OMG. We used CLU in a software engineering. The compiler (really a CLU-to-C translator I think?) was sooooo painfully slow. Can't imagine using it for anything moderately complicated.
I know what CLU the language is and its significance, but every time I read about CLU I still think: "Forget it, Mr. High and Mighty Master Control. You aren't making me talk."
I don't think the new course is "SICP with Python"; my impression (from talking to GJS!) is it's a different course that now uses Python. But maybe someone here has experience with it & can speak up.
Glenn Gould Reader, a collection of writings by Canadian pianist Glenn Gould
Eye, Brain, Vision by David Hubel, IMO an excellent introduction to visual neuroscience for the layperson and a really, really nice example of good scientific writing
Huygens and Barrow, Newton and Hooke by VI Arnold, for the density of ideas
Perceptrons by Minsky and Papert, mainly as an example of clear mathematical exposition
Seeing biology in light of processes on (evolutionary, developmental, ecological) timescales is one of the 2-3 realizations that made biology interesting for me.
Even at top-notch universities (public or private), when I talk to retired faculty, grading almost always comes up as a reason they don't want to teach anymore.
> No grading is perfect, but there’s also some undercurrent of an attitude that students have paid to be there and are entitled to a certain grade.
Given that students have taken on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that they'll have to repay no matter what and on top of that a lot of jobs being completely out of reach these days without an academic degree (that for fucks sake isn't remotely required by virtually all jobs requiring it!), that's completely understandable.
Want to fix higher education? Bring the hammer down on companies abusing it as a proxy for legally discriminating against classes of society that are closely correlated with poor academic outcomes. Academic education should be reserved for the best of the best of our youth, and it should be fully paid for by the government, not simply another hurdle to pass to get a job that pays barely more than flipping burgers.
I think it is rational that students can feel entitled to that.
I also think that the vast majority of poorly paid, non-tenured professors and other teaching staff don't love being the targets of this harassment, since it's not their fault and largely out of their control, and it's not like they're getting the bulk of the tuition money. (That mostly goes to administrative expenses and sports programs.)
Heck, most adjunct faculty are often paid below minimum wage and qualify for food stamps.
> Given that students have taken on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt that they'll have to repay no matter what and on top of that a lot of jobs being completely out of reach these days without an academic degree (that for fucks sake isn't remotely required by virtually all jobs requiring it!), that's completely understandable.
Would that my students were this engaged before the exam. Guess which students show up the most often for office hours? ... yeah, the ones that are getting the best grades.
If my students spent half as much time learning the subject as arguing with me about grades, they would be getting a higher grade than the one they are arguing for.
I'm not a big fan of putting everything in the cloud, but one of the advantages of online grading systems is that it is easier to make this kind of adjustment. The workflow goes like this: make a rubric item for a specific kind of mistake (it takes a little experience to know which mistakes are likely one-off and which ones are likely to be repeated by other students), assign X points, and later if you decide there are worse mistakes, adjust the points and that gets applied to everyone.
Online tools like Gradescope make this a little less painful (but still painful), but sometimes it's what's needed, especially on problems that are a little open-ended.
