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CS100 is a your basic CS2 course, providing an introduction to data structures, big O, and of course plenty of practice coding tricky problems. This course is a great favorite of mine to teach, mostly because of the office hours. It’s just fun to work with students who are just starting to get serious with Computer Science; they are still capable of having fun just getting the computer to output the right stuff.

For extra credit, we gave the student an opportunity to write a song about Computer Science. There were some super awesome submissions. One of my favorite lines is the refrain from this adaptation of Avril Lavigne’s Complicated (Noelle Suaifan):

Why’d you have to go and make Java so complicated?
I see the way you’re forgetting to import packages gets me frustrated
CompSci’s like this, you
And you code and your program implodes and takes forever to load
and you don’t insert that node and your code is the biggest mess
But promise me you’re never gonna switch your major to Art History
No, no, no

Two other great submissions:

• Far Away From Java Code by Haoran Liu and Hanxiao Mao (lyrics)
• Algorithms and Data Structures Theme Song (adapted from the Pokemon theme song) by Jennifer Villa and friends (lyrics)

Check out the complete list.

Pretty much all of these songs are about how difficult the assignments in CS100 are. Should I be concerned?