[plt-scheme] Prereqs for robotic programming

From: Anthony Cowley (acowley at seas.upenn.edu)
Date: Tue Feb 17 11:01:29 EST 2009

> A bad experience is worse than none.

That's very true, and I've only seen, up-close, robotics courses at 3
schools, so I don't claim to speak with any kind of universal
authority on the matter. But I will say that retention between
Robotics 1 and Robotics 2 (when offered) has been extremely high in
each case that I've seen. That really doesn't say anything about the
explicit or implicit presence of programming design in the curriculum,
but your warning applies equally well to CS classes that turn off
potential CS students.

And do bear in mind, some of the robotics students will branch out
more into control theory, others into mechanical design. Some do
follow on deeper into CS, but I think it's actually quite a good thing
to get an opportunity to require that these other engineers construct
fairly complex programs.

Anthony


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