I disagree. We're working towards the goal of having a comprehensive Computer Science curriculum and this is just the first step. I talk more about our reasoning and methodology here:
http://ejohn.org/blog/introducing-khan-cs/
I really love what is being done here so far, especially the voice overs and live code editor, but I think it might be helpful to first-time visitors to put some more of that info on the khanacademy.org/cs page as well.
Right now, at first glance it just looks like the Khan "Computer Science" curriculum is solely about learning how to make drawings and animations with processing.js. It can be a bit confusing to the first-time visitor, who might be asking "What is this page going to teach me exactly?".
This. I appreciate the goal of the program most certainly, but I'm having a little trouble seeing a road map from the current spot to something like the theory of computation or complexity theory. It'd be cool if once the KA people have sort of a direction or loose map of how this is going to work that they could blog about it again.
It's cool, regardless, I'm just personally a bit of stickler for calling things Computer Science. I think the term is overused to the point of losing its original meaning.
This. Exactly. I was really confused. I've been trying to learn JS on an off for about a year. When I was shown the new CS program at Khan Academy today, I was instantly confused because...I was drawing pictures using processing.js. So..was I learning javascript or was I learning this processing.js that runs on top of javascript? As a beginner, I think it's super important you clarify this.
John, while I think that a lot of value will be derived from this (the environment is very cool!), your blog included the following:
"When I look back at how I became interested in programming, or ask other programmers about how they started to program, the answer is very frequently: “I was given a [Basic/QBasic/Python] compiler and a bunch of programs and I wanted to understand how it all worked so I could write my own!” It was only after digging in to the code that the student wanted to understand how to tackle certain programmatic challenges – but they then did so with great gusto!"
Which sounds great, but speaks directly to what cantankerous mentioned: this is more about computer programming than it is about hard Computer Science. Programming is just a subset of CS, and I've personally known several CS researchers who haven't touched code in years. This topic has been beaten to death, but this approach is conflating the tool (programming) with the study (CS). I realize that there's much more to come, but the introductory material that I've viewed thus far does nothing to dissuade me of this fact.
Again: I think that this is a laudable effort, and hopefully will encourage many more youngsters to get into programming. I was just hoping to see material more along the lines of computer numerical methods, computer architecture, data structures and so forth, that would be a true introduction to the wider world of what CS is.
Awesome work! But I have to agree with cantankerous. This is more about programming than computer science. If the premise is that a student should learn programming before computer science that's fine, but the curriculum should be labeled as such. The drawing tutorial video highlights this point for me when it makes a false assertion about coordinate systems in "computer science". More than just arguing semantics, this could create false expectations among students of what they are learning compared to university computer science programs.
