waterloo computer science

[Rahul]

hey everyone,

i got accepted to waterloo uni for comp sci co-op and i accepted the offer. some questions i have are, even tho my major is in comp sci, can i take the course CS 115 and CS 116 and then take CS 135 later on or do i have to take CS 135 first year. Im decent in programming, but during the summer i may forget some stuff. Im just want to know if its okay to take CS 115 and CS 116 even tho im majoring in Computer Science. thanks


CS 115 is a first year course in programming for students with little or no programming experience. It covers most of the material from the frist eight weeks of CS 135.

[rizzix]

Don't panic, go ahead with CS 135. It should be a breeze.

[endless]

i dont think we get a choice, it's CS135 for CS majors. when filling out the math course selection, we are basically put into CS and MATH 135, with the exception of advanced courses. speaking of which, you should fill out soon so as to get the co op sequence you want (first come first serve).

CS135 is supposed to be accessible to those of us who have no programming experience. perhaps you could take a look at the text book which is available online (packaged with Scheme) to ease your worries.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

135 is the normal course for CS majors. You can take 115 but you need to make a case for it (something stronger than just being apprehensive). Normally the 115-116-136 route is for people who don't start out as CS majors but change their minds.

Depending on what your high school was like, "forget[ting] some stuff" over the summer may be advantageous.

[A.J]

well, from what I gather, CS 135/145 isn't that hard. They teach you Scheme, and basic algorithms and data structures.

[DemonWasp]

Relax. CS 135 is a gentle introduction to the university. UW recognises that students are at varying stages in programming capabilities and language knowledge, so they start slow.

When I took CS134 (similar to 135, but in Java; I don't think it exists anymore), it was trivial. They don't even expect that you've seen object-oriented programming yet; they may have even spent some time teaching us what a method was. OOP isn't formally addressed until second year (CS246).

[Prabhakar Ragde]

DemonWasp @ Thu Jun 18, 2009 12:08 am wrote:

Relax. CS 135 is a gentle introduction to the university. UW recognises that students are at varying stages in programming capabilities and language knowledge, so they start slow.

135 isn't as slow as it was earlier, since 115 now exists. However, we try not to make it overwhelming.

Quote:

When I took CS134 (similar to 135, but in Java; I don't think it exists anymore), it was trivial.

134 was not at all similar to 135. I designed both courses, but after I left 134 and it switched to using Java, it devolved considerably, mostly under the strain of trying to teach Java to both majors and non-majors. 134 was a pretty standard "CS2" course such as you might find at most institutions. 135 is quite different: recursion and lists in week 4, trees in week 6, because of the use of a language which makes it a lot easier to talk about serious ideas without a lot of syntactic overhead.

[Prabhakar Ragde]

A.J @ Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:29 pm wrote:

well, from what I gather, CS 135/145 isn't that hard. They teach you Scheme, and basic algorithms and data structures.

I don't think CS 135 is that hard (there are two ways people make it harder on themselves: one is to not do the assignments, and another is to think about how a problem might be solved in Java or C++ and then try to translate that into Scheme). But CS 145, being compressed and enhanced, is not easy.

[Dark]

endless @ Wed Jun 17, 2009 4:17 pm wrote:

i dont think we get a choice, it's CS135 for CS majors. when filling out the math course selection, we are basically put into CS and MATH 135, with the exception of advanced courses. speaking of which, you should fill out soon so as to get the co op sequence you want (first come first serve).

CS135 is supposed to be accessible to those of us who have no programming experience. perhaps you could take a look at the text book which is available online (packaged with Scheme) to ease your worries.

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