Computer Play: An Unconventional, Musical Introduction to CS and EE
Course Description
This IntroSem will introduce you to computer science and electrical engineering in an experimental way: creating programs that understand sounds and let you play with them in real time by making noise with real-world musical instruments. (No musical training required.)
"Computer Play" is a rough draft of a future CS/EE-listed class, emphasizing the joy and playfulness of these disciplines and their fundamental concepts through real-time interaction.
By the end of the class, you'll understand the foundations of computer programs in a visceral way, by learning assembly language (the language all other programming languages rely on!). Plus, you'll learn the big ideas behind some of the core discoveries, surprises, and impossibilities at the core of CS and EE: How can computers think about a continuous sound wave that has an infinite number of points? In a noisy world, what does it mean to communicate information, and how well can we truly do it? What can computers compute, and what *can't* they compute — and do those limits also apply to what humans can think? And finally: why is every piano always out of tune??? Ok that one isn't quite as close to the core of CS and EE as the others but it's still true and relevant and in this class you'll learn why. Sorry piano lovers.
For the IntroSem, our ideal student will be a bit courageous — this is a trial run of a new way of teaching this material in an unconventional way. If an experiment appeals to your sense of adventure, we'd love to have you and your feedback for future offerings. We're aiming for students who complete this class to be well-positioned to go on to CS 106B, ENGR 76M, or EE 102A, but this class isn't a direct substitute for those classes' prerequisites.
Meet the Instructor: Keith Winstein
“This is my 12th year teaching at Stanford! Both Stanford and MIT (where I went to college) helped create the fields of computer science and electrical engineering, especially information theory, digital audio and music, and the first programming languages, and were home to the original 'hackers,' people whose value system was about playful troublemaking, curiosity, and sharing the fun of co-creation, and I'd love to share that spirit with you. To me a big part of the 'leverage' we have in computer science is the confidence that comes from knowing the mystery is ultimately solvable — which comes from some of these important discoveries that we'll talk about. Outside of this class, my group researches systems around computing, compression, and communication. I used to be a newspaper reporter covering science and medicine and also consulted for the HBO 'Silicon Valley' show (I was briefly in the finale with some of my colleagues).”
Of related interest
