Check out 6.00.1x computer science class on edX!

I just finished the last program for a computer science class on edX and I urge you to try it.

I took this class:

MITx: 6.00.1x Introduction to Computer Science and Programming Using Python

I was more interested in how MIT taught the class than in the material itself because I already know the subjects covered.

The class taught the basics of programming – expressions, variables, loops, if statements, and functions.

It also had a large focus on bisection or binary search and the performance benefits of this type of search over sequentially reading through a list.

It also covered lists, hash tables, trees, stacks, and queues.

It discussed object-oriented programming.

The class concluded with the professor stating that the programming and computer science skills taught in this class are key to advancing your career, even if you do not work in a computer related job.

I interacted with a number of students in the class and found some that were in other fields and were having success taking the class.  Others were in business computing or IT and yet did not have a computer science background so they were good programmers but learning new concepts.  Many struggled with the class but, it is free, and is given often. The class starts up again August 26th.  Nothing stops you from taking it multiple times.

I tried to think about whether I should recommend this class to the people I work with as a method of helping develop my coworkers that do not have experience in these areas.  At first I thought that the subject is too academic and has no connection to their jobs. But, after thinking about it for a while, I now believe that just the opposite is true.

Searching for practical applications of the class, I first remembered the programs that we wrote that compared searching sequentially through a list to using binary search.  In one test case the sequential method took 15 seconds but the binary search took less than one second.  This reminded me so much of tuning Oracle SQL queries.  The sequential scan of the list was like a full table scan in Oracle.  The binary search was like looking up a single row using an index scan.  As I tune Oracle queries my computer science knowledge of binary search and binary trees makes it easy to understand index and full table scans.

In another example, we recently had slowness on a Weblogic portal server.  CPU was getting maxed out and the CPU spent most of its time in a Java ConcurrentHashMap object.  I don’t know the internals of Weblogic and I have never used a ConcurrentHashMap but I know how hashing works.  I know that hashing is very fast until your hash table fills up or if the hash function distributes the items in an unequal way. My knowledge of hashing helped me grasp why our portal server was using a lot of CPU despite my lack of access to its internals.

So, contrary to my original fear that the edX class was too academic and not practical I believe that the concepts covered are very practical.  If you do not know how binary search works or what a binary tree is you will benefit from 6.00.1x on edX.  If you can not explain how a hash table works and what causes hashing to slow down you can learn from 6.00.1x. And, if you have never written a computer program, although you may find the class difficult and have to take it more than once, you will benefit from 6.00.1x on edX.

– Bobby