First year computer science in Trinity - tell me your impressions!

zoolinaieio

I'm a first year computer science student in UCD, and I was wondering what you guys think of the TCD course so far? (I'm a boards user but I'm posting this on an alternate account)

I'm going to list my impressions so far, I've tried to keep things as general as possible (as I have heard TCD's course is more hardware based in first year), but so far I've found :

- Most of our modules in UCD are useful, but we do have a module that is (in common opinion) a big time sink with little benefit
- The maths module we take is comparatively much more difficult than the rest of the modules
- One of our modules is continuous assessment, and while it is nice having no end-of-year exam for it, the continual testing week after week wears you down a bit
- Very happy with the amount of extra support classes available (maths support, drop-in computer science support (programming questions))
- A lot of people feel that the programming should be more hands on, rather than taught via slides
- Our lecturers I have to say are helpful and approachable - they will also respond to individual email queries and make themselves available if you're really stuck with a problem
- Our tutorials are okay, but some of them can feel very time pressured and some of them we walk out questioning their effectiveness at all

There are other things I can mention but I'll say these for now

Amy teehee

- Yeah we also have a pointless module. It's only like 2 hours a week though so, it's not too bad.
- I think all of our modules are like 20% continuous assessment and 80% exam. Which is a good mix I think, not too many assignments to be dealing with each week.
- Our programming modules are a good bit hands on - labs and tutorials etc. - but yeah it is mostly taught through slides too.
- They are progressing a bit slow though - the programming modules. In my opinion. And I didn't do programming beforehand if you were wondering. They say you mostly have to teach yourself how to program though - the lectures and labs mostly serve as an intro.
- All our lecturers are helpful too, but one of them's a little lame at teaching. He's approachable and all, but I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
- I gotta say I find some of the tutorials very very helpful in understanding **** I didn't get during the week. We get loads of them too, cos the labs are basically tutorials too, just a little bit more hands on.
- The hardware side of it, I don't really enjoy tbh. I mean it's interesting and all but I don't see how it's relevant to a graduate going into software. Which is going to be like 99% of graduates I presume.

what's programming like in UCD?

zoolinaieio

Amy teehee wrote: »

what's programming like in UCD?

The format of our programming classes is very "do it yourself", our lecturer uploads slides and audio lectures to our moodle site and he expects us to be able to start working on the programming assignments immediately (we are given 1 assignment every week). We have been programming in C since the beginning of semester, most of the assignments have been grand apart from one in particular which was very difficult in my opinion (and time consuming). We have just started on Perl today.

When we do have our lecturer, he will indeed talk on a programming or low-level computer topic - but it won't be anything directly related to the questions in our assignments. I think that he feels he's given us all the tools we need to go off and program ourselves autonomously, which frees him up to talk about other topics. However there are quite a few people that are struggling with this method and have expressed that they'd like a more direct approach to being taught programming basics, or how to approach/break down problems.

I will say though that our TA's are very helpful in our programming tutorials and they can clarify most problems. Also, it's been said that everyone in our comp sci building knows C inside-out, and most have a very good working knowledge of other languages