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Comment by UltimateEdge | Hacker News Reader

As a Mathematics undergraduate I am not allowed by my university to officially take (and receive credit for taking) most non-beginner Computer Science courses, including Compilers. At least I'm allowed to attend the lectures and cram it in alongside my other pure math classes!

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When I was a math grad student, I technically could have gone through the process to get 1 or 2 CS courses approved to give credit toward my degree, but I never actually cared about the "credit" part, anyway. So, I did my regular course in the math department, taught for the math department, then hung out half the day in the CS department. I ended up auditing, and thoroughly half-assing, Algorithms 1, 2, and 3, Programming Languages, and Automata Theory. Still learned a lot, in spite of the half-assery.

Did your timetable/coursework schedule allow you to audit a meaningful number of external courses? I find that I can only allow myself to attend one additional course per semester.

I STUPIDLY started going to lectures on Computer Systems this year without doing my research first (I couldn't find the timetable for Compilers, and relied on being able to take it officially next year). Turns out I don't have enough (or any) background in C, and so I couldn't make sense of a lot of the lecture material. Oh well, at least now I'm learning C, and I still have the lecture recordings.

Good on you for being more academically-minded than your university, and shame on them for not encouraging more cross-disciplinary credits!

I went to a relatively small school in Canada, but they were very good about staying out of the way if you tried to take extra courses (with credit).

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