Study.com New CS Courses

[Merlin]

The intro to OS and OS both fill the requirement at TESU?
Can anyone confirm I can finish the discrete math?

Do you get seperate credit for both OS course? No Duplicates of credit for these?

It doesn't look like TESU has two separate OS courses, so these may duplicate. They're both lower level so it makes sense that they would. However, we won't know for sure until people take them and see how they are evaluated.

[MNomadic]

Has anyone started on a tesu BACS degree plan utilizing these SDC CS courses and the other cheapish alternative sources?

[armstrongsubero]

Has anyone started on a tesu BACS degree plan utilizing these SDC CS courses and the other cheapish alternative sources?

I have ! I asked them to add CS it to my eval yesterday and this morning they added it. Instead of graduating in December this year, I'm moving to June 2019. But that degree in CS is worth it. I need it to get into a good masters or phd program

I'll attach my plan.

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They also told me I don't need to do a second capstone. Which is good cause my Capstone was based on an IoT and Robotics solar charge controller design anyway, a little CS based, lol.

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Though it dosen't matter what it was based on, but good in case an employer asks.

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When I complete all requirements for the BACS I may ask that the BALS be given a Natural Science and Mathematics Concentration. CS and Mathematics is a good combo for the resume especially with all the AI and Data Science hype. I just don't have the money to put out for a math degree, but a BALS with math written is a good choice!

[armstrongsubero]

Finsished the C. Now do I do OS, Comp Arc or Discrete math?

[davewill]

Finsished the C. Now do I do OS, Comp Arc or Discrete math?

You need them all and it doesn't really matter what order.

[timblackwell]

Finsished the C. Now do I do OS, Comp Arc or Discrete math?

Which OS are you doing the Intro? How long did it take you to do C?

[armstrongsubero]

Nah the intro course seems basic. I might actually learn something from the Operating Systems course.

C took me 3 evenings. But I have experience with C, if you never used C I HIGHLY recommend that you spend at least a month or two getting famililar with it, else chapters 8 and 9 and the final assigment will be very difficult fof you.

You did any of them yet?

[Merlin]

Nah the intro course seems basic. I might actually learn something from the Operating Systems course.

C took me 3 evenings. But I have experience with C, if you never used C I HIGHLY recommend that you spend at least a month or two getting famililar with it, else chapters 8 and 9 and the final assigment will be very difficult fof you.

You did any of them yet?

I agree. I took the course last weekend and while it was not really a challenge for me since I have more than 20 years experience with C & C++, it won't be an easy course for someone who doesn't have any prior experience. Plus the course covers a LOT of ground in a short period of time (much more than is probably necessary for an introductory course in C programming) without really providing the interactive feedback you'd get in a normal programming course.

Anyone who takes this needs to make sure they work all the examples and do the recommended coding exercises at the end of each chapter. Even with that, it will be tough to get through the course without a lot of head scratching. A lot more example programs need to be written to really get it.

Speaking of writing programs, when I completed the course, the final assignment wasn't required, but Study.com pinged me earlier today to ask me to complete it anyway before they award my final grade. I was a bit annoyed by that, particularly given that I know others who managed to complete new courses before their assignments were added (such as CS 302 and 303 several months back), and they didn't get asked to come back to complete them. Anyway, I'm not here to complain about that. I wanted to talk about the assignment.

So, I ended up doing the assignment today after all. When I first looked at it, I thought it would take an hour or two. After looking at the requirement and rubric more closely, it is actually more work than I originally thought. It took about twice as long as I originally expected, at least half of that time going back to make changes to match the requirements and rubric (cleaning up the formatting, using different variable names, documenting every function, loop, and update, etc.) In the end, I cut a few corners on documentation because documenting everything seemed excessive. I was particularly annoyed that globals were forbidden since that made the list handling more cumbersome. I had to throw out the first version I wrote since I didn't notice that in my first pass. My version also has proper error handling and input validation, which wasn't asked for but I couldn't help but add since that is the right way to write code. Hopefully, that gives me some extra credit against the points I'll lose for not writing more comments than code.

I'm pretty sure someone new to C would be hard-pressed to complete that assignment in any reasonable amount of time. It's certainly doable, but will probably require some mentoring and/or a lot of practice versions of the code.

[armstrongsubero]

Haha same here!! I thought I could finish in an hour. I ended up taking 4!

[Merlin]

Haha same here!! I thought I could finish in an hour. I ended up taking 4!

If I count the time wasted before realizing that I couldn't use globals for the lists and restarting with a different design, then I probably spent about 4 hours as well.

Final version took probably 2-3 hours of coding, plus another hour of going back to make changes to make it look closer to the rubric requirements. My final version was much more efficient, but more complicated as well since I decided to use double pointers and double dereferencing for the linked list update functions to simplify the list handling. I also built my add & delete methods as "generic" multipurpose functions so I wouldn't have to duplicate any code for stack vs queue management.

It was kind of fun to write, so at least it has that going for it. Now I'm curious how the graders will look at it.

In any case, that was the last course I needed, and the 20th course taken via Study.com, so I'm glad to be done! Now I just need to complete the capstone and I'll be ready to graduate.