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E-PrinceMore than a dozen years ago, I taught for one semester at Harvard. A good friend was taking her sabbatical and asked me to take over her course. This was well before I came to Princeton, and, though I had ...
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Love the Chaucer reference.
"I gave a guest lecture in a programming course and spent a day hanging out with friends from Harvard’s computer science department. Some of them have gone temporarily over to the dark side by taking on serious administrative responsibilities."
LAWL coolest guy evar, btw. He was my freshman and sophomore year adviser. so 1337
The story of the prospective government major turned computer science professor is an amusing tale, but the overall description of the Harvard course sounds like something out one of Dante's lower levels of hell: 457 overly heterogeneous undergrads jammed into one class where they will mostly be taught by 31 teaching assistants, all but one of whom is a fellow undergrad.
Princetonians, be grateful for what this college is not.
Great Article. Dr. Kernighan is awesome! Don't let his modesty fool you-- he remembers almost all of his students' names (even in the big lectures of COS 109!)
Yikes: That's not exactly correct. The professor does most of the teaching, not the teaching assistants. The professor lectures for 3 hours per week, whereas the TAs grade, hold lab office hours, and run small discussion sections.
Also, 457 heterogeneous students is no longer the case. Computer science was exceptionally popular in 1996, and they have since added several intro CS courses for non-majors, which relieves some of the load.