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Comment by a1pulley | Hacker News Reader

I was in Andy's dorm (house) at Caltech. When I matriculated, I chose begrudgingly to study a "real" science--physics--instead of what I actually liked--computer science. It was in no small part thanks to Andy's contagious and unabashed excitement for CS that I eventually switched over and became a happy software engineer.

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Hi! I was in Blacker, too (same year as Andy). I matriculated wanting to do astro and stuck with it, but there were enough excited CS majors around (of which Andy, of course, was one) that I ended up taking a number of CS classes for fun before graduating.

And thank goodness I did! I eventually left astro for industry and that experience (both the formal classes and just being around a bunch of CS people a lot) helped with that transition tremendously.

Great to have such upperclassmen as role models as a student. Doesn't surprise me that it would have a big effect on what majors students choose. But sometimes we wonder if too many people take cs at caltech these days just because it is trendy or just easier? Guess I really Don't know if that's a "problem" Either, I am happy it worked out for you.

As yet another housemate of Andy's at Caltech, it is perhaps worth mentioning that he was also involved in updating Caltech's CS curriculum prior to it becoming as popular as it is today.

Hard to say how much of the trend is just what happened everywhere, but CS1 being in Python rather than Scheme probably helped a bit.

Was swapping Scheme for Python a good thing though? Scheme is a very good way to understand the concepts of CS in a more fundamental way. Python can be learned independently anyway through SICP.

IIRC, CS1 was a mandatory class for other majors (like MechE) and a course in Scheme was basically hazing from their perspective.

I forget if Scheme was moved to a later course or made optional.

It was moved to a later course, thankfully. I’m a big SICP fan!

(Hi Chris!)

Hmmmm... you didn’t happen to start the 2-seater car physics major trend, did you?

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