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

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.