Apparently computer science at Purdue sucks

Being a CS major at Purdue, I hear a lot of complaints about the way things are done. Often times, they're from people I don't know well, or from people that have made a bad first impression on me; regardless of what I think of them, sometimes they're just unfounded complaints, too. However, worse has come to worst when I hear complaints from what I see as the smartest of the department--usually honors students, but not always. If we're turning off the brightest light bulbs in CS, how are we supposed to retain student interest in CS? Being a junior now, I don't see many people that are very excited in my classes. Unfortunately, this trend has started to appear earlier in the years (our excuse is compilers), even down to the freshmen. One of my former students recently posted a note on Facebook about his beef with Purdue CS:

So many people are greedy, they are here to get a degree so they can make money, not to learn / change the world for the better / etc...

This is undeniably a true statement. Though, I would argue that its common in any major; after all, this is America. Essentially, we're forced into this philosophy (or into academia, or being a FSF junkie of some sorts, or whatever), and really this is a whole new discussion.

Academically repressive, exhausting and depressing.

This one is harder to really comment on. In recent years, CS240 (C Programming) has had a new professor (to the class, not to teaching) and a new set of TAs teaching the class. It's been getting terrible feedback from students, and I suspect that this statement is really the result of taking CS240. This class was pretty much golden when I took it, since I was under the instruction of Dr. Brylow and a capable set of lab instructors, but has since changed. While I can't comment on the teaching style of the new instructors, I can comment that the material has changed from historical teachings for the worse. Unfortunately, some students think this true of all CS classes they take. This is also a story for another day.

Of all the cs students I have met in my class, none have any love for the craft of programming. They all see it as a chore, and I don't blame them based on how our courses are taught.

This probably goes back to the "greedy" point. Most people in general seem to lack a real passion for what they do. As far as classes go, I think part of it is related to the lack of practical knowledge that's taught, in addition to excessive amounts of work and occasionally unreasonable constraints on assignments. Unfortunately, the latter is not easily fixed; for example, one constraint that was deemed unreasonable by another student in the class was the ban on using string library functions on assignments. This student is a talented programmer (also a former student of mine), but people who have never programmed before need to learn how to write these functions. Unfortunately, it slows the learning experience for advanced students, and the test-out process for classes is strongly discouraged/not allowed.

However, I would also say that there are still a group of students in CS that do enjoy programming. I'm more familiar with the upperclassmen, but I'm sure they exist in the freshmen ranks, as well. Difficult to find? Sure. It's not atypical for a CS major to be pretty anti-social.

TA's dont care. This is mostly because TA's have a bazillion things to grade though, which is more of a university problem of making classes huge. But TA's could make it easier on themselves by not being such strict graders.

This also seems to be a more recent development, which is somewhat unfortunate. For all of the CS180 TAs (at least this semester), however, I would argue that they put a lot of effort into trying to give the students a good learning experience. This comment probably is also related to CS240, and I can't comment. I've had a great track record of TAs, and most of the ones that I've had are extremely helpful when the situation arises, and are very knowledgeable and interested in doing a good job.

Though, when it comes down to grading, I might be inclined to disagree. I don't think a TA needs to be relaxed in grading. After all, if a student does something wrong, a TA should point it out to prevent future mistakes (say, for personal enrichment). If he/she ignores mistakes, is the student really garnering a good learning experience? I guess I don't really mean, "take off points for everything," as much as, "point out all visible mistakes to the student." It's still in the grading process, but it doesn't necessarily have to affect the grade. I stand by this firmly, as I see plenty of students who have had TAs that won't do this sort of thing, and write what I believe to be terrible code (where terrible may or may not be hyperbolic). For example:

public boolean foo() {
    boolean b = bar();
    if (b == true) {
        return true;
    }
    else {
        return false;
    }
}

This is a simple piece of code, it's pretty obvious what it does and I see this frequently, and it's not semantically "wrong". It drives me insane. It isn't that bad, but I believe it's indicative that something weird is being taught in class. I feel like I'd be committing a mortal sin if I didn't tell my students not to do this.

Most CS students are hardcore gamers, which alienates me somewhat from their ranks, because that is there primary social activity.

You can probably find CS students that don't game a lot and don't drink a lot (like me, except my reason for not gaming is time constraints, and believe it or not, laziness), but they really aren't high in numbers; this, I would agree with. However, they can still be found, I think. The CS department does a decent job of hosting events where you can network with other CS majors, but a lot of people don't take advantage of them. I'd say that this would be a better way to meet students, than in a classroom environment. Yes, we are quite often anti-social, but we're CS majors. You can meet other people at clubs that you're interested in, and I'm sure they'll be less socially inept.

It doesn't help that we're in the middle of a large corn field known as "Indiana," but I think people can find other things to do (movies, card games, whatever). Of course, I'm not an expert in these things, so I can't say much.

Another student (also of mine, what a trend) posted a comment:

Why don't we make CS fun and actually work on projects that are in interest to us?

I think the simple answer is, "It's extremely difficult." CS classes [unfortunately] have to cater to a wide variety of students: people who care, people who don't care, people who don't actually know how to code that have somehow survived X semesters where X > 1, etc. Making assignments that interests everyone is impossible. It's hard to cater to even a majority; how do you calculate what a majority is? Some people are interested in theory. Some in practical material. The debate goes on, and in the end, the instructors decide. In the end, the entry-level classes tend to be very boring for people who have prior experience; this is unavoidable, which sucks, sure. Even if you could test out of these classes, there would be a number of indignant people who failed the test out for X class, because they "knew everything" about said subject. It boils down to intro classes being boring, and advanced classes being, well, less boring. Less difficult? Probably not ever.

Another student some time ago suggested that CS352, the infamous compilers class, be removed from Purdue. Reasons cited:

1. Really really hard
2. Nobody remembered anything

My answer to one is pretty blunt: boo hoo. To the second, I think our department head responded correctly in saying that it's the student's fault. I hardly see how the curriculum is at fault for this. I'm somewhat biased in that I was probably the only person in my class who liked the stuff taught in compilers, but whatever. It was something new, which was refreshing.

But speaking of this student, complaints about the CS curriculum here can be addressed in a few ways:

1. Mid-semester reviews
2. USB feedback panel
3. Complaining to your advisor

I think the feedback panel is the most valuable, since it's a collection of faculty and sometimes advisors that listen to what you have to say.

I've wasted too much time on this now, and now I'm going to fail my OS exam since I haven't studied.