What I hope to learn from CS3216

Like many of my fellow classmates-to-be, I stumbled upon this course in the NUS mail. What intrigues me about this course is that, unlike most courses, one has to prove his/her worth to be allowed to take this module by writing a personal statement. This seems extremely controversial to me. I believe that none of my physics lecturers go to such great lengths to qualify a student before allowing him to read a module; it would seem irrational to do so, considering the fact that there are only about 25 students doing the honours’ programme.

The controversial nature of this course attracted me to find out more information about the course via the blogs by previous students and subsequently to attend the information session. But what really motivated me to apply for this course was the opportunity to create something original (Facebook app, Wave extension, etc), which I would not be able to if I did not take the course. Hence, in taking this module, I hope to learn some programming languages to a level of proficiency which will allow me to create simple web applications.

However, I believe this course was intended to go beyond teaching students. Rather this course offers students a tiny bit of guidance (with the workshops and seminars) and, more importantly, offers students a platform to explore and learn on their own. So instead of simply describing what I hope to learn from this course, I shall go beyond “what I hope to learn” to describe “what I hope to get” out of this course.

The filtering process of having every student write a personal statement before they are allowed to read this module implies that everyone in this course is good one or more of the following: programming, designing, selling or writing a bloody impressive personal statement. Personally, I regard this as an extremely rare opportunity to be immersed into a pool of highly capable experts with different expertise and collaborate on projects. Therefore, even if I do not learn anything (which I highly doubt) from this course, it would be an enriching experience for me, who am neither a programmer nor designer, to create web applications together with a team of passionate experts.