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Comment by jhspaybar | Hacker News Reader

Having been educated only as an undergrad at a college ranked ~100, I have a question for those who've experienced a course like this at MIT or a similar institution. When I was reading the first lab's description I thought "man, that'd be tough to put out in a week, but it's doable." I saw that it appears to be a multi-week lab for graduate students and wanted to find out if this is normal difficulty for a course? Is there more homework outside of labs that's missing, or crazy quizes/tests that deal with much more theory or proof style work? I just recall my undergrad courses having those extra items, but in large part being the case that if you made all your labs pass all the test cases you could get an A in the course. Does this hold true even at the elite schools or is there much more hidden below the surface here?

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The first lab is due Monday, six days after class began, so we were given about a week for it. The professor told us it was not supposed to be a very intensive lab, and its main purpose was to get us up to speed with Go and the scaffolding code that we are using. In addition to the labs and tests we are required to read a research paper for every class and write a paragraph answering a question about it, and we must also do a project at the end of the term. You can find examples of old tests at the OCW site http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput..., if you'd like to see what they are like.

I'm a CS major at Yale. Problem sets this difficult are assigned regularly with only a week or two to do them. Right now I have two due at once. It sucks.

The good news is that you can get an A on all the problem sets by just completing them to specifications. It's often unclear whether you will be able to make the deadline, but usually you manage. At least at Yale, I've found the tests to be pretty difficult as they are the differentiator in the courses.

I took this class in 2011 when it was still in C++ and as others have said, besides the weekly labs, it had significant amounts of reading, two quizzes and a final exam. This is the probably the class I have learned the most from.

I took this course in 2010 when it was in C++. In addition to reading papers, as mentioned below, there were one or two tests. I say this is one of the tougher CS classes, though probably my favorite.

having taken a couple of cs undergrad courses when i was a physics grad student, i can tell you that undergrads seem to get way more in the way of homework and assignments than grad students do (presumably because grad students need to keep up with their research, TA duties, etc.)

It is because grad school "classes" are a charade to keep up the pretense that an apprenticeship is a classroom education that merits tuition.

I'm the TA for the class. The first lab was intended to get students up to speed with go; the rest of the labs are significantly harder. That said, the labs are completely new, so we're not exactly sure how hard they will be for students. It's a process.

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