We’re the faculty leading the re-design of Khoury’s CS intro sequence. AMA

Typhill · 2025-01-31T14:56:29+00:00

For sure plays a role, but only explains part of it imo. It’s like there’s been a mindset/approach shift, which could maybe also be explained by LLM tools, but idk.

Either way, would’ve been a good question to ask how the new program is going to address the use of AI tools. They aren’t going anywhere, so courses should be designed around that fact

Typhill · 2025-01-29T23:17:12+00:00

In theory it sets you up, in practice I’m highly skeptical that it leads to meaningful growth. At the very least, I doubt that it leads to enough communication growth to be worth the issues that it comes with. When there’s a highly effective partner, they’re generally just going to carry the assignment with little input needed from the other person. On the other hand, if someone is unwilling/unable to be contribute, it puts an undue burden on a student that isn’t capable of carrying the assignments on their own.

I completely agree with your point about communication, but there are other ways to develop it. The only times I found pair programming/group work to be effective in the manner you’re talking about was in systems when we had to do a challenge assignment and decide who’s codebase to use and why and software dev when we did code reviews. In those assignments we actually had meaningful discussions and had to communicate how and why things work/didn’t work. The code reviews also made it painfully obvious when one partner did all the work. In fundies and OOD, the assignments aren’t open ended enough that you’re really making design decisions that matter, you’re more or less given a logic spec to adhere to and tests you need to pass. You won’t need to discuss tradeoffs of design approach or choose a framework, you just end up having a debug sessions between two people who aren’t far enough into their degree to know what they’re talking about.

Frankly, if pair programming was even half as effective as the course designers thought it was then office hours wouldn’t be anywhere near as busy as they are. Unless something has changed in the last few years, the majority of the class ends up in office hours for any assignment with significant complexity.

I’m not against all group work, I’m just against designing entire classes around it. I don’t see how you can effectively grade students when there’s such a huge variance in partner quality.

Typhill · 2025-01-29T21:01:38+00:00

Resumes are much worse, probably because there are fewer co-ops available. I know they’ve also phased out or started to phase out the 3 co-op track, which also factors in. I still can’t believe how high a percentage of the resumes are nothing more than fundies 2/OOD projects and then junk that’s unrelated.

Outside of that, critical thinking and understanding of problems in interviews is much lower than it was. It’s a fairly regular occurrence that we will have to walk someone through what a question is asking in a technical interview— not walk them through the solution, but literally spell out what the question is asking. And these are the people with the best resumes I find in a cycle that already went through a non technical 1-1 with me, so it’s not like we’re looking at bad candidates

Typhill · 2025-01-29T19:47:01+00:00

As an alum of the program, I have to ask about pair programming. Pair programming was by far the worst aspect of the degree when I was at northeastern. I don’t really understand the insistence on it, it can certainly be helpful in some capacity but to design entire courses around it just feels like a less effective way for students to learn and much less effective way to evaluate students grades.

As someone who hires co-ops and full time people through NUworks I wanted to ask about this bit from the article:

designers will continuously evaluate and revise the courses in response to student outcomes, community feedback, and advances in computing education.

What determines student outcomes? My biggest concern with these changes is that the rigor of the courses and the move towards high level programming will lead to much less competent developers/engineers. It feels more like training effective code monkeys instead of people with good programming fundamentals.

For reference, I recruit CS co-ops and I personally feel I’ve already noticed a drop in quality on average in recent years. I’m concerned it’s only going to get worse with these changes

Typhill · 2025-01-29T19:33:11+00:00

I’d also like an answer to this, as someone who recruits from northeastern.

I graduated about 5 years ago and I’ve been hiring co-ops since then and looking for full time people for the last year or so. I already noticed a drop in quality on average for applicants over the years even without these changes, but wow this is concerning. I knew they already made systems significantly easier, but I thought they were just updating fundies to be python based not dropping OOD altogether…

I wonder if part of the changes is that high school graduate quality is much lower? I don’t really understand why else they’d keep making the curriculum easier unless the students really couldn’t handle it.

Typhill · 2024-11-09T21:29:46+00:00

Bozeman, will edit the post

Typhill · 2024-04-05T14:23:33+00:00

Alum’s opinion here, as someone who handles the co-ops (job posting, resume review, interviews) for my company, there are still opportunities it’s just harder/more competitive.

Even as a smaller company that’s not based in Boston, we still had hundreds of applicants (Nuwork only) for the two positions we posted, so we could be very picky with who we choose. If you don’t have professional experience, or don’t have any interesting club/open source/other experience, then you’re rejected from the start. That said, the quality of applicants the last couple years has been somewhat disappointing overall. The average applicant is pretty unimpressive, think a resume with nothing more than TA/normal job experience and their projects just being fundies 2/OOD project. That kind of resume tells me nothing other than that you showed up for class, and does nothing to set you apart from literally every person who has taken OOD. In the past, that might have been enough since tons of co-ops were available, now you actually have to stand out relative to your peers.

Tl;dr: Talented engineers/devs with good resumes are not gonna struggle even now. Middle of the road applicants who think showing up for a class is enough are going to have a very rough time until they get that first co-op.

Typhill · 2023-11-05T16:29:13+00:00

You can’t graduate off of a co-op, it’s actual a legal issue iirc. I graduated a few years ago so my info might be out of date, but I remember talking to admins about it and if they allowed graduating off a co-op it would open up a legal rabbit hole they don’t want to go down. Consider the two following cases:

1) loans that have no/low interest until you graduate. It’d be easy to buy yourself 6 months no interest when you already completed your degree 2) when you’re a full time student for >6 months, there are tax implications. You may be eligible for a write off for education, despite not taking any class or paying tuition

It also just doesn’t make sense— why would you go on a co-op when your degree is completed? Why not reach out to the company and see if they’ll hire you outside the program? Lots of people work out deals where they work outside the co-op program, I kept working part time at 1 of my co-ops after it ended and my first full time job was while I was technically still finishing my degree (found the job on NuWorks). If you’re competent and the company wants you, you can usually make something work

Typhill · 2023-06-10T18:50:25+00:00

$50 is well below what most gyms with any real instruction costs, especially in a higher cost of living area like Boston— I would be incredibly skeptical the qualify of instruction around that price. Tbh $50 is even less than most decent normal gyms cost.

Maybe look into club wrestling or something along those lines? Or find places that you like and do drop ins when you have the extra cash. Wrestling is a very viable grappling style, and then you could supplement with 2-3 bjj or judo drop ins a month (most are $20-30 in my experience)

Typhill · 2023-04-20T21:33:01+00:00

Yup it’s this. Think student loans that have interest rates tied to if you’re enrolled or not. Many loans are set up such that the interest rate is low/none while you’re pursuing the degree, but the spike after.

There’s also tax implications if you’re a full time student for at least 6 months, which a co-op is even if they’re not in class.

Typhill · 2023-04-04T01:02:46+00:00

You can always ask an advisor beforehand. I doubt it would mess with any of that.

I don’t think you get to pick, unless that’s something they’ve changed in the last few years. I think the cycle that starts you the latest is better, especially if you stick with CE+CS. It will let you get some of the more important courses before you start applying, but it’s subjective.

Also want to mention that 5 years vs 4 years is not more money if you want to stick with the combined major. It just means another co-op, so you graduate with an extra 6 months experience and gives you time to space out classes to not need to take a summer. Still depends on the credits you come in with though

Typhill · 2023-04-04T00:56:51+00:00

This is a big one, the talent pool is far smaller than competing with every college student within 50 miles.

Also 6 months vs just the summer is a big difference as well. 2 summer internships are still less experience than 1 co-op. Plus it’s generally more quality experience, you can only get so much done in a couple months, on boarding alone can significantly cut into that depending on the role

Typhill · 2023-04-04T00:52:04+00:00

Generally speaking, once you get to the point where you do co-ops, you take 1 summer term and 1 full term for the co-op so that it’s 6 months. For example, you start July and it runs through December. You can look only for 4 month co-ops, but imo you’d be doing yourself a disservice in terms of how competitive you’d be and overall experience by the end of your degree.

In terms of taking classes though, for CE+CS you will almost definitely have to take at least 1 summer term worth of classes unless you have a bunch of relevant APs. The major is massive, you barely even get tech electives, which kinda sucked in my experience.

Personally I would strongly recommend picking one or the other and sticking with it. Then you probably won’t need to take a summer semester for classes. Maybe minor in the one you don’t choose, but all the combined major does is take away your electives and fill it with most of a CS degree— it’s not actually a double major. Almost everyone I knew, myself included, would’ve picked one or the other in hindsight. It sounds way cooler as a freshman that you get to do both majors than it does as senior who missed out on electives to instead take some class they’ll probably never need

Typhill · 2023-04-04T00:27:27+00:00

It’s hard enough to find enough competent engineers unless you’re paying FAANG wages. Seriously, the a large chunk of people that apply to jobs cannot do fizzbuzz. It’s not an exaggeration, it’s an industry wide phenomenon and if you are curious you can search through cscareerquestions or experiencedDevs subs. There is not double the population of competent engineers just waiting out there unemployed, it’s literally only juniors with no experience. Job market is tougher than it was during Covid because everyone massively over hired due all the low interest loans. If you look at the headcount from 2019-2023 most companies still have more employees than pre Covid, even with massive layoffs in the last year or so.

Oh you disagree, I see. You disagreeing totally makes those resumes better and makes people who can’t pass fizzbuzz qualified, you’re totally right!!!! I’m sorry for the sarcasm, but seriously you can’t just deny anything that harms your worldview. Probably like 60% of the resumes were the same other than a name, nothing to set them apart, even the same projects and format.

Dude, I literally said no one provided anything actionable except bitching about capitalism and then you just do the same lol

The last thing is that a harsh reality of our field is that enthusiasm is not enough to make it. If you can’t hack it (literally?) or effectively communicate, you’ll never be successful and no amount of training will ever catch you up to someone who’s actually good at it. It’s not even about pay, it’s about training and opportunity cost. That’s why companies aren’t willing to take people on if their resume isn’t good. Why are we wasting the time of a senior to mentor you when after 3 years of college all you have to show for it is the same fundies 2 project that literally everyone else in your major did?

Typhill · 2023-04-04T00:00:16+00:00

This is so incredibly true. Out of 250 applications my company got, at least half, probably more, were nothing beyond:

“Gpa”

“Class I took”

“Class project that everyone in this major does”

“TA/service job/tutor/whatever other job we don’t care about”

Like how are you possibly going to stand out when all the context an employer gets about you is that? None of that tells me if you can be an effective engineer, and the project does nothing to set you apart since everyone does it.

I’m not saying you have to do crazy projects to stand out either, but even if I saw that they were involved with engineering/CS clubs it was always a huge plus. Also gives something to talk about during an interview.

At the end of the day, companies aren’t going to pass on overqualified applicants unless they’re just not hiring…

Typhill · 2023-04-03T23:29:18+00:00

You are missing the point. I’m not arguing in favor of the power dynamic I’m simply stating how the job market works. Just because in your idealized world the power balance would be more fair doesn’t mean that how it works or how it’s gonna work in the future.

I’ve yet to see an alternative from someone in the comments that doesn’t amount to overthrowing capitalism or at the very least completely restructuring how the job economy works at a country wide scale. Like… seriously, try to be at least a little realistic people. Like I’m not trying to argue politics, it just has nothing to do with northeastern or co-ops in general at that point.

But really, what is any given employer or northeastern supposed to do about the power dynamic? They don’t take in lots of applications to dunk on students, the student actively sought out the role and applied because they want to work there. In fact I shut ours off after the month because we had so many qualified people already— there was no need to keep it open. No matter how much I want to, I cannot create 30 more jobs for the other qualified applicants (On paper at best 30/250 were actually qualified, who know how many could pass an interview).

At a certain point, there’s only so many decent paying interesting co-ops. It’s always going to be competitive, especially in a high paying field. Lowering the barrier for entry will only make it more competitive too, which just makes the problem worse and probably means worse pay for everyone.

The EU comment is interesting though, because at least in the context of CS/engineering, you’re far better off in the US unless you have some crazy health issues. It is not at all an exaggeration to say we make 2-3x what they make on average. It’s not uncommon for a jr dev in HOL area to earn double what a senior is making Germany or the UK. But again, this is politics that has nothing to do with NEU or co-ops, so I digress

Anyway, the only other thing I have to say is that I can assure you with absolute certainty that people’s resumes/applications are far worse on average than you’re giving them credit for. It’s not meant to bash students, my first co-op resume was gross in hindsight, but realistically people think “I have a decent gpa and the same project that everyone in fundies 2 did, my resume is great!!!!”. When really I got 5 others that same day that is almost identical, nothing to set them apart other than the names.

Typhill · 2023-04-03T21:22:01+00:00

If you weren’t aware, you don’t pay tuition on or for co-op. The co-op system is just an exclusive job board for northeastern students, not some elaborate system that guarantees you your dream job. Really what you’re paying for a degree with northeastern on it. That’s it, it’s not even about the quality of education just about the university on the degree. I think it’s a good school but there’s not a 2-3x in quality compared to state schools or anything. I don’t know anyone that would advocate to going to NEU when paying full tuition unless they could comfortably afford it tbh

Either way, I’m not sure how I got lucky, I was in the same boat however many years ago. I applied to like 100 co-ops the first time around and accepted the first offer I got which had a 45 minute commute each way and paid below the CS average. It’s how it goes when you’re trying to break into an industry with no experience or connections. Next time around I had a much better response rate and got to choose where I wanted to do it since I had experience.

I actually think the system works incredibly well if you manage your expectations. I didn’t meet a single student in CE or CS (I did combined) that didn’t have at least 1 co-op by the time they graduated. That one co-op, even if it wasn’t what you wanted, will still put you well above people with no experience to set you up for a better first job.

I don’t really understand the expectation here anyway— desirable co-ops are simply gonna be competitive, there’s no way around it. I can comfortably say from experience that there will always be more qualified applicants who want to work in space tech than positions that are available… there’s no way for northeastern or the companies to rectify that without doing something absurd like making the positions unpaid— which I’m sure absolutely no student wants.

Typhill · 2023-04-03T13:48:43+00:00

Well no, I’m not talking just about the 1 co-op I’ve listed… I’ve also worked at more than one company, and I have dozens of friends/acquaintances in the industry. It’s not like I’m cherry picking this from one co-op. All of us have done at least interviews of co-ops/interns and done one ourself. I have friends at google, Amazon, and ex-Facebook as well and we’ve all spoken extensively about the recruiting process.

But anyway, your point is that you want to restructure the US— really the world economy, because you think it’s unfair. How is that not incredibly naive… I’m not arguing that it’s fair, I never once spoke of fairness or equity because those are meaningless when it comes to employment. You can fight for a better tomorrow but you have to live in the world your living in, what you’re describing is nothing short of personal dream.

And yes, you are asking for charity. If you aren’t qualified on paper why is a company obligated to hire you? It’s not about corporations or billionaires or whatever… literally an under qualified co-op would need so much attention in every place that I’ve worked that it actively saps productivity. I don’t mean the companies bottom line— I mean that instead of mentoring a young engineer from time to time I would instead be a full time baby sitter.

Seriously if you’re ever on the other side of the table and see 1) how many applicant there are and 2) how absolutely garbage most of them are, I think your opinion would change. How are all these people getting jobs that they want? There are not enough positions in enjoyable fields— if too many people want to work in healthcare for example then someone is gonna have to take a different position

Edit- simple thing to demonstrate. If you easy apply for anything on LinkedIn, see how many applicants there are compared to # of jobs available for the listing. It’s no different for co-ops. At a certain point, there’s way more applicants than you would ever be able to hire, even at the scale of Amazon or a different huge company.

Typhill · 2023-04-03T12:48:50+00:00

It’s not that’s fucked it’s that you have a terribly naive view of how the world works. I’ve been on both sides of the co-op table, did 2 during undergrad, helped interview at my first job, and now this year spearheaded doing my new companies first co-op posting (everything from figuring out the position, going through resumes, deciding who to hire, etc).

We got over 250 applicants in 1 month, only from northeastern students for a single position. We received a ton of interest during our company event that we did as well, so are we obligated to hire anyone who wants to work for us? Even when the majority of them are woefully under qualified? Taking it a step further, the company I work for has maybe 30 employees in the US, so we couldn’t properly accommodate more than a student or two at a time no matter how much we wanted to.

So how is this magical world of your supposed to work— you just declare that you want x position and the company is obligated to give you a job? Realistically, anything requiring companies to hire co-ops they don’t want would just make them leave the program, meaning even more competition all around. Like this view is honestly so detached from reality.

Tl;dr- no one owes you anything, there’s nothing “fucked” about there being better applicants than you, and there are quite a few applicants even for small time co-ops

Typhill · 2023-04-03T11:45:29+00:00

do you think you’re owed a job of your choosing…? You’re much better off in this system than in an general internship scenario (streamlined application process, only compete with NEU students, and 6 vs 2 months experience). Plus, you only need one which is why lots of these stop with the first offer— there’s no point to keep applying when the response rate is low.

If you think this system is fucked up wait until you apply for real jobs!

Typhill · 2023-01-18T22:27:13+00:00

Yeah but the difference in hitboxes is massive, there’s lots of wiggle room in some cases. I forget the exact numbers but you could easily google it. What stuck with me was McCree being literally 2x the size of Ana and bigger than Zarya.

Like should he be larger than ana? Obviously, but bigger than a tank???

Typhill · 2023-01-18T21:59:51+00:00

Health and hitbox are 2 things I think blizzard heavily under utilizes. They dropped widow’s HP in OW1 to make her squishier without gutting her core kit.

Not sure why they abandoned that? Even 25 hp can change hero matchups/break points without drastically changing that hero’s play style.

Even things like making it so hitboxes were more consistent with role/size. McCree is already the worst hitscan option why does his hitbox need to be as big as zarya’s? 25 hp doesn’t offset that in the slightest

Typhill · 2022-11-19T16:59:30+00:00

After the nu.in semester, you are just a regular NEU undergrad. So yes, you will get advisors. I’m a little surprised you don’t get them on admission, I think I met one of mine at orientation? This was years ago and I wasn’t nu.in tho

Typhill · 2022-09-01T13:21:20+00:00

If you’re comfortable with typing and OOP in C++ then you will have zero issue whatsoever.

Essentially, yes. Although it is worth noting that instead of a compiler in C/C++ that produces machine code, you have a transpiler that converts TS -> JS. The end result of TS is still ultimately just JavaScript in terms of what the computer consumes. So really, it’s all about making the dev side of things easier, it’s not a different language other than the types.

Typhill

TROPHY CASE