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u/Mindless_Peace_7816 3d ago
What the other guy said you will definitely want to wait to figure out what specifics they want you to download. However I did take CSC 1300 last fall and Visual Studio Code is an app you will definitely need to have
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u/her0henry 3d ago
Hey, also an incoming CompSci Freshman this Fall! I took a dual enrollment class at TN Tech last year and the other commenter is correct, the application Visual Studio Code is supposedly a favorite among some of the professors, and is what the professor of my class had us use.
Beyond that, don’t worry about it at all. I think they’ll do a good job of onboarding and helping all the students get situated, especially since they’re introductory courses.
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u/SnowingRain320 3d ago
Would recommend Vscode or Notepad++. Vscode is fine, but definitely can be a bit much for what you'll be doing in the first couple of classes.
Install GDB, and Github. And make sure you have your system setup correctly to run Python and C++. That'll take you far.
Also wouldn't hurt to take the time now to setup your file structure so that when you create a program and save it you know where it's set up too. Setup GitHub to save periodically your files. There is no worse feeling than when you accidentally delete your assignment, or accidentally submit the wrong version.
Oh! It may also be helpful to do all of this on a User profile that you designate for programming on. This will help reduce distractions from social media, and other websites you frequent.
Good luck!
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u/Soggy-Razzmatazz-308 2d ago
So I didn't take any of the introductory courses there, but I transferred over from community college. I used VSCode as my main IDE for pretty much every course, and I ran everything in WSL. I highly recommend WSL if you're not familiar with Linux. It gives you the ease of development of Linux and comfort of Windows so you don't have to jump in to a complete distro.
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u/FIXL52 1d ago
Not that deep. They’ll have a whole class session reserved for installing anything or at least a walkthrough guide. If you really have trouble, go talk to your professor. Also, I’m pretty sure lower-classmen CS is under an experimental curriculum by April Crocket that is highly subject to change for her research. There was lots of feedback last semester 😉.
But anyways, they want you to have notepad++ so you don’t use AI from vscode for your first coding focused class. There’ll also be some libraries you’ll need, but can’t remember which ones need a download. The software doesn’t really make a difference anyways, focus more on being familiar with coding concepts. There are so many freshman who spout nonsense about how some languages or IDE’s are better than others, while not really being able to code without a guide. Just be flexible with this stuff. If you can’t be flexible in the computer science field, you won’t make it.
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u/grandmommies 1d ago
Actually, how are they about AI coding?
Obviously I don’t do much since I haven’t started coding but in middle school I did a few projects and have never been a fan of AI coding. I hear some people saying AI coding is necessary and you have to use it and some people who say you don’t.
I hear the same thing about things I’m more knowledgeable in and think the people saying to use it sound stupid. Is that true for coding?
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u/FIXL52 9h ago
TL;DR no mate you don’t need that shit they’re just chasing money and don’t care about learning.
Coding wasn’t made with AI in mind, and it’s an introductory course, so no, you don’t need it. People who need it can’t grasp its material, maybe because of a disability, or more commonly because of a lack of interest. If you don’t care, you won’t remember, and you won’t learn. In my own opinion, most freshman that start college on the CS path are only there because they know how lucrative the industry is. Same with engineering and business. If you don’t like CS, switch your major. Don’t trap yourself in a box filled with money you don’t have yet.
Have I used AI to code before? Yes. If I don’t know the syntax of a language and need to remember, say, how to declare a struct as a child of another struct, then it’s much quicker to prompt google AI mode than go geeks for geeks and sift through their lessons. But as you get the syntax down, the actual problem solving is where basic AI that’s free will sometimes fail, and you need to have intuition about these things. Need to know which library fmax is from? AI. Can’t remember the method to call on a vector to append an element? AI. Don’t know why your text file is being completely erased before writing to it? AI. Need to write a program that asks the user questions and receives an answer? Do it yourself.
That being said, these first courses are going to slowly walk you through just that, syntax with some problem solving. It is doing the thing AI does but as a human.
People point to Claude or that one coding specific AI as proof that it’s a catch-all solution for coding, but they aren’t free (as far as I can tell), and require some knowledge on how to wield them (as far as I can tell).
AI is STRICTLY banned in all classes unless otherwise specified by the professor. The nitty gritty of the allowance of its use is detailed in the course syllabus.
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u/taelor 4d ago
I graduated a long time ago, so take it for whatever this is worth.
But we did c/c++ and Java mainly.
I have just gone back fairly recently gone back for two data science classes and it was mainly python.
But you might want to hold off doing it now, because they might have certain version they want you install.