The popularity of the course, said Kenneth J. Goldman, Ph.D., professor of computer science, lies in students' inherent curiosity about software, their immersion in personal computers and their realization of the importance of technical background in today's job market, regardless of their primary disciplines of study. As a loose analogy, let's say all of your life you knew how to read, but then someone comes along and shows you how to write. You can get a great sense of satisfaction from creating software. You think of an idea, write a description of it and have it instantly come to life for you on the screen. Goldman has spent a good deal of time and effort molding the course and making it more accessible to a broader range of students by creating a series of challenging programming projects that incorporate a lot of computer graphics.
Software is intangible, which is one of the things that can make computer science so difficult.
If you look at a page of program text, an error may not jump out at you, but if you incorporate graphics, the software becomes more physical, more tangible. You see the results and can correct mistakes more easily. While students have fun and find satisfaction in developing software, the course is very demanding, in both time and intellect. Students attend a weekly 90-minute laboratory and four lectures per week. Add the programming projects to the class time and students can easily put in 12 hours a week.