[breadmaster]

Prof. Franek says it very well at the beginning of the semester, and I'll paraphrase, "It's very difficult to teach someone how to program." With that said, you will find yourself spending a lot of time learning indepedently. Of course, that doesn't mean that there isn't help available for you should you reach a roadblock. The two T.A.s (Alvin and Jasper in Fall 2009) and Prof. Franek are eager to help you should you provide them with some code over the email.

This course uses JAVA. If you're familiar with any programming language's basics, you should have little issue. Most programming books I've looked at recently will assume you have a basic working knowledge of Loops, If Statements and Arrays. You will learn those basics in this class.

So, if you have zero to no experience in any programming language, you should be fine as long as you dedicate yourself to getting over the initial roadblocks of understanding the logic of programming.

The first assignment is a very easy "Hello World" kind of thing, but things ratchet up exponentially from one assignment to the next. You will likely find the third and fourth asssignments a challenge.

The one big complaint I had was Franek's punctuality, which was spotty to say the least. It is a cardinal sin to be a tardy prof, imo.

The class attendance dwindled after about a month and a half but that is a result of the fact that all notes are available on Franek's web-page and the pace of the lectures were slow and somewhat ill-planned.

Franek himself comes off as genuinely concerned with the material and understanding if you find youself in a bind.

The book is something I would recommed buying as it is well written and extremely helpful.

Assignments:

Assgn1: Basic Hello World stuff. Draw a rectangle, etc. Not very challenging.

Assgn2: Variables, simple math and shape drawing. Easy.

Assgn3: Loops and Methods. A sharp increase in difficulty from the previous assignments. Time consuming, but the book and web searches on the subject matter help a lot.

Assgn4: More methods and arrays. Challenging, time consuming, but doable. I found myself asking for a lot of help on this one.

Tests:

Test 1: 10 Multiple choice questions and a couple written programming questions. Only 50 minutes to do it, but it's not too hard.

Test2: 10 Multiple choice questions and a couple written programming questions. Only 50 minutes to do it, could have used more time. Promised an hour and 5 mins at first, but he shortened it down to 50 mins again during the exam. First part was all about loops. Second part was written programming.

Both test marks were heavily curved.

Final Exam: Three hours. Multiple choice first hald. Second half was written. Challenging. Make sure to study everything as there were a couple tricky ones.

Would this be a good (somewhat simple) elective for a first-year who has no computer programing experience? (aka me )

If anyone is planning to drop this course for first year on july 11th, i would really appreciate if you send me a message as I plan to take it the split-second that it is open again because it is currently full.

Is there any course where hello world isnt the first thing?

Originally Posted by aspire.dream

Would this be a good (somewhat simple) elective for a first-year who has no computer programing experience? (aka me )

This may be a little late since school already started, but I'm gonna put it out there just in case - i took this course as an elective in first year with prof Franek and I had close to zero experience programming. I found that the material took baby steps at first to accommodate those who were doing this for the first time, and I did really well on the first 2 assignments and first midterm. From then on it was a matter of asking for a lot of help (at least for me and other beginners like me ) because as was mentioned in the review, the difficulty rises pretty sharply after the first couple assignments but it's definitely doable even if you have little experience. I know they're changing the language from Java to Python this year so I'm not sure how that will affect the difficulty, but I imagine Python may be easier to get used to than Java.

loved it!! ... really easy to follow even for the ppl nt knowing programming at all..!!

Anyone take this with sekerinski?

Can someone post a review about this course since I'm wondering whether or not it is an easier elective to take, and if it is possible to get a 12 while having no experience whatsoever in programming?