Course 6 major in 3 years?

Napoleon1
Fri, 06 Jul 2012 02:42:31 +0000

Characterizing 6.00 as an “intro to an intro class” is just incorrect. 6.00 has a much wider breadth and depth than 6.01 does. In fact, 6.01 doesn’t really teach programing at all, expecting you to already know the basics. As such, you’ll miss out on lots of useful little things (quick examples, tons more: overloading, file.io, hashing), a rigorous introduction to some complex ideas you’ll see later like algorithms, as well as some non-comp sci statistical applications that aren’t in the rest of the curriculum. It actually has some very nifty problem sets, like creating a RSS feed, plotting a Roomba path (similar to the 6.01 robot model minus the stochasticity). There’s actually very little overlap with 6.01 minus the first two weeks of 6.01, and it’s a very worthwhile class to take if you’ve never had any exposure to programming before.

Back to the OP’s question – Course 6 is definitely doable in 3 years; I even know of people doing it in 2 years (although they’re on the crazy side).