I was looking something up on the UCSD CSE website tonight for a form I was filling out…well, one thing led to another, and I ended up poking around on the CSE website and checking out what’s new in the department these days.
The less exciting things included such news as one of the professors I had in college had died, which wasn’t particularly surprising because he looked like he should have been long retired when I took his class…oh well, I guess the next generation of students won’t have him refusing to answer questions about whether or not they need a blue book for their midterm.
The tritonlink website (formerly studentlink) has been upgraded a bit. Now on the online course listings, they have a link that you can read the cape reviews for the last several years for a given class just by clicking a link next to the course title. No more having to buy CAPE books for a dollar off a pallet on library walk (or well, technically usually they were on the other side of price center by the ATMS…but whatever) that only included the most recent year. Of course, the online cape results don’t include the written descriptions of the most common written feedback, but they do show you the breakdown statistically of the professor’s rating in a bunch of specific areas. Professor Burkhard still gets amazingly low 43% ratings for his classes. Somehow I successfully managed to never take any of his classes, but one of my friends used to TA for him. But what’s interesting to note on his CAPE reviews is although his “overall” rating as a professor consistently scores low, in the individual categories they were asked to rate, almost everyone rated him with a neutral or positive rating. And 40% of the class was expecting an A, which was much higher than the percent expecting an A from better rated professors. And of course, there’s the impressive 9 or 17 students who turned in a cape form for a 90 person class…apparently a lot of people still never go to class.
But the bigger more impressive change was the curriculum changes. I’m kind of jealous because they pretty much got rid of every class that I hated and that seemed completely useless and replaced them with classes that fill some particular gaps the program previously had and just are genuinely interesting and useful material.
They demolished compilers B, and now compilers A is just compilers. They demolished ECE 53B, the brutal electrical engineering class where they threaten that you have to learn so much stuff so quickly because those “poor” computer engineering students will get dumped into ECE 101 and need to catch up on this stuff. They eliminated physics lab requirement, and replaced it with a programming lab. They removed the additional science course “elective” which I never really understood the point of in the first place. So what did they replace all those requirements with? A “tools and techniques” lab class where they learn how to debug; C++ for Java programmers, a much needed course on teaching the *language* of C++…it appears the way they got around the previous reasons they couldn’t have such a class by making it a 2 unit course; a “perspectives” seminar where you get indoctrination in and orientation to research opportunities, industry careers, and graduate study programs; and a course on “software engineering”, where they teach design/implement/test, IDEs, version control, test harnesses, etc…all that stuff that was among the stuff you learn in the first sixth months of being “in the real world” of a software engineering job. They also have a number of changes to the technical electives offerings, most of which are no surprise, they’re things that were offered as 199’s when I was in school, and some class on learning to read and write technical english that exists only on paper in the catalog as an approved class but isn’t offered.
But all in all, all those changes are really practical from a preparing you for a career in computer science. And they took out/condensed some of the things that have historically been the most brutal parts of the program that I personally didn’t find beneficial in preparing me for a computer science career. Like that “math/science elective”…and particularly ECE. The problem with the ECE program previously was it was just really intense trying to cram 3-6 quarters worth of electrical engineering material into 2 quarters for the computer engineering folks. Now, instead, computer science people only take one quarter of electrical engineering, and the computer engineering students take three quarters of lower division electrical engineering…in the same sequence as the electrical engineering majors take, slowed down enough that it would better prepare you for the upper division electrical engineering courses.
I mean, the thing is, if you’re really just interested in software programming, you really don’t need a strong background in analog circuits. And if you were really interested in doing embedded circuits and stuff, you’d be doing computer engineering or electrical engineering, not computer science.
And one other interesting side effect of all the curriculum changes is aside from having a shift in and toward the lower division requirements, suddenly physics becomes suggested as a course for sophomore year (which I think is more appropriate in terms of student preparedness/success in the class), instead of freshman year, because freshman year, you’re taking more hands on programming/computer science theory classes (and good for actually getting a good feel for the major early on), and it moves up the suggested time for cse 100 from fall of junior year to winter of sophomore year which really gives you a lot more freedom and flexibility in terms of planning for and taking the upper division electives you’re interested in…which also helps with the graduating on time thing.
But I’m still kind of jealous that if I were a freshman at UCSD now, I wouldn’t have had to take physics 2cl, ece 53b (and for that matter most of the material in 53a), bild 10, and cse 131b. Granted, I enjoyed compilers B, because I had Ord for it so it was like CSE 30 rehash + compilers A rehash + a bunch of homework, but reducing compilers from 2 to 1 quarter I think is quite good for students in terms of what other courses they have the opportunity to take as a result.
And keep in mind the bible also says the next judgment will not be by water but by fire… (2 Peter 3:6-7)