"Interesting at the start but was soon so lost it was uninteresting."
"Some parts of the course were hard to grasp."
"There seems to be quite a lot to get through. And some of it is not easy
stuff!"
"Seems to be too much to take in on the handouts."
Next year, I will try to have less abstract discussion of the
different possible kinds of language constructs and instead have more actual
examples. I will also try to shift the emphasis from isolated discussions
about individual language features and implementation, and try to say more
about their interactions and language design.
It would help if I knew in a bit more detail what the problems are -
stop me in the lectures if I go too fast!
"Very laborious/slow."
"Same as most, how about a bit of variety."
Any suggestions?
"Larger font please"
"The font used is a bit too small."
"Too much has been crammed in on them, not too clear due to small type and
the compactness of the handouts."
"Too cramped upon the sheet."
"Very hard to learn/revise from."
"The layout and standard of the handouts are a major problem. Trying to
revise from them is a major task & seeing as there is no one course book
that covers most of the course I hope I can scrape a pass in the exams!"
"On their own they mean very little, if the print was bigger more of our own
notes could have been added to give meaning to them. Many details not
included on the notes and it was just not possible to make handwritten notes
of all the details given in the lectures."
How do I reconcile these two sets of comments?
The dept. can't afford current copying costs, and staff are being asked
to reduce handouts to about two A4 sides a lecture. In particular, we can't
afford to waste space on the handouts to give you lots of room to write
extra notes! The only alternative is to reduce the information on the
handout and expect you to make more notes in the lecture and/or buy a
textbook. The current scheme seems to me to be the best compromise, but if
there is a concensus of opinion (and the dept. can afford it) I am willing
to change the style of handouts. Should I reduce the information on the
handouts and make the missing information available electronically?
However, I expected that most students would need to make extra notes
during the lectures - in general, whatever is on the slides is on the
handouts, but you may need to note anything extra I say or write on slides
or board. You should always feel free to ask questions in lectures or labs
or by email, to ask for more explanation or another example or just for more
time to make notes.
"What about answers to the questions at the end?"
Please feel free to chat to me about them in the lab or after the
lectures or by email or whatever - full answers are in the dept. library.
"The notes for Lex and Yacc were poor and unclear which meant the labs were
hard to do and get to grips with."
"More explanation of Yacc."
I listed several alternative sources of information available in the
dept. library, but I will try to explain them better next time.
"A few of the demonstrators were hard to understand though."
"There were hardly any demonstrators available."
If you have problems with the demonstrators, let me know. I wasn't
aware of significant problems, although inevitably they are not as familiar
with the exercises as I am.
"The laboratory exercises are not specific enough. It is not clear what is
wanted by just reading the exercises."
"The lab exercises were not clearly set out point by point as to what exactly
was required. A marking scheme sheet would have been useful."
"Instructions are a bit vague"
"Difficult to start with."
"Exercises 1 & 8 far too hard!"
"I found some of the labs too demanding. In particular exercise 1 was very
hard given the time available."
"Too much knowledge of C is assumed. This makes the labs very difficult and
it was too easy to get left behind at the start which meant the knowledge to
do the later labs was lacking."
"1st & 2nd exercises didn't fit in"
I did overestimate how much C you know (& see other comments below).
For 95/6 I have completely revised exercise 1, and rewritten the other
exercises (particularly 2 and 8) to simplify and clarify them.
"Possibly labs once a week was a bit tough going?"
"The idea of 1 per week was hard to come to grips with as one extension meant
you were behind forever, so several lates."
"Pretty hard, especially as it is once a week, but just about manageable."
"Continuous labs are a pain in the @$$."
"Too many by far, unless more weighting i.e. 50% of course."
"8*2hr labs are too much but required to understand and back up the
lectures. Therefore the course needs changing so there are only 4*2hr labs."
"I didn't like the three FSA exercises as I had problems with the first one
I couldn't do the next two."
"Quite complex in parts."
"Not really enough time for each exercise."
I have spaced out the labs in 1995/6, with a spare week after
exercises 4 and 7. I hope this will give you chance to catch up if you are
feeling overworked. Are these pauses at the right times, or should they be
elsewhere?
The amount of lab is linked to the decision not to have examples
classes. I intend many of the lab exercises to be straightforward, like
examples classes but using computers instead of paper and pencil. The FSA
exercises (5-7) are intended as 'real' lab problems, after the introduction
to Lex and Yacc in exercises 2-4.
The weighting of lab and exam is nominally 25%:75%, but as announced,
one exam question asks you to use Lex and Yacc to solve a similar problem,
so the lab work really has a weight of about 50%. Should I make this
question compulsory?
"Would be nice to have examples classes." "None - could do with some." "Would have been nice, especially since this was the first year of course and no past papers"
Again, how do I reconcile these comments? I find that very few students seem to take examples classes seriously, so I decided to replace them by labs, which would be more useful. For those of you who want them, there are optional exercises at the end of most handouts.
"Not appropriate for a CA student (I had problems with the technical words
used in the course) although it gave me an in depth understanding of how
compilers work and programming languages & I enjoyed it very much."
I did not expect that you would be at a disadvantage, but I can see
that there can be problems. I don't want to discourage CA students, but I
have to be honest. I am very happy for you to ask questions during and/or
after lectures, so if you are interested and brave enough to ask for help,
then you should be able to cope with the course. (In practice, joint honours
students seem to have got similar marks to everyone else.)
"Assume that you know C & SML inside out (well almost)."
Not intentionally. I overestimated what you had learnt from CS1062
this year, so I will simplify the labs. In the lectures, I expect you to
think about the different ways C could have been defined, and see the
trade-offs implicit in the actual decisions made. We do look at SML
occasionally (and other languages as well), just to see a different set of
trade-offs and decisions, but I do not expect you to learn other
languages.
"Is there any way to have better reading material available."
"Recommended book (Bal & Grune) seems to be less referenced in handouts than
other books."
"It would be useful if a course text book was available. The Programming
Language Essentials book is too general and does not support a large part
of the course."
This is a real problem, and the main reason why I put so much detail
into the handouts. I think I have found a better textbook for 95/96. I
expect I will have complaints next year about you being forced to read it,
although that is not my intention.