CPSC 210

A very enjoyable and practical course in my opinion. The project is one of the best aspects of the course. You get a chance to be creative and apply what learn to build some actual software. The lecture content is pretty bread and butter OOP stuff but is nevertheless very important material. The last part of the course covers design patterns which was the highlight of the course for me. The course might feel a bit on the easier side for a CPSC course but I don’t advise slacking too much if you want to learn and do well.

The concepts in this course are useful. The course overall is good, but I have a big issue with PraireLearn just makes everything so much harder for no reason. In this class we use a system called PrairieLearn for exams and practice exams. To put it frankly, this system is horrible. First of all, why are we writing code in a web browser? This course should learn from its pre-req CPSC 110 and move onto programming in an IDE for exams and all practices. Also it should really have autograders. Trying to match our answers with the solution when the solution can be often coded in maybe ways is horrible.

For practice problems, you can only answer the question once, if you want to try again, you have to creat another instance of the whole practice set. The text editor is bulky and annoying. Exams seriously tests more on predicting what the question writer wants. It is also very hard to perfect grades, because of multiple choice. You can easily get 0 on a question if you just miss a few details.

PraireLearn randomizes the order of answer choices for some reason. Consider this arbitrary case , if the question involves 3 variables, usually the question would list the answer choices (1 1), (1 2), (2, 1), (2, 2), (3, 1), (3, 2) or in some other order. With the order randomized it could be (2, 2), (1 2), (1 1), (3, 1) , (2, 1), (3, 2). Which messes up the flow of natural problem solving especially when the answer choices are full sentences and you need to pick out which parts are different.

PraireLearn randomizes variable names. Again, this makes every unnecessarily harder for no reason. They love using arbitrary names with no meaning at all like “smurf”, “lorem”, “ipsum.” Again, you have to look back and forth to the question. Even if they just used random everyday words, it would make it easier.

The questions are just not that clear. If you have a slightly different interpretation you can expect a maximum of 50% on that question.

Overall the course material is very very easy, but the PraireLearn system just suck. 0/10. It adds so much extra resistance to the otherwise very easy course material. CPSC 210 can easily be a 3 credit course. Also its hard to wrap my head around how a “second year” computer science course at “a good” university has so much overlap with Programming 10, 11, 12 in highschools.

I had Steven, his teaching was excellent, he is clearly and effective in everything he teaches. The course is modularised very effectively. I wish there was more skepticism on OOP and there is a heavy reliance on the debugger and other IDE tools which is not great. The content is engaging and the “fliiped” lecture style is really helpful, especially since Steven will sit down next to you and help you through problems in a really helpful way. He is also helpful if you ask questions that reach outside the exact course content. I would reccomend coming in with some experience in java or other (non-racket) languages, the concepts are important.

Excellent course. Lectures are easy to follow, all practice materials and labs are highly relevant to lecture materials, and term project allows students to problem-solve independently.

Well-structured course. Concepts covered are very valuable for the workplace, job interviews, and general software engineering. Instructors are attentive, engaging, and fun. Felix especially!

fun and relaxing course

Its a Software development course. You build a project over the course of the semester and learn about program design. Lecture content is pretty simple but there is a large time commitment due to the project. Great introduction to software development.