[KwartzLab] Computer Science from the Top and Bottom

[Ben Brown]

Sounds like an awesome idea, especially for people like me who wouldn't
even get the time of day at the University.

I'd be in, anytime other than Monday or Tuesday would be great.

Cheers,
Ben

On 11/27/2012 10:52 AM, Stephen Paul Weber wrote:
> It is no secret that I'm fairly disgruntled in general with the state of
> University education, especially in my field.
>
> Over past months I've been working on the construction of a curriculum
> that
> provides base Computer Science concepts.  The core philosophy is to start
> simultaneously at the "top" with the highest abstraction level (building
> syntax and semantics) and the "bottom" with the lowest level (RAM
> layout and
> machine instructions), and then move in step towards the middle.
>
> I am on track to have an edited second draft of the curriculum
> completed by
> the end of December, and will then wish to run a course based on this
> curriculum in the new year as a way to both test the philosophy and gain
> feedback.
>
> The intended target for this first version of the course will be (1)
> programmers with no formal Computer Science background, (2) people
> with a CS
> degree who wish to get a refresher (or to heckle me), (3) mathish or
> sysadmin persons who have an interest in getting some base in Computer
> Science.  Based on conversations with people both in the greater
> KWartzLab
> community and Waterloo in general, I am convinced that there are many
> such
> persons in the region.
>
> The format for this first version of the course will be a fairly
> fast-paced
> roughly 8-week (notionally, 1 night per week) presentation that involves
> a bare minimum of lecture-style and a maximum of tinkering with
> concepts and
> Q&A where students can get concrete answers to the bits of the material
> they're playing with or struggling with.  It will of course be entirely
> gratis for attendance and nothing will be mandatory.
>
> All that said, I'm sending this email to gauge interest in the
> community in
> such a course, and also to get feedback from any interested parties on
> what
> sort of timeline (assuming a course starting early January) in terms
> of days
> of the week, number of hours per session people could put up with, etc.  
> Venue would be TBD, though I would love to do it at KWartzLab.
>
>
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