August 1st, 2024

MIT: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education course focuses on essential computer science skills like command line usage and version control, running from January 13 to January 30, 2020, with resources available online.

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MIT: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

The Missing Semester of Your CS Education is a course designed to address the gap in computer science education regarding tool proficiency. While traditional classes cover advanced topics like operating systems and machine learning, this course focuses on essential skills such as mastering the command line, using text editors, and leveraging version control systems. The course aims to enhance students' efficiency with these tools, allowing them to tackle complex problems more effectively. The schedule includes topics like shell tools, data wrangling, debugging, and security, with lectures taking place from January 13 to January 30, 2020. Video recordings of the lectures are available on YouTube, and the course has been shared beyond MIT to benefit a wider audience. The course is co-taught by Anish, Jon, and Jose, and students can reach out via email for questions. Additionally, the course encourages community involvement through translations of the course notes into various languages, with a call for contributions to the translation efforts. Acknowledgments are given to individuals and organizations that supported the course's development and recording. The course is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA, and guidelines for contributions and translations are provided.

10 comments

By @_zoltan_ - 3 months

My first semester at uni doing a CS/math degree I had a class called introduction to unix which taught everybody bash/awk/sed scripting and how to use the CLI to do stuff on Linux. It was great.

It also had a really high failure rate, like 60%ish.

By @gnabgib - 3 months

Popular last year (1024 points, 336 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34934216

By @LadyCailin - 3 months

Ha, this is great. I actually did an independent study course my senior year of college, where I went around to the freshman and sophomore level classes and took over the course for a day, to teach relevant tooling and such, much like this. I had been working as a software developer for a small company since I started learning programming, so I had figured a lot of this out the hard way on my own, and was sort of pissed they didn’t teach this kind of stuff, so I would have absolutely loved a crash course like this. Kudos to the folks putting this up.

By @randoglando - 3 months

Those who like this may also like "Command Line Efficiency": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXuXij68DtE

By @lbill - 3 months

That's exactly the kind of resource I was looking for, to help friends (and myself!) with the basics of using a computer for programming.

By @fragmede - 3 months

> The class is being run during MIT’s “Independent Activities Period” in January 2020 — a one-month semester that features shorter student-run classes.

Many students go home during this winter "semester", as Boston is cold and snowy, but the learning and bonding during this time can be invaluable.

By @JojoFatsani - 3 months

Get this in front of your juniors ASAP

By @up2isomorphism - 3 months

I would say you really don’t need a course for such things when internet is the course and a better one.

By @behnamoh - 3 months

Dupe.

MIT: The Missing Semester of Your CS Education

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