Prompt 1: Asking Questions and Breaking Assumptions

by Steven Wang

Cover Page of Textbook

When high schoolers begin the transition to college and decide their major, the first step is
usually thinking about preconceptions about the field. What do people do? What do they say? What do people like and don't like? With the advancement of technology, Computer Science and Engineering is quickly becoming a more popular major choice. The textbook "The Practice of Computing Python" by William Punch and Richard Enbody will be use to test if certain preconceptions in the computer science field are true or not.

Preconception #1 - Computer Science is All About Programming

Surprisingly, this is not completely true. Although the major is revolved around learning and executing code, I believe the main skill that is taught is simply how to approach and solve a problem. This idea can be backed up in the textbook, where the preface states that "Our goal is that after the course, students when presented with a problem will think, 'Hey, I can write a program to do that!" (Punch, Enbody XXIII). This is also the reason why in many colleges a intro computer science course is required for all engineers, as knowing how to problem solve is an essential skill. 

Preconception #2 - Computer Science is Slow and Difficult For Beginners
Yes, at least from my perspective. I say this as you would be surprised how easy and natural computer science is for some people, being able to just code without even hesitating. For many students, their first experience in the field is often a mixture of frustration and confusion. The textbook wastes no time diving right into creating a program that calculates the area of a circle. Its a simple task on paper, but coding it is different.

Area of a Circle, Written in Python

Immediately, you see statements such as "import" and "print" that haven't been taught before and sometimes are you told "Worry about those later, just memorize it now". Although it does go into detail, the explanation of just eleven lines of code is two pages long, which can easily be off putting to someone who wants to learn quickly.

Preconception #3 - Computer Science is a Part of Every Day Life
This preconception can be tied with #1. We all know that computers are everywhere, millions of them. "What were once rare, expensive items are as commonplace as... any commodity you can imagine" (Punch, Enbody 3). Computer science surrounds us and there are a multitude of examples but to name a few are social media, smartphones, cars, and the internet. Many computer science textbooks have a preface explaining its importance because many students never consider anything outside of what they code.

Overall as a resource, this textbook is highly recommend for students are you starting from the bottom. It teaches the importance of computer science, its uses, and how to code with arguably the most basic language. Even if you think its dense and slow, this is as easy as its gonna get and the learning process will definitely speed up as you go on.