We have entered a society in which science are predominantly embedded in various aspects of our life, ranging from a scissor to a smart phone. We have been unprecedentedly depend on technology ever before, which gives rise to the golden era of geeks: no matter it is a glitch of your home appliances or your forever crashing python program, geeks are always prepared with the complete knowledge base to save your life.
Geeks only spend their time on the very most practical skills among the pool of human knowledge(they are born to solve technical issues after all). It seems that they should be immune to all form of arts---literature, music, language, speech, etc., and sometimes not even the basic writing skill(they probably rarely have the mood to lay their bottom to a chair in their high school English class, and thus barely pass the literacy test)
Is this the mere outcome of natural selection and human functionality specialization? OF COURSE NOT!
Writing is actually a universal skill which lays the foundation of academic communication across a broad range of subjects, an idea is not substantiated until it is articulated by words, and preferably on a piece of paper due to its considerably better portability than voice. It would make no sense if an idea is trapped in one's owe mind instead of spreading it to the world and make a difference, no matter how brilliant this idea is.
For instance, in Python, a well written doc-string or comment will greatly facilitates people to comprehend on your codes. The competency of a programmer is never only a matter of how sophisticated a program he/she can writes, but most importantly, how easy your boss/clients can understand it.
My impression of the first feel weeks.
I used to have this illusion that I should be able to breeze through 148 with the preparation from 108, it was not until the second week that I realized the level difficulty of this course was well disguised by the easy relaxing first week. I was sadly caught off guard by this course due to this sudden switch of teaching style from the '' handout spoon fed" in 108 to ''here are some example codes, go figure out the rest by yourself'' in 148.
Nevertheless, I guess 148 is actually what is a typical university course like where instructors show but not tell, study is more on your own instead of being forced or obliged. Besides the knowledge and skills, I think responsibility, is the most important thing we will be learning through our 4 years university career, that there are some duty which are not forced upon us, yet we have to fulfill them at our best effort.
And personally I think tutorial labs are very beneficial, this is something we didn't have back in csc108, where most people get the chance to practice what they learned merely by doing the assignments. Whereas in csc148, there is an incentive for students to come to labs since there will be a quiz relates to the lab practice.
