Question

I thought this was a course on programming but there seems to be a lot of ancillary subject matter. In particular, a lot of math I can currently do with a calculator program, but do not know how to do by hand. I see people asking a lot of math questions in the latter part of the lessons, so before I go any further I need to determine if I have the time. I want to learn programming. Not math, history, or botany - programming. Does anyone know of a course that focuses ONLY on programming? TIA!

Answer 1

to learn programming you have to have examples or problems to solve
math problems lend themselves well as programming examples
you don't have to really learn the math; they tell you what to do (what operation to perform) - but you do have to be able to read the problem sets critically to determine what they trying to get you to practice.
the lectures are prettty focused on programming

Answer 2

What you say is true, but since I have been scripting for many years I am quite sure one could either give the solution to the math problems up front or better yet devise problems having no math in them whatsoever. If you go to the book store and pick up a book on Java it will not ask you to calculate prime numbers anywhere. I am working ~50hr/wk. I simply don't have the time for this method of learning, and I'm an auditory learner so the massive tomes at Borders aren't helping. If you know of an online course that uses a more explicative method of teaching it would greatly help me.

Answer 3

watch the lectures, they are really good - the profs have impressive resumes. it is an introductory class - they go thru different algorithms, patterns some real basic computer science stuff. you don't necessarily have to do the problem sets, they are for practice - the prime number thing is about looping and flow control, not prime numbers

Answer 4

classes, functions, a little polymorphism, simulation, code testing, error handling, the affects of data types on proccesing complexity - lots of stuff

Answer 5

OK I'll go ahead and watch the lectures. It's just frustrating because there are no examples to follow. No textbook and not even the solutions to the assignments. If that one peice wasn't missing it would be a fantastic course.

Answer 6

the solutions are readily available here amd there are at least a few ppl that have taken this course and posted there solutions on their website. The profs must also have shied away from the large tomes in the book stores. There are a number of online resources/books listed under the readings 'tab' with various chapters coordinated with the lectures. The Tutorial in the Python documentation is a must - being a scripter you will probably like Python - the Tutorial goes a long way to showing the nuts and bolts of the language.

Answer 7

I think of it as being due to the course being taught at MIT. Math problems are probably pretty good examples for these students. I work in biology where a lot of our scripting work is with text files. I'm enjoying learning thinking about the math.

I would also say that as the lectures from a course, it is assuming you will be spending many weeks on the course just like the MIT students are.

Answer 8

sorry to say but programmin has alot of math in it , you can learn the basic of what a programming language does but your always going to be dealing with numbers no matter what piece of software you write, you dont have to get to in depth with the math but it is helpful

Answer 9

" Text processing is arguably what most programmers spend most of
their time doing. The information that lives in business
software systems mostly comes down to collections of words
about the application domain--maybe with a few special symbols
mixed in. Internet communications protocols consist mostly of
a few special words used as headers, a little bit of
constrained formatting, and message bodies consisting of
additional wordish texts. Configuration files, log files, CSV
and fixed-length data files, error files, documentation, and
source code itself are all just sequences of words with bits
of constraint and formatting applied."

from http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/intro.txt
hope i don't get in trouble for posting that

Answer 10

that is a pretty good resource so far ... http://gnosis.cx/TPiP/

Answer 11

Programming is Computation. Computation is Algorithms. Algorithms involves Math. There is no "ancillary" material in this course.

Answer 12

malpaso, I apologize that my statement was not easier for you to understand, but it is indeed factual. Ancillary means "connected to but of secondary importance". Counting prime numbers, for example, is not a required skill to become a programmer. They have this cool invention called a calculator for that - one does not need to reinvent the wheel in order to become a programmer. So, the specific examples the teacher chose are overly complex. This is a fact. What I did not say, but understandably can see how it could be mistaken to have implied, is that no math is needed in programming whatsoever. That would not be true. Programming is indeed based on math. I should have stated with greater clarity that it is only a superfluous level of math I find tedious and distracting.

Answer 13

bwCA, thanks for the links. They are extremely heplfull!