aruss

What this article, and many commentators in this thread, are forgetting is that the college/university system is not designed primarily for education. The reason why the college system is tailored toward young adults is because we as a culture have decided that college is the place for young adults to "find themselves." College is often the first time young adults begin living on their own; putting them in a structured institution with their peers is how many kids learn how to "grow up" (in particular, the children of privileged individuals who also want their children to receive some sort of education/job training). There are other issues with the higher education as an institution, but the segregation between older adults ("nontraditional" students) is not one of them, nor is the seeming lack of responsibility found at college (though sexual assault and substance abuse are serious issues that need to be addressed) - it's a defining part of the American "college experience."

It could be argued that you can "find yourself" without college, and while that's absolutely true I would say that it's hard to find a better institution to do so (other problems like rising tuition/loans notwithstanding).

No, mathematically speaking the 4th dimension is no different than the 3 that we are used to dealing with, and is held to the same physical constraints.

This has been the opposite of my experience. The US school system is extremely inhibitive to fast learners. Everything is on a curriculum, and it's really difficult to get around the bureaucracy to get ahead.

I was homeschooled/self-taught since the 2nd grade until about high school when I started attending community college full-time. At that point I was about "even" with my best friend, who is also considered very intelligent. I was then able to pick which semester-long classes to take. For example, I was taking third year calculus my sophomore year, a full year before he was able to take Calc 1. And this was no discrepancy due to ability. (for those curious I applied to colleges at the 'regular' time and am now attending a 4-year institution without transferring any of my credits).

The fact of the matter is that the American public school system wasn't developed with education in mind, and now functions more as crowd control than as an educational institution.

Obfuscation is a really exciting field that's blown up in the last year or so. Hopefully advancements will bring down some of the parameters so that we can see small-scale obfuscation in the real world.

Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. It's a collection of his short stories, often funny, sometimes touching, and always insightful.

It would also be useful to include liberal arts colleges. I don't think it's representative of top institutions if you only consider research universities. For example, Harvey Mudd, has a top notch CS program, but wouldn't be considered under that metric as it doesn't have any grad programs.

I'd be interested to figure out the whole intro sequence. For example, my college begins with Java for the first class, then the next two classes can be taken concurrently, which respectively consist of functional programming/basic CS theory in SML, and Data Structures/Advanced Programming (memory management!) in Java and C++. I'm sure a number of other colleges follow similar procedures.

Also - I don't think that "CS0" classes should be included on this list as most are not taught with the intention of further CS education. For example, we have an "intro" CS course that is taught within the context of cognitive science (in Python).

Python's syntax is a breeze to get ahold of without any experience making it ideal for introducing people to CS and algorithmic thinking without overwhelming them with theory or syntax.

Also, a lot of colleges (at least the best ones) offer functional programming in a second semester intro course (Berkeley does Scheme I believe). My own institution uses SML.

I absolutely love what Elm is doing for the web - it takes the next step in making FRP and pure functional programming accessible. Reading Elm is a pleasure.

This reminds me of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (by Douglas Adams) where one of the main characters created ad jingles and sounds for businesses based on their quarterly earnings and similar data. Well done!

Thanks for checking it out! I'm currently getting into Haskell, and one of my future projects is to use the Euterpea library to re-do this project. I especially want to add in real-time accompaniment using some basic harmonic theory.

Right now I'm working on a Haskell project to do intersolar pathfinding (pathfinding with gravitational effects). I want to see how to get A* or something similar like D* Lite to pick up on gravitational slingshotting by adjusting the heuristic.

I thought they were fine - I did watch some of the TAs virtual office hours on a couple of problem sets, but beyond that, the problem sets were largely good. I'm incredibly glad that the lectures were conceptually focused. It may have been a bit harder to do the assignments, but it forced you to really learn them. You had to go from concept to code on your own. In other classes (including CS75), it was much easier as you could copy a lot of work from lectures and office hours.

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I took Prof Malan's course via the Harvard Extension School my junior year of high school while trying to get into programming. I first tried to get into PHP and C++ the prior summer (I had no clue, and had no idea of how clueless I was). Enter MIT's OCW and CS50. I quickly watched all of the lectures in about a week or so, and decided to take the course for the following fall shortly thereafter.

Prof Malan is one of the best lecturers I have had the pleasure to learn from, knowing how to keep an audience interested in just about anything. Malan and his army of TAs have also done a fantastic job of creating a community around CS50, and have provided a plethora of resources for their students. Their assignments and problem sets were also perfect. They were challenging and interesting without being inaccessible; teaching both programming skills and being relevant to important CS concepts. We also got a special lecture from Brian Kernighan at the end, which was a real treat.

I'm extremely appreciative for the skills and knowledge CS50 has given me, and would highly recommend it to anyone willing to take on the challenge. It's the reason why I have my current interest in and basic understanding of CS.

I'm really excited for what online education can offer if many other classes can be brought up to the high standard Prof Malan and his team has set. With 5 years of community college (8th-12th grade) and a semester at a top liberal arts college, all taken in-person, CS50 remains one of my favorite classes (in terms of interest, challenge, fun, etc).

I should also mention I took CS75 with Malan as well, and while it wasn't quite as enjoyable for a number of reasons, it was also an excellent course.

I'm not limited by anything except for financial concerns. I live in Arizona but go to school in southern California.