[ghaff]

I took the 6.001 edX courses a while back. Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python--actually broken in 2 parts for edX.

Yeah, it came across to me that the expectation was that you'd learn to program mostly outside of the course. Or, really, that you already had a reasonable grasp on the basic concepts. Otherwise I think that course would feel to most people like being tossed into the deep end of the pool from a great height.

To be sure, with the campus version of the class there would be recitation sessions and other resources to get help on the programming side. There's also a companion textbook that goes into more Python details. But that's certainly not a class to "learn to program," much less how to work on a command line, use an editor, etc.

That may be reasonable for an MIT CS curriculum but most other majors probably don't have the same degree of implied prerequisites.

[ericd]

Yeah, that was a pretty common feeling in 6.001, especially among those who hadn't done much programming in high school. At the time, it was taught in Scheme (a Lisp), which no one I knew taking it had any experience in, so everyone was on sort of equal footing there, at least. And more generally, it seemed to be a pretty common approach there to throw students into the deep end and let them figure it out - people liked to compare the experience to trying to drink from a firehose :-D. I'm not sure if it's optimal for learning the material itself, but it does make jumping into new subjects seem less daunting after you've gone through that a few times.

[ghaff]

Yeah. Course 2. '79. :-)

There's probably an expectation these days that students have some degree of exposure to computers. When I took an intro to computing course (FORTRAN) it was pretty much no expectations. But times have changed.

And I found 6.001x useful. But then I had a lot of experience with computers even if not programming full-time professionally.

[ericd]

Haha so you know the feeling well.

Makes sense, guessing not many high schools even had one computer until the Apple II, which I guess would have been a bit after you graduated.

Side note, I love that it's possible to take a course like that online for ~free now.

[ghaff]

I didn't touch a personal computer until a few years later in a job where we had an Apple II to do some engineering calculations. High school was BASIC using a teletype connected to a local community college--and that was pretty forward looking at the time.

I did take a FORTRAN course in college which people would consider very rudimentary today. This was the textbook :-) https://openlibrary.org/works/OL6795090W/A_Fortran_coloring_...

But I didn't really use a computer to speak of (other than as a text editor in grad school) until I was working--and later got into programming as a hobby.

[ericd]

Oh, that's a pretty sweet looking textbook. Reminds me a bit of http://landoflisp.com/