COMP3411 (ongoing)

COMP1521 was the perfect way to start off my Computer Science journey! I completed this subject in Trimester 12023 alongside discrete maths (MATH1081) and a free elective.

The course is run extremly well. Lectures were well paced and the lecturer was great at giving enough time to properly explain and go through all content in the course. Tutorials and labs were also really great. All the tutors and assistants were very helpful and the laboratory exercises themselves were interesting and tested knowledge of the weekly content well.

Having never coded before, learning all about C and programming fundamentals was super exciting and overall I think the course did a great job at laying the foundation for the Computer Science journey to come.

As this was my first ever Computer Science course, pretty much everything in this course was new and exciting to me. I think the main takeaways for me were that COMP1511 gave me a fundamental understanding of programming and an adequate proficiency in my first language, C.

I think that this fundamental understanding really fostered many skills that I am still developing today such as: Critical thinking, program design, style, testing and debugging. Looking back, I think also that having such an in depth and comprehensive introduction to programming made it significantly easier for me to pick up other languages and be able to analyse code.

The assessments in this course were really well thought out and for me were set at a level that was challenging but engaging. I remember really liking that all parts of assessments (including the final exam) were given difficulty ratings, because for me coming in knowing nothing, it was reassuring to know how difficult they expected students to find certain tasks.

The course had weekly laboratory tasks that were definetly manageable and matched the weekly course content well. I found it really drilled into me the fact that coding was something that constantly needed to be worked at, and the weekly tasks helped me feel more competent when it came to the final exam.

The first assessment involved using structs and arrays to implement a tower defence style game. I found the assessment really fun and enjoyed creating complex stucts and wrestling with the idea of 2D and 3D arrays.

The second assessment involved using linked lists to simulate train carriage layouts. I also really enjoyed this assessment as I wrestled more with the idea of linked lists and found the challenge of implementing them to be more enjoyable than the first assignment.