Adventures in CS-112: earthexe Takes an Introductory Computer Science Class

As part of my major, I am required to take a class titled "Foundations of Computer Science." And so far, every day has been magical in its own little way. I am currently beginning week 3 of 10 in this class, and so far I have learned:

• How to follow the textbook creators on twitter
  
• What a tablet is
  
• How to use emoticons (:
  
• How to use a web browser
  
• The difference between a laptop and a desktop PC
  
• What "the cloud" is
  
• How to use proper "netiquette" online - don't post any "flames!"
  
• What HTTP stands for
  
• The literary background of the word "mobile"
  

While actual, useful things I have learned include:

• How to connect to and use an FTP server
  

There's also a very vocal guy who consistently browses 4chan in class, and eagerly advertises that he does so at every opportunity.

I'll be back with some more stories and tidbits. Please sit back and enjoy yourselves.

So, let me first describe my first day, when I first got a taste as to what this appointment every Monday through Thursday at 9 AM has to offer.

I was a bit sleepy that day, as I had just finished moving into my new apartment, and I wasn't all that used to waking up this early in the morning. But it didn't really hurt all that much, since we were just talking about syllabus things, and what the textbook was called. The professor hadn't listed it on the school website because they didn't know how, which is always a good sign for someone with a PhD in computer science to be teaching a course. It was somewhere around 30 dollars, and I decided to go buy it at the bookstore later that evening, as I couldn't find it elsewhere for cheaper.

In my drowsy early morning stupor, still ill with a cold I had caught earlier in the week, I saw something in the corner of my eye, that was unique in the room. I had never seen this anywhere else in my life, nor anywhere else in the room - what I saw was the spitting image of a fedoraman with his laptop open, scrolling through a particular image board with a white and red color scheme, in class. I couldn't see what he was typing, but at one point, he opened up a new tab to Encyclopedia Dramatica, copied a section of the Tumblr article, and pasted it there, as if with a sense of purpose. And then he made a rage comic.



Never have I been so fascinated in my life. This man looked as if he were pulled directly from his mother's basement, and put here as part of a museum exhibit. Normally, I would hate to make fun of the guy, or any human being, but there was one, vital difference between what you see in the bestiary and what we had here.

This man was very, very vocal.

I tried to ignore him, but before too long, he grew bored of using the school's wifi to browse memes, and turned to his neigbor to ask a question, namely, "Have you ever used 4chan before?" As if he were looking for more of his own kind. It's a gesture of goodwill, and I can give him points for at least that - but his neighbor was also very disinterested in the subject, and simply shook his head no, saying "no thanks" and turned back to the paper he had in his hands. Still, the creature persisted. "Really? Not even once?" He seemed almost confused.

His laughs were loud, and pierced the quiet of the classroom as the professor took roll call at a snail's pace. I didn't look to see what he was laughing at, nor did I care. ...but to be fair, I was also using my smartphone to talk to people on discord. I'm pretty sure every student in that room was bored out of their mind.

When class was over, we all got up to leave. Mr. 4chan, is what I will call him, enthusiastically rushed to the door to hold it open for everybody, which would also be a pretty nice gesture if the doors didn't prop open by themselves. Unfortunately, I was among the last to go out, and he followed me as I walked to my next class. We had a brief conversation that went something like this.



I tried to move more quickly to get ahead, but he followed and tried again, with a new line of dialogue.

"Hell yeah, one more class, and then it's lunch time, mmmhm! Or... breakfast, if you're like me. Heh, breakfast, brexit, whatever. Haha! Brexit. Fuck yeah, British independence day!"

I didn't respond; soon enough I escaped and sat down in my next class, which was much more enjoyable. My deepest darkest fear is that I might in any way resemble this man. I look at myself in the mirror at home, and see many signifying features, which include square glasses, a Hawaiian shirt, and an unshaven beard on my neck - but then I remembered that I actually dislike Deadpool, the logo of which was proudly emblazoned on his backpack. I was relieved, until I realized I would be spending the rest of the quarter in a class with him, and probably several more over the next two years, seeing as how we are both computer science majors.

For my first class period ever at this college, it certainly wasn't making all that great of an impression on me.

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This CS curriculum seems questionable. I sincerely hope they intend to teach an actual programming language by the end of the course.

This fellow student seems like the sort of guy who's going to leave college a changed man. Maybe.

I had no idea people like that actually existed. Kinda like the stereotype of all tumblr users having bright purple hair and ranting obnoxiously about social justice, I thought it was just an exaggeration.


Also, foundations of computer science makes me think of learning a bit of python, basic datastructures, maybe learning the conventions for various uncommon editing programs, at a stretch. Not Learning How to Use a Computer.

At the very least, they shouldn't besmirch the all-holy name of compsci with that stuff. It's like calling algebra "Foundations of Vector Calculus" because it's math and they both deal with lines.

shave your neck unless you have a face beard too. i'd say "please" but it's not a request or a question

Seriously, tho, in my first CS class we learned Java and sorting algorithms. Python would be a more than acceptable substitute. If that's not the sort of stuff they're eventually going to get around to teaching you, then you're for seriously wasting your time and should try to test out of the course requirement or run screaming for the hills or something.

But in the meantime, tell us more! More!

To be fair, I skipped straight into the full programming courses in my previous school, without even bothering with the 100 level courses - by then, I had already created my first game in Unity, and the one computer science professor there was impressed... I suppose I would be, too, if I used notepad to program in Java.

Thankfully, my new professor is at least a doctor in his field, but his knowledge is showing signs of age. Again, I hate the idea of turning a person into a joke, but the textbook and course material already makes itself out to be one, as you have already seen. He reminds me of someone's dad, who is at least a little bit computer savvy, but doesn't quite use them extensively every day of his life, to the point where he has to struggle to name all the latest technologies. Obviously, he knows more than I do, but there's a certain inescapable air of removal from present day about the way he talks.

The real icing on the cake, though, is that English clearly isn't his first language. If I had to guess, I would probably say French, but the accent is a little hard to pin down. Definitely somewhere in Europe. Had he been from an English speaking country, this experience would not quite be the same... and the way he interacts with Mr. 4chan is always interesting to see. So far, those two have been the only people in the classroom to speak at length about anything.



Like magic, the room was full of uncomfortable shuffling and exhaling as the professor broke into a hearty laugh to what was probably, and unknown to him, a holocaust joke. For the most part, this class made an excellent study period, where I could tune out the lecture and do work for my actual, useful classes, like learning assembly, but its moments like these that forcibly rip you from the reality of your inner mind, and into the bizarre landscape of what we call life. And life doesn't care about how many double takes you do to make sense of itself.



For the next several minutes, the professor probed him for information on what Piratebay actually was. As in, he didn't know - and this was absolutely earth shattering to my fellow student, who responded by repeating the website's name twice, and then describing what it did and was used for. Eventually, someone did pipe up to say that Piratebay did not in fact use FTP, but instead primarily advertised a protocol known to the rest of us as BitTorrent.

This did not deter the manchild, though - he went on to explain that users had the option to directly download the movies that they wanted to illegally obtain, but it was shadier and riskier. Another student stood up and called him out as a criminal, which prompted the professor to get a hold of the class by moving on with his lecture, now delayed by several minutes. My chest was in pain.

I went back to my binary conversions, hoping to block the experience from memory, but it turned out to be the only significant feature of that day's lecture. I looked around; not a soul was taking any notes.

For those Curious, this is what I look like.

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notepad to program in Java.

Every Monday and Wednesday, class takes place in an actual lecture room. It's the same room where I attend lecture for my other computer science course, where I'm learning how to program in assembly language. It's a very different environment.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the class has a "lab" period in a different room, full of beautiful dual-monitored windows 7 machines, Complete with a wonderfully organized server in the next room over. Really, it's great... or, it would be, if the professor didn't use this time for more lectures for me to zonk out on. We seem to only every use them on Thursdays, to do things like download a pdf from a website, and then open it. Or learn how to format an Excel spreadsheet. This week, we are going to have our first graded assignment in this room, and indeed the entire quarter so far. It's a test, on paper.

At the end of every day, we are reminded to "Study, study, study" for the test, which is good advice for those who don't already know how Microsoft Word works, perhaps a grand total of two or three people in this class full of people who declared Computer Science as their major. Right now, I'm using this time to type out this story while the professor rigorously describes over-the-shoulder password security breaches, while everyone else fiddles with their phones hidden behind the wide berth of double monitors.

The first lab we did was at least a little interesting; we were instructed on how to use PuTTY. I had used it before this lecture, so, that's great an all. It's just not something I would expect given the surrounding curriculum. We downloaded a congratulatory message from the server. The next two labs followed similarly simple tasks, which we were given all of 50 minutes to do. He'd let us do our thing for a while, but then a good 20 minutes in, the professor gave us an important reminder.



I was already finished with the task. I couldn't see anybody working on it, really. But then he saw my monitor, and informed me that I had skipped a part of the task, which was to change the default colors of the PuTTY terminal as I booted it up. Why would I want to do that? The default colors are just fine. But apparently I should be able to customize my experience to be whatever I wanted it to be, and I should know how to do that. Manditorily.

So I changed the text color from green to a slightly lighter green... and he never took the time to examine my excellent work. It was almost as if he didn't really care, as much as I didn't care. It's not even a graded assignment. The only assignments that matter are the tests I mentioned earlier, which probably reflect the calibur of difficulty showcased in the end-chapter sections in the textbook. That is, so easy as to not even bother. But I guess, I shouldn't really speak for the other students in the class, not even the ones using their computers to compile C++ code for their other classes.

As the end of the lab day, the professor had what he called a "special treat" for us. It required a volunteer, and who else would step up but our favorite internet memester? They spend five minutes or so figuring out their usernames which consisted mostly of numbers, and then something happened on the projection screen.



The following conversation appeared on the projector.

Professor: Hello how are you...
"Anonymous" Student: my wife and I lived happily for 20 years, and then we met.
Professor: Good to hear... How are you enjoying talk...
Student: its fun
Student: this will prove to be a fun tool to mess with people in class
Student: for some added fun try deleting system32
Student: ofc
Student: its a virus that will harm your computer

This savage was laying down meme after crispy meme on the projector even as the professor was continuing his lecture and the other students were leaving the classroom.

I can't stress enough that this is NOT hyperbole. Sometimes I have to sit down and wonder if this is even the real world. Have I traveled back in time to 2005? Am I some kind of pioneer stepping through a portal and documenting everything that i see here, in this classroom?

...Well, I have some theories as to what's really going on here, anyways.

report this shit, seriously. this is a grade a waste of your money.

Fortunately, I'm already working on that.

But I have doubts that they'll listen.

It sounds like a useful opportunity to compile C++ code. We can all use a little time to do that.

where can i download the hottest screensavers?

seriously though my own experience with college wasn't this bad, but it also wasnt great. i wanted to learn programming. both of the community colleges i went to only offered computer science degrees that'd have maybe one class on one language mixed with a ton of liberal arts classes and a few IT-work-related classes. technical college had a much better ratio of classes relevant to the degree (as well as a degree specifically for software development), but there were issues there too. the whole program felt really secondary in the school administration's eyes, there were a lot of filler classes that were required (one for microsoft access, and also a keyboarding class like this is middle school or something, seriously what was up with that, how many hunt-and-peckers would even try to get into programming). one professor was having to teach three or four different languages at once, and some other languages got combined into a single class and were taught by someone else, someone who only sort of knew what they were doing- php and javascript, specifically- and it was sort of an html class too! and there were maybe.. ten to twenty people in that entire program?

the technical college also had a habit of choosing languages by what employers are looking for not nationwide, but in their super redneck-y east texas town that sits 30 minutes from the nearest other town. so there'd be no classes on java, but there would be classes on visualbasic.net and c#. before i left there were rumors about the college wanting to stick a class on some powerpoint knockoff into the software development curriculum as well, just because a local company was using it

i wanted to go into game design first but that was an even bigger joke

I may have alluded to this before, but I have a suspi

Okay I have to stop. He just described what his halloween costume was gonna be: a mormon. He'll get a black shirt, black slacks, a bicycle helmet, and just go around being super nice all day.

Now back to my original point. I have a suspicion that this 4chan boy of ours is actually a mythical beast of some kind. It makes sense. This sort of behavior is only ever observed in fiction, isn't it? He is known to the public as a concept, but never as a physical entity. This could be a rare sighting, a look into the origins of such fantasy. This man cannot possibly exist, and so I must conclude that he does not. And yet... there he is.

This leads me to two possibilities. Either he crossed over from another world into ours, or I somehow traverse the planes of existence every weekday at 9 AM. Regardless, I find it is my duty to observe and record this "fairy" as I shall call them; a true guardian of 4chan, winking in and out of existence only when he is needed most. Just look at the way he talks:



He holds his homeland in the highest, most sacred regards.



He directs the denizens of this plane toward his own, perhaps to find or recruit more followers of his way.



And he actively seeks to alter the environment of this world to be more friendly and habitable for his own kind.

And this begs the question: Why? Not a day goes by that the name of the eldritch plane "4chan" is not uttered from his lips. Does he plan to multiply, and bring more to colonize this place? Does he seek to drag others with him to his mysical hellscape? Is the future of this planet already doomed, or...

Is it just me? Have I already lost the fight? Looking around this room, I see only the faces of exceptionally bored students, and a professor who doesn't understand that I understand his lectures. ...Well actually, after the first test, the curriculum has gotten acceptably interesting. But that only means that I still exist in my own world. Maybe... there is still a chance that I might be able to save it.

...What shall I do?

i was introduced to visual basic. and by "introduced", i mean forced by my brother to learn the basics on my own with no help.

so i haven't touched on it ever since b.c i hated it but now i'm worrying that it could be the foundation of the future to know a comp. language. I am very apprehensive about learning one but since i'm probably going to have to learn one going into finance, what should i learn.

You should not learn Visual Basic. That's what.

Hard to go wrong with Python, though.

definitely python

holy shit, is that an attack on titan shirt.

He had the whole jacket they wear in that thing, in fact