I don't know what the question there is.
Okay. >>People like it. >>Okay. Good. I'm glad Anisha likes it.
Okay. A question about the upcoming classes. >>I see this a lot.
Will they also be using Python? Yes, they will.
We have four new classes that will be starting in April.
re-offering these two classes.
Three of the new courses are 200 level courses
that if you complete 101 and understand what we do in 101,
you'll be ready to take those.
I think they're three really, really exciting courses.
One will be about building web applications, and that's going to be taught by Steve Huffman
who was the cofounder of Reddit as well as Hipmunk, yes, which are two of the coolest websites.
If you haven't checked those out, I encourage you to do so.
One will be a programming languages course that will use the goal
of building a web browser to focus the course, and that's going to be take by Wes Weimer,
who has been out here recording parts of that class this week.
That's going to be a terrific class.
The third of the 200 level courses is going to taught by Peter Norvig,
and he's really a legendary programmer and is going to look at ways of using Python
in more advanced that what we do in CS101 to solve a whole range of interesting problems.
The fourth class that will be offered will also use Python in the course.
I'm going to teach an applied cryptography.
That course is going to be a 300 level course.
If you have fairly good confidence in math--
the Python programming that we use will not go beyond what you've learned in 101.
You would be able to take that class.
I'm going to assume a little bit more math background than you might have otherwise,
but it won't assume any more programming background than you'll have from 101.
Does anyone have a question?
Followup to that one--f we take the three 200 level classes,
what would your goal be for what we would be able to do on our own once we've done that?
If you take all of them at once? >>Well, once completing them.
Okay, yeah. If you take all of them at once I think you'll be very tired.
I commend anyone who wants to attempt to take all three at once.
You're certainly allowed to and welcome to.
I think each one of those is going to be a substantial amount of work. >>They're time consuming.
So I think it's going to be really hard to take all three,
but they will be offered again.
Our plan is to keep offering the courses every 8-week cycle,
so whichever one or two you can take starting in April,
you'll have a chance to take the other one starting in June.
Each of those courses has a different goal in terms of what material it covers.
Definitely, if you take all three you'll be quite an experienced programmer.
You'll really be able to build and understand complex programs.
The goal for the web applications course is by the end of that course
you'll be able to build a web application.
Not only you'll be able to--you will build one.
It will be a blog. It will have user accounts.
You'll learn how to use APIs to interact with other websites like Facebook API,
and you'll learn about how to make it scale,
which since Steve Huffman is teaching it, he's built websites that scale--
Has some experience in that. >>Many millions of users.
I think that will be really interesting.
If you take the programming languages course, at the end of that
you'll understand how to build an interpreter so it's focused around a browser,
but the core part of a browser interprets the JavaScript programs that are in the browser.
JavaScript is a language fairly similar to Python that runs inside almost all web browsers today.
What you'll do in that class is build an interpreter that can handle not all of JavaScript
but a core of JavaScript, enough to really understand how an interpreter would work.
You'll also won't be building an interpreter for Python in that class.
but you'll have a much better understand of what's going on behind the scenes
when you run a Python program from having built a JavaScript interpreter as well.
Anyone else have a question?
So the question is for the CS101 class being offered in April,
will it be a re-broadcast of the exact class or talk live again.
None of the lectures are actually live now.
There's a lot of editing that goes into producing the lectures.
When the course is re-offered, we'll be reusing a lot of the content.
Probably most of the lecture content will be reused.
The things that we have ideas how to do better than we did this time we'll try to improve.
Many of the problems from the homework, some will be reused, some will have new problems.
Our goal is to take advantage of the content that we've developed
and to be able to use that to offer the course again.
But it will still be an experience similar to this one where we do hope to have a group of students
going through the course together, doing the homeworks together.
We haven't figured out exactly how to manage the forums that we have from this offering of the course
starting new forums or having ways to access the old forums
and maybe have them scheduled along with the course.
We don't plan on deleting the old forums.
Right. We don't want to delete the old forums. We have all this content.
But we also don't want the students taking the April course
to see the answers to the questions before they have a chance to have their own discussions
and figure them out themselves.
We haven't figured out exactly how we're going to do that, but well try to make it so
it feels like students are going through a class together that's a real class
running at the same time but still taking advantage of all the content
and being able to improve the content based on what we've learned from all of you
from taking it this time.
I have another grading question. >>Sure. >>Okay.
This may sound silly, but what exactly is the purpose of the grading?
Is it just for motivation for those of us who are motivated by it?
This is a question about what's the purpose of the grading.
It is really up to you if you care about the grading.
We're providing grading. For many students I think that makes it feel more like a real class.
It's a motivating factor.
It is the case that students do the homeworks on the deadlines and take the exam,
the ones who get above the threshold will get a certificate ,
and based on how well they do, they can get a certificate that indicates that.
We also have a long-term plan--at least long term meaning this year--
to have enough courses that you'd be able to do something comparable to a top-level university degree,
taking courses through Udacity.
Students who are doing that because they want to build a transcript,
they want to be able to get a job, they want to have something they can show to an employer
that shows here's what I've learned.
This demonstrates my ability from having grades in these classes.
Having grades that are meaningful will help us do that.
So I see a lot of stress on the forums and in emails to me about the grades.
If you're taking the class because you want to learn to program,
and you're not worried about that, that's perfectly okay.
I hope people don't get too stressed out about the grades.
It's really about learning.
But for students who do want to pursue something like a complete CS degree
or take a large set of courses with us and build a transcript,
then the grades will start to be meaningful and valuable.
Probably from 101, that's not going to be enough to have a transcript.
For at least most employers, having just had the one class the grading of that class won't matter too much.
But I think it is a motivator, and I hope people will value the certificates that they get,
because it is a lot of work to do while in the class.
We definitely appreciate your efforts and want to recognize them.
Sorry. Couldn't hear you. >>I had the audio muted, so could you repeat your question?
Oh, it's okay. What programming languages will you be offering courses in after this one?
It's a good question. I don't have an answer to that yet.
We're working on planning the June courses.
We don't have anything ready to announce about those courses yet.
We will definitely eventually have some courses that use languages other than Python,
but all the courses we have planned now are still using Python.