#3 — Read before you code
Seeing the forest and the trees
The Power of Context: Reimagining Learning
I really enjoyed hearing Adam Gordon Bell talk to Steve Krouse from Val Town about his learning journey, including his initial struggles and eventual success in learning math through persistence and approaching problems from different perspectives—in this case, computer programming. It's well worth the listen, especially for students, but also for anyone at any stage of their learning journey. Here are some quotes from the show that really caught my attention:
Like a big part of why programming is a better medium for learning mathematical ideas than math and math class is because math and math class is done on paper, and the feedback loops are terrible. And programming, you can explore mathematical ideas and then get instant feedback in an automated way from a computer.
That emotion is a huge part of what makes learning real, effective, alive, like that, that's where you get a love affair with mathematics.
Syntax is really hard to learn, especially as a 12-year-old. Syntax is just a bitch. It's like, why do I need a semicolon there? Why do I need a brace there? If you haven't taught a 12-year-old syntax, then you just can't know how hard it is. If you're a programmer, there isn't a parser that parses in the abstract syntax trees that happens in your brain so quickly, you don't even know it's there. But for children, it is not there, and it takes many, many hours to put it there. And while they're putting it there, they're putting it on top of programming constructs that are totally unfamiliar to them. The console printing? The console, like, what’s that? Accepting input from the command line? What’s that? Nothing, nothing in programming 101 has anything to do with all the wonderful things they did in Scratch. And so they have to learn new concepts and new syntax at the same time, and it’s a bloodbath.
I think recently, I’ve been toying with the mission of Val Town being spreading the joy of programming. Cause I think that’s what I’m here for. I think programming is so much fun. I have so much fun doing it, and I just want more people to be able to, like, share in that joy. If you’re already programming, I want to make it more joyful for you. And if you want to get into programming, I want to build this platform that’s like a joyful place for you to do your programming.
Listen to the whole thing here.
Strype: a frame-based approach to Python
I loved this free tool that uses an advanced block-like interface for editing and running Python in the browser. This talk explores Strype and its design! Thanks to Pierre Weill-Tessier, Neil Brown, and Michael Kölling from King's College London for bringing it to life!
Curated resources for discovering, reading, and working with arXiv papers
Great collection of resources for finding, reading, and working with arXiv papers. Includes tools for building related collections, showing relationships between papers, identifying trends, scraping metadata, converting formats, conducting literature reviews, explaining papers, and much more. Here's the link to the GitHub repo.
Expert seminars on the future of SQL
This spring 2025 seminar series features expert talks on the future of SQL. Is there hope for better optimizations? Or, should SQL be replaced altogether? Includes talks from Google, Malloy, PRQL, MariaDB and many more. All talks except the last one are online and open to the public.
Two good bites from the industry
→ Sam Altman at AI Startup School last week
In this conversation from AI Startup School last week, he traces his path from early startup struggles to building OpenAI—sharing what he's learned about ambition, the weight of responsibility, and how to keep building when the whole world is watching. He opens up about the hardest moments of his career, the limits of personal productivity, and why, ultimately, it's all about finding people you enjoy working with and doing something that matters.
You can watch it here.
→ Lex Fridman Interview with Sundar Pichai
Lex Fridman's podcast is one of the most valuable to me, especially when he sits down with a guest who is one of the most influential in tech: Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google. His story has really impacted me. Sundar Pichai grew up in India and had a childhood marked by water scarcity. Through a lot of hard work, he managed to make his way in the tech world and now leads a company that develops the world's most cutting-edge solutions. You probably expect a good dose of discussion about GenAI, and you're not wrong - it's one of the central themes. I found this reflection from him very interesting: "Too often we dedicate too much effort to engineering and too little to user interface development."
A new series on Probability and Statistics!
This recent course from Steve Brunton (University of Washington) on probability and statistics starts with the basics and quickly progresses to more advanced topics. It covers essential concepts for data analysis. It's very enjoyable and serves to lay a solid foundation. In case you're looking for new ideas.
Test your exam to make it more fair
Summer has now started for almost everyone in academia. So, how about reading this article written by Prof. Kristin Stephens-Martinez that's a few years old but worth remembering to make your exams more fair in the next academic year. By testing your exam, there will be fewer errors that will confuse students. Fewer errors mean fewer disruptions if/when you correct them during the exam and less stress on students as they try to decipher if it's an error or they misunderstand the problem. Perhaps something useful to help structure your thinking! Read the post here.
CS Teaching Resources
→ Awesome collection of curated data visualization materials
If you teach data visualization, give this repository a shot because it's incredible!
→ Quick Start Guide to R and Bayesian Inference
Teaching R? This book created by Adam Fleischhacker from the University of Delaware aims to be the fastest, easiest, and most visual entry point into working with R and computational Bayesian inference. There's a lot here, including code examples and a YouTube playlist for each chapter.
→ CS Teaching Tips website
This website includes useful tip sheets of curated lists of ideas, as well as videos emphasizing specific tips and tag filters to make your search more targeted to your specific needs.
→ Convert Text into Graphics in a Flash
Great for generating diagrams, charts, and infographics quickly. I can think of several use cases: presentations, educational content, blogs, etc.
🌎 Computing Education Community Highlights
Lauren Margulieux from Georgia State University has been publishing her blog series for a few weeks to provide an overview of topics in the learning sciences and help education researchers think systematically about how to apply its theory and methods. It could help you as a researcher think about how students engage with complex concepts and how to design instruction that supports deeper, more meaningful learning. Check out the blog series if you haven't already.
Marisa Exter from Purdue invites us to participate in a brief survey that examines the key cross-disciplinary skills and dispositions necessary for working in computing professions. Your insights will help them understand and enhance the training for future professionals. The survey will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. Click this link to participate.
PhD position available at the Open Universiteit: Automated Detection of Security Vulnerabilities in Software. For more information you can visit this link.
🤔 Thought(s) For You to Ponder…
Community is a group of people who not only share common principles, but also develop and share practices that help individuals in the group thrive.
I really like this definition of community because it talks about principles, as well as sharing best practices that help others thrive. This is what I aspire to with this Substack: to help subscribers be better than they were before they joined, to have a positive impact on your lives, no matter how small. BTW, we've seen a big jump in subscribers coming from SIGCSE. I'm glad to have you here, and if you like what I share, it would be great if you could “restack” this post to reach many more CS educators.
The PhD Student Is In
🎙️ A new podcast episode is out!
I sat down with Ibrahim Albluwi, Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Princess Sumaya University for Technology, for a candid conversation about reading code. See you over there, and as always, thanks for joining me.
Check it out on the podcast site or on YouTube.
→ A recent paper not accepted at ICER 2025
Great work led by Ali Alfageeh - rejected after being conditionally accepted. Tough. Anyway, very proud of the new method we created called Prompt2Constraints to analyze how students interact with LLMs when solving problems by converting student prompts into logical constraints that capture what students are trying to achieve.
🪁 Leisure Line
And just like that, today marks the end of my 6 year journey at IESE Business School! Time to move on. Six years with many learnings and where I've been able to work alongside great professionals. I'm putting an end to a long professional cycle to start building a new one with great enthusiasm. I've decided to pivot my career and start a new stage in the academic world: in August I'm moving to the USA (Houston) to begin a PhD in Computer Science. Very excited and eager for what's to come.
It has been a difficult decision to make because at IESE I've been always very good with the people and more than satisfied with the way of working, I was valued, had freedom to do things, the team, the constant technical challenge and the projects always doing new things. Thank you, from the heart.
Currently Reading, Watching, Listening 📺
I recommend the latest movie I've seen, Sing Sing. It's easily the most moving film I've seen in a long time. Theater inside a prison - in this case Sing Sing - can be the only hope and at the same time a way to achieve redemption. Check where it's streaming.
This week's music inspiration came in the form of listening to the new Eliza and Burr Hamilton story EPs. WOW, what a powerful experience! I've been listening to these two EPs obsessively and digging deeper into Lin-Manuel Miranda's genius on Spotify. I'm fully converted into a super-fan.
That's all for this week. Thank you for your time. I value your feedback, as well as your suggestions for future editions. I look forward to hearing from you in the comments.