How difficult was your first CS/Programming class?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm currently taking 6.00.1x on edX (a free MIT MOOC), and it's really difficult for me. People entirely new to programming take this class every year at MIT, but I can't imagine being entirely new and taking this class, which shows how hardcore MIT really is.

My "progress" in the class is currently at 30%, which is embarrassing because many people are already above the minimum passing grade of 52% (IIRC). I'm behind by a couple of weeks, and the class is probably going to be over in that same amount of time. Oh, and I bombed the quiz they gave me, and on many problem sets I have no idea how to begin solving the problem.

I feel it is a problem with my study habits. The class is entirely online, so I haven't really been paying *full* attention while watching the lectures, and I'm behind on reading the (optional) textbook. I also haven't really been taking notes, mostly because I don't really know how to do it in a class like this. Do I just write down the lecture slides, or do I try to put what the professor is saying in my own words? Actually, now that I put it that way, it seems...obvious. I guess I'll also have to put in tons of more effort. It'll take almost inhuman amounts for me to pass this class by now, but then again where would humanity be if there wasn't the occasional hard-worker putting in an amount of effort they thought they didn't have?

This is about as hard as UPenn's Calculus: Single Variable class on Coursera. Both of them are light-years ahead in terms of difficulty in comparison to any other class I've taken in real life.

I wish I could tell you - I began studying CS, nearly under penalty of expulsion, in middle school. I've tutored an introductory C course at my local university, but my client flaked out; he was certainly less determined than you. Right now it's relatively unlikely I'll go to school for it, I'd rather apply my existing discipline elsewhere or go to school exclusively to expand my background knowledge.

_________________
"Standing on a well-chilled cinder, we see the fading of the suns, and try to recall the vanished brilliance of the origin of the worlds."
-Georges Lemaitre
"I fly through hyperspace, in my green computer interface"
-Gem Tos

One thing that I've done in classes where I need to understand by doing rather than learn by rote memorisation, is to pretty much ignore the lectures and text book and go straight to the problem sets.

I start at the first (simplest) problem, and then only read enough of the text book to get through the problem. Then I go through the next problem, again only reading enough to be able to solve that problem.

I work through all the problems in this way, and then quickly read through the entire chapter once-through at the very end.

I found that if I did the reverse -- read first -- then I'd get to the end of the chapter thinking that I knew what it was about, and then I'd be stuck on the first problem and have to go back to the beginning anyway.