[q-big]

> but if the DS course is your first exposure to a hash map, it's a detail that can easily get lost in the huge forest of other brand new things to learn.

My experience differs: It is the common situation that the theory is taught in the lecture, and then each week you have to do quite some exercises to implement all the newly learned data structures in code (lots of work to do each week :-) ). So, if you forgot such a "detail", the code to write for next week simply won't work - 0 points.

This way, it is rather unlikely that you will forget such a "detail" in the forest of new things to learn. This statement in particular holds for students who had done pretty well in DS as the one you are talking about.

[tonyarkles]

Not to date myself too much but the course was taught in Eiffel :). On top of the theory, and on top of the practical details, there was also the fun of learning an obscure quirky programming language you were unlikely to ever use again.

I loved it all and had a great time. Lots of people really did not.

> So, if you forgot such a “detail”…

Sure, very true in the short term. Next semester though? That code doesn’t matter and most people don’t have flawless long term memory.