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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

Yes, I so agree with this sentiment. Also I feel a little bad for students at Stanford who actually take this class in person. It seems a little weird that these students come to this world class institution where leading minds are doing cutting edge research, and they are paying exorbitant tuition to sit in a class and learn about how to string simple API calls together. Most of this knowledge can be obtained by just reading the documentation and tutorials on various websites.

I'm sure it makes sense for some students, but it just kind of seems like a waste of money to me for most people.. It's good that it's free now.

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What you're describing would be a problem if they were studying only stuff that they can learn from docs and tutorials. But I'm sure that not every class is like this one and the students are getting plenty of exposure to theory and deeper knowledge in various fields.

Universities need to balance out the argument that you're making with the argument that CS education doesn't prepare people for having an actual job.

False dichotomy. I'm sure Stanford cruses its CS students with theory and math already. Nothing wrong with a course that is purely practical and can help people get a job. Most employers would rather see "built and iOS app" in a resume than "took this difficult theory class".

It's not like this is a required class. You still have to take the required set of theory classes. This is just an optional elective for students to take if they want to learn iOS development.

At the end of the day the day if you want to create a startup or even just get a job out college, taking practical courses like iOS development will put you in a much better position than spending all of your time taking theory classes.

You're focusing on the apparent triviality of the coursework ("learn about how to string simple API calls together ... just reading the documentation and tutorials on various websites") versus the stellar skills and knowledge of the faculty.

This applies to a lot of 1xx classes anywhere! In particular, foreign languages, or beginning art classes.

My wife went to art grad school at UCLA. Her advisor (whose competence is beyond amazing, e.g. https://art.famsf.org/adrian-saxe) taught an undergraduate ceramics class, and one of his chores was to bust on his students who made bongs as their class project. Which he did with good humor. (Broke in the kiln, how about that!)

What can you say? Learning happens in all kinds of ways?

I mean majority of the knowledge is online and open sourced nowadays, even if the most cutting edge technology, especially in CS field.

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