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by CydeWeys 2158 days ago
> I'm not bashing the lecture style, but if I were a student, I'd prefer a good textbook to those lectures.

I suspect you're in the minority here. The majority of students are more engaged by a good professor lecturing on material than by reading a textbook. This is especially true for introductory classes which CS50 is, because a lot of the students are from other majors and are being introduced to the entire field for the first time. It's hard to enter a new field just by reading a textbook.
1 comments
bachmeier 2158 days ago
> I suspect you're in the minority here. The majority of students are more engaged by a good professor lecturing on material than by reading a textbook.

Me too. I'm not saying that in general textbooks are better than lectures, I'm saying the lecture style of this class is sufficiently ineffective that I don't see how it's worth anyone's time to watch. In contrast, Martin Odersky's lectures are designed to effectively teach the material, and they absolutely are better than reading a textbook.

The difference might be that I've always learned by taking notes and working through the ideas during the lecture. For those that are into passive lecture consumption, CS50 is about as close to perfect as you'll find. The style definitely doesn't work for me.

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CydeWeys 2158 days ago
> I'm saying the lecture style of this class is sufficiently ineffective that I don't see how it's worth anyone's time to watch.

Again, you're incorrectly extrapolating from your minority view and making global statements about how it's not worth anyone else's time. This lecture style is very effective for most people and is absolutely worth their time. Witness how highly rated the class is, and how successful it is at drawing people in to the major.

> The style definitely doesn't work for me.

That is a fair statement. But saying it's not worth anyone's time absolutely isn't, and is directly contradicted by the fact that this class is in fact highly successful, well-rated, and does a good job of accomplishing its goal of introducing people to the field.

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bachmeier 2158 days ago
> and does a good job of accomplishing its goal of introducing people to the field

That's exactly the point. The goal is not to help students to learn the material at a deep level. It's to recruit students to CS. I'm not even sure what the disagreement is at this point, so I'm going to step away.

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kyawzazaw 2158 days ago
but you were pointing out its flaws in achieving a different objective ("learning deeply")
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