11.18
One of the problems I have with the Computer Science program at Georgia Tech is the fact that there are very few opportunities for students to learn the hot languages in the classroom. Many students learn languages such as Rails or PHP in their free time hacking code together on their own but most do not do so and lack the motivation or ability to learn by themselves. I am embarking on the quest to solve this problem and the result is what I call Coders Anonymous: The Programmer’s Support Group.
The concept behind Coders Anonymous is to learn programming languages somewhat individually but in a group setting. The way I currently plan to implement this at Georgia Tech is a weekly two hour meeting where we get all interested students into a room (a big one based on current feedback). We decide on a language or two to focus on (I see rails, php and django being the hot topics initially) and start going through some online tutorials. When one person gets stuck, there is probably someone else in the room who understands the concept and is able to clear the doubt. We also hope to have a couple people in the room who are proficient with the language to help out.
The advantages:
- It becomes a group activity.
- You have someone to push you when you start slacking. Kind of the same as getting a workout buddy.
- When you get stuck, there is someone who can help you out.
- With a large enough group and a couple months, you will be able to pick up not 1 or 2 but quite a few languages.
On top of the basic concept, I also see some potential for other tertiary activities such as instructed classes by members of the community (for instance someone from the Atlanta Ruby Users Group doing a seminar on Rails) and hackathons. Another problem this will fix for those of the entrepreneurial mindset will be a larger pool of good developers looking for a job/project to work on.
This is just my initial concept but I do plan to launch this by the end of this month, so any feedback or suggestions are welcome.
Update
The ACM is planning on launching a program of options classes this Spring. In order to not confuse students, I’m putting this project on hold for the near future.
A name change might be appropriate, as * Anonymous groups exist to quite the thing. E.G. People go to NA to quit drugs, not score new types of dope.
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Sounds like a great idea. Keep us updated!
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I’m a research scientist over in CSE. If there’s interest, someone here could work with students on topics like GPU programming (e.g. CUDA, OpenCL), parallel systems (MPI, OpenMP), etc. Dr. Vuduc definitely is interested, and this could pair well with his HPC for Undergraduates class next semester (CS 4225).
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A Georgia Tech degree is not a trade school degree. Focus should be placed on foundational concepts not on language du jour. Ruby will be a forgotten fad in ten years. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself how many people are still out there that write Tcl/Tk. Seriously, thanks to the Threads program, some “Computer Science” students can get a “degree” without even taking theory, or hell, even 2110.
I think the idea of a workshop surveying popular languages is a good idea, but I take issue with your first sentence. What you have stated should not be considered a problem.
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