Spare all majors from lowered-bar programming classes

Being the Georgia Institute of Technology, the powers that be have decided to make it mandatory for most majors, come semesters, to take an Introductory computer programming course. This course will be equivalent to the current CS 1501 course. In addition to this, many majors have to take CS 1502, Introduction to Programming, in Java. This, in my opinion, is a great idea to ensure that all Tech graduates are-to a degree-computer literate and can communicate ideas with the machine, an increasingly important skill in the 21st century.

My gripes come however with the implementation of this computer literacy aim. As a STA (Supervisor TA) for the second introduction to programming course (CS 1502) and a part of the team that writes quizzes and programs for this class, I have a view from down in the trenches. The problem is that CS majors have chosen this major with the understanding that the majority of them when they graduate from Tech will pursue careers in fields that will require them to program or communicate ideas and thoughts effectively with a computer. This means that they need to be schooled thoroughly in the art that is programming. This involves beating into their fertile minds concepts about data structures, algorithms, problem-solving techniques, and design strategies. This is a complex task that involves having the students literally slave for hours at their computer.

As most will pursue this type of work as a career, this is the rest of their life that we are talking about: These students have to be given a rock-solid foundation on which to base the rest of their careers. At this moment, I don't see this being accomplished to the level of proficiency that is required by many sophomore/junior-level CS programming class, let alone industry. I have talked to many 2000-level CS TAs and this is a major concern. We are not doing a good job at the primary tier in the education process. The primary reason that I see this happening is that Computer Engineering and Computer Science majors are being forced to take the same course that is currently taught to Industrial Engineers and International Affairs majors.

The INTA and IE schools think that it is a great idea for their graduates to be computer literate; However, it is unreasonable to think that their students will be interested or motivated enough to do well in a course that is primarily focused on CS majors. This class has approximately 550 students this quarter, 63 of these students being IE majors. In this class their opinion carries considerable weight when determining the difficulty and focus of the assignments.

These assignments are way too difficult, in my opinion, for the run-of-the-mill IE/INTA major. This class ends up dictating the pace and time distribution for their entire quarter. They slog away at these assignments and spend inordinate amounts of time working at them. For many of these students this class becomes an exercise in frustration.

This time commitment for non-CS majors influences the difficulty of the assignments and compromises the level of difficulty that is required for CS majors to become proficient with basic concepts. This means that making a general class that non-CS/CmpE majors are forced to take with CS and CmpE majors ensures that we are doing justice to no one. The IE/INTA majors have a quarter from hell when they take CS1502 and the CS/CmpE majors that need this strong foundations for the rest of their life get shortchanged by this one-class-fits-all approach that is taken by the Georgia Tech administration.

There is only one solution: Tailor these "Introduction to CS" classes, specifically CS 1502, for the majors that take them. Giving a CS major an easy ride will only cause them pain in the future. Georgia Tech should do its job and tailor classes to the majors that are required to take them.

Shad Hashmi, Entertainment Editor, is right-on here. INTAs hate computers and hate people who make them take computer classes.