Hacker News Reader

Comment by acbart | Hacker News Reader

Why is this being posted? I suppose it's interesting from a historical perspective, for what is available. This is so far removed from modern CS Ed that it's an interesting little time capsule, I guess.

View on HN

Pointers, linked lists, and trees are fundamental concepts. Even though many CS programs have moved away from C and C++ for their intro-level courses, there is still a need to teach how dynamically-allocated data structures are implemented in memory. Even if beginning CS students are not exposed to pointers in their first or second CS class, they will be exposed to pointers eventually in many CS programs, either when they take a course on basic computer organization and assembly, or when they take a course on systems programming.

Also, Stanford's guides are very well written. I remember learning pointers from these guides when I was learning C nearly 15 years ago as a high school senior. I still have the copy of K&R that I bought back then; it is very worn out now.

I mean, obviously. No one's going to seriously advocate removing systems programming from the core introductory sequence of undergraduate CS degrees. The learning objectives are still relevant, I meant the materials themselves are old.

I think modern CS could benefit from more claymation videos.

In what way? I learned about all this stuff a few years ago in school. Yeah there's more stuff to learn about now but the basics never change.

Yes, the learning objectives are all still relevant and will outlast me. I meant that the materials themselves are old and do not represent what's really going on in CS Education, from my perspective.

I upvoted it as it was interesting to me.

because it is interesting, and because the knowledge in it while old is still relevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com