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MIT Missing Semester 2026

(missing.csail.mit.edu)
91 points vismit2000 | 2 comments | 15 Dec 25 12:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.407s | source
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ghaff ◴[15 Dec 25 15:25 UTC] No.46275685[source]▶
There's definitely a tension at top STEM schools (probably especially in CS) between assuming students have some baseline knowledge of whatever field and just tossing them into the deep end of the pool and figuring out the practicalities on their own.

I did take one of the MIT intro CS MOOCs at one point for kicks. Very good. But it was more or less learn Python on your own if you don't already know it (or how to program more broadly). That doesn't really happen in a lot of other disciplines other than some areas of the arts.

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1. throwaway20174 ◴[15 Dec 25 16:16 UTC] No.46276457[source]▶
It's tough to for me to judge cause I've been programming for 30 years maybe I'm underestimating how hard it is, but I look at learning a new language very different that trying to understand the graduate level CS work I've seen at a top STEM school.

Git, shell, basics.. even simple python if you have any at all programming experience - not nearly as hard as what they're teaching in the class.

Most of the time something like that like learning latex or git basics.. they'll say.. you'll pick up what you need. They're not gonna spend 12 weeks on those subjects they aren't hard enough.

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2. ghaff ◴[15 Dec 25 16:30 UTC] No.46276678[source]▶
Discrete tools are fairly easy. On the other hand, I think a lot of people here would laugh at the "text book" for the introductory FORTRAN course I took at said school.

Of course, you were struggling with fairly primitive tools at the time as well. Made a typo? Time to beg the grad students running the facility for some more compute cycles.

Although it's out of print I don't immediately see a full copy online. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~kaufman1/FortranColoringBook/Colo...