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Comment by steakejjs | Hacker News Reader

There are a lot of things here that stand out to me, as a recent grad of just a regular state school.

Things like "Using an API Key", and "Using git" cause students to HAVE to go above and beyond the assignment Because they will undoubtedly run into a problem with some of these extra steps along the way.

I think this type of learning can be more beneficial than the assignment itself. It's real problem solving using the computers.

That's just cool to see.

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Back before I went to university, I spent a lot of time taking programming and systems classes at the local junior college while in high school. That coupled with the tinkering I did on my own, as part of the local BBS seen, and helping others with computers taught me a lot more about the practical aspects around computers at the time -- assembly, TSRs, device drivers, different compilers, different operating systems, etc. -- than was taught at the school I went to.

If a course with this level of detail had been available to me, I would have taken it in a heart beat. Mmm...boot loaders.

Agreed, I am currently attending a state school and very few of the professors emphasize the importance of self study. Learning to learn is more important than any piece of information college has to offer. The fact that MIT puts part of the learning burden on the student is another reason that the students go on to do great things. The professors are in part readying them for the real world.

Part of the explicit ethos of MIT undergraduate education is that some significant fraction of what you're learning will be obsolete in due course, or irrelevant to what you end up doing, but at the very least the school is teaching you how to learn stuff quickly.

IME, most CS departments will have tutors or training sessions available for things like learning git or POSIX that there is no time for during class time.

In my experience, people who hold this attitude would look down their noses at a basketball coach who asked for a hundred and ten percent from his players. But this assignment is no different: if you're required to go above and beyond, you aren't really going above and beyond anything in particular. You're just doing what's required to finish an assignment that happens to be specified imprecisely.

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