What are the 5 most important CS courses that every computer science student must take?
I was never a CS student, but there are certain things I’ve had to learn that are fundamental that I would have preferred to have learned in school:Fundamentals of programming languages: procedural vs functional. The role of garbage collection in high and low level language (yes, C has a form of it). Trade spaces between strong and weak variable typing. The use of threading and concurrency models and the memory models used.Data structures including at least linked lists (single and doubly linked), balanced trees, red/black maps, hash maps, directed graphs with and without cycles. Some basic graph theory. Sets and set operations. Efficiency concerns in trade space between different representations for lists and sets depending on the sizes involved.Algorithms, probably focusing on something practical. Linear algebra because it is super useful in everything from the sciences, engineering and AI is one obvious area. Algorithms for data structures is another.Compiler fundamentals, not compilers per se. Lexical analysis, parser construction, working with abstract syntax trees and transforming them and optionally turning an AST into an executable byte code output.Design patterns - one of the best bang for the buck things to teach as far as I’m concerned. These patterns are reusable and would build on earlier work on data structures and algorithms while not completely substituting for them.
Which math course to prepare for a masters CS program?
I am currently a physics undergrad hoping to switch over and get a CS masters in graduate school. As part of the physics curriculum we must take many math courses. I will have taken up to ODE, along with discrete math/linear algebra. This puts me in a spot where I am one math course short of a math minor. I have narrowed which courses I should take to the following: Partial Differential Equations, Numerical Analysis or Probability/Random Variables. My question is which of these would be the best choice if I wish to obtain a physics BS then go to grad school for a MS in CS.
Which course is better for learning python ?
I've worked through the CS-101 course years ago just to see what it's like. The other one is newer, so I'm just basing this on the syllabus. The CS-101 course is a real intro to computer science taught at a college freshman level (no prior experience), more of a quarter-system length course than a full semester. It's a sort of course that someone interested in CS might take if they didn't get AP Computer Science or something like it in high school. You learn enough Python for the assignments and projects, but the course really is about programming concepts and not the Python language. The Introduction to Python course appears to be just that, with the most of the syllabus (all but the final project) structured around Python language components. The final project sounds a bit simpler than the search engine page rank project of CS-101, but it's hard to say without doing it. So, the short version that joe posted (and had thumbed down by someone) really has some merit. They are both free courses and you'd have to be a complete brick not to learn *something* by trying out the first few hours. Neither one has a prerequisite, but think the Introduction to Python might be an easier first course for someone brand new, and the CS-101 could be a more in-depth course to take afterward. The front-page says 3 months for CS-101 and 5 weeks for Intro to Python. Most students will finish sooner than that, I imagine, but that's a measure of content that says there's about twice as much material to present in CS-101.