<p>I'll be at my college in less than two weeks, but I'm a bit worried by the fact that I decided to take some intro-level programming classes despite never having programmed at all in my life.</p>
<p>I'm wondering if they'll ease me into it (since they are intro classes) or if they expect me to know things right off the bat.</p>
<p>It's somewhat important that I do well considering I am also taking Chem and Calc this semester and plan on going premed or prepharm. (I just figured a little programming experience maybe with a minor or certificate would boost my stock in the health industry.)</p>
<p>My intro course started from scratch, but it seemed challenging for students who had never written a program before (not even on a graphing calculator). The challenge is not learning the programming language; the challenge is to get your brain to think algorithmically and break a problem down into loops and conditionals. Students who had some prior experience with that were doing noticeably better than the rest.</p>
<p>@ b@r!um, is there anything you’d recommend I do in the weeks before classes start just to familiarize myself with it? From the book selection, it looks like I’ll be learning Javascript, although I do not have my book with me yet for reference.</p>
<p>It has a strong javascript section, so that should really help.</p>
<p>Really, the big thing is to get in the right way of thinking. Every problem needs to require you to think about how you can break it down into a series of tiny problems.</p>
<p>In these two weeks, start working ASAP. Having never programmed before, you will need to work twice as hard. Go online to good resources like theNewBoston.com, and start learning.</p>
<p>wiscongene
javascript is a rather straightforward language and its used for web programming
in other words its not a full fledged language like java, c, c++ etc
so theres that</p>
<p>It’s an introductory class - the instructor should be obligated to go over the basics. If there’s no prerequisite, you have nothing to worry about.</p>
<p>I took an introductory Python programming course, without any knowledge of programming, and loved it! That’s how a lot of people become computer science majors at my school.</p>
<p>if it is an intro class, the instructor should teach as if you have no expierence. a lot of studies dont have a lot of knowledge going into their fields of college. thats why you go to college, to learn. sure previous expereince always helps, but you should be ok</p>
<p>The difficulty of intro programming courses varies widely. My son’s intro course at his university had over 80 programming assignments. These varied in time required from five minutes to thirty hours - and this for someone with experience. It was called computing so there were a lot of concepts in computer science (stacks, queues, lists, process structure, operating system, etc.) covered too. There were a few papers to write too. Some of the programs would be quite difficult to do without an algorithms reference text.</p>
<p>I’ve seen courses where there are as few as ten programming assignments too - probably on the order of an hour each for someone with a little experience.</p>
<p>Could you post the school and course number here? We could look it up and make more specific recommendations to get started ahead of time.</p>
<p>“Note we do not consider this an “introductory” course in the sense that some students assume it means the course is easy. This is an introduction to programming that, for some, will be very challenging though others will find the opposite given their aptitude for this material. There is no clear way to predict which you’ll be so assume this course’s difficulty is similar to 300 level math courses.”</p>
<p>This course looks like a lot of work, especially with no background. I would read through the three pages linked above.</p>
<p>Hmm…that’s discouraging. While at orientation, I expressed my concern to my advisor that I had only an interest in programming and no formal training and this is what she set me up with.</p>
<p>I believe I have a week-long drop period to see how things go, but I’ll definitely contact my advisor beforehand. That said, I’m definitely meaning to attack this year head on, so maybe I’ll give it the old <em>college</em> try (ha!).</p>
<p>It does say that no prior experience is necessary, so I wonder if there even is an “easier” option. It’s a shame because I really want to learn some programming but feel like I’d need a curriculum to do so.</p>
<p>And Mike, I hope you don’t mind if I shoot you a pm as soon as I’m home (and off my clunky phone). I figure I’ll need all the study buddies I can get.</p>
<p>im guessing the material itself isnt that hard but the pace they go makes it seem a lot worse
in other words they expect you to go from beginner to intermediate pretty quickly which can be tough</p>