriculum search - and I was really surprised. It is a great way to look up
tutorials, course materials. If you notice the poll results for Curriculum
search (cant draw a definitive conculusion from this sample,still), it seems
to be terribly skewed towards people who haven't heard at all about Curriculum
search- for a CS-centric community like Hacker news, that's very surprising.

Another thing to think about is that- proper vertical search for course
contents of top universities around the world, would go about a long way in
providing quality "self-education" for students all around the world.

Look at khanacademy- when one guy making educational videos on algebra and
arithmatic,is making such a huge impact - here we have a good search facility
of top cs curriculum /course material of the best universities all around the
world, lying idle?

I dont want to sound patronising- but just think- what an incredible feature
is this in the hands a CS curious hacker in Africa, or for that matter any
'third-world place' -all he/she needs is internet connection! That's it!

I really feel sad that something which ought to be very,very popular, probably
is gathering dust at Google.

~~~
kgermino
I completely agree with you that Curriculum is an interesting, useful, and
underutilized feature. However that is completely unrelated to what I said.

Again, why do you make a submission with a title that you openly admit is
link-baity, unless you are trying to artificially increase your karma? I don't
know how long you have read HN but your account is less than a month old and
intentionally submitting link-bait (especially by a relativity new user) reeks
of karma whoring and really pisses me (and I assume/hope a number of other
users) off.

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RiderOfGiraffes
Based on the poll over here : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1756193> :
the answer is "Almost Everyone."

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bigmac
The comments on this page seem surprisingly negative. I for one just had a
great experience using that service. I've been looking on and off for months
for a course on Abstract Algebra (with lectures).

So, I type in "abstract algebra" into the search and here's what I get:
[http://code.google.com/edu/curriculumsearch/results.html?cx=...](http://code.google.com/edu/curriculumsearch/results.html?cx=009384408222384877262:p27tltxalv0&q=abstract+algebra&sa=Search&client=google-
coop-np&cof=FORID:9;CX:Curriculum) Perfect.

So this search engine passed my initial test with flying colors.

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steven_h
The stuff on Algorithms is interesting, but not very deep for anyone who knows
the basics and is trying to expand their understanding. But I think these are
meant to be general lessons rather than specific.

~~~
darwinGod
I'm guessing you saw only the course listed on the left- not the curriculum
search itself. If you use the search, and see lecture notes, assignments,ppts
on various topics, you might come across things you didnt know before.

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blahedo
Well, I _didn't_. But now that I know about it...

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xtho
You should really ask that question on Digg, Ask Yahoo, and maybe the Bing
support forum.

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philwhln
Having recently gone through Google's interview process, I think this site is
useful getting up to speed for that, since Google is looking more for Computer
Scientists than Computer Programmers.

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wicknicks
Didn't know about this until NOW. The traditional Google knows what I want
better than the Curriculum search. Also, a lot of students have enough to
study from their lecture material -- what they would want are snippets to
specific topics which they find difficult to understand (Again, Google does it
pretty well too). In short, even Google can't beat Google.

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RiderOfGiraffes
I've started a poll on this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1756193>

Only 4 votes so far, but 75% have never heard of it.

ADDED IN EDIT: And now over 87% have never heard of it.

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javanix
I don't.

I might if I ever need any info on algorithms in the future, but I'd wager
that there are quite a few professional programmers on here who, not being in
college anymore, don't really need to read academic papers.

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pjscott
I was a little startled when results didn't appear as soon as I started
typing. I'm actually used to instant search now. When did _that_ happen?

