MIT Missing Semester 2026
35 comments
·December 15, 2025ghaff
andai
At one university I went to, the head of the CS department was quoted as saying "[We don't need to care about the job market,] Our job is to create researchers."
I thought that was pretty strange at the time because like 5% of the students end up going into research. So that was basically like him saying I'm totally cool with our educational program being misaligned for 95% percent of our customers...
Maybe it makes sense for the big picture though. If all the breakthroughs come from those 5%, it might benefit everyone to optimize for them. (I don't expect they would have called the program particularly optimized either though ;)
anon84873628
Well you can say there is a difference between "computer science" and "software engineering", plus many "universities" are particularly research focused.
A chemistry, physics, or even MechE BS is coming out only at the very beginning of their training, and will require lots of specific on-the-job training if they go into industry. School is about the principles of the field and how to think critically / experimentally. E.g. software debugging requires an understanding of hypothesis testing and isolation before the details of specific tech ever come into play. This is easy to take for granted because many people have that skill naturally, others need to be trained and still never quite get it.
ghaff
Probably one of those thoughts you should self-filter (and the alumni association sure wishes you would).
But it's also the case that (only half-joking) a lot of faculty at research universities regard most undergrads as an inconvenience at best.
__loam
Historically, the point of a university is not to be a jobs training program.
01HNNWZ0MV43FF
I'm not gonna recommend them to anyone then, because the number one problem most of my friends have is having crappy jobs
throwaway20174
It's tough to for me to judge cause I've been programming for 30 years maybe I'm underestimating how hard it is, but I look at learning a new language very different that trying to understand the graduate level CS work I've seen at a top STEM school.
Git, shell, basics.. even simple python if you have any at all programming experience - not nearly as hard as what they're teaching in the class.
Most of the time something like that like learning latex or git basics.. they'll say.. you'll pick up what you need. They're not gonna spend 12 weeks on those subjects they aren't hard enough.
ghaff
Discrete tools are fairly easy. On the other hand, I think a lot of people here would laugh at the "text book" for the introductory FORTRAN course I took at said school.
Of course, you were struggling with fairly primitive tools at the time as well. Made a typo? Time to beg the grad students running the facility for some more compute cycles.
Although it's out of print I don't immediately see a full copy online. https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~kaufman1/FortranColoringBook/Colo...
cylentwolf
I feel like most first intro classes in Computer Science is learn the coding language on your own. At first I was like why? Why don't they hold our hands while we do this. But since I have had some space to look back it really is a pretty good representation of our industry. You are going to need to learn new languages. So getting thrown in the deep end is a pretty good precursor for what work is going to look like.
kenjackson
This isn’t a bad idea, just not for the intro course. When I was an undergrad “programming language” was this course. You were given a brief introduction to brew languages and paradigms then expected to figure it out from there. But at this point you had a foundation of experience to build on.
ghaff
I don't totally disagree. On the other hand, based on the MOOC I took, had I been going in literally cold (as in college, new experiences, this is my chance to dive into CS and programming), I'd have been completely lost in a way that wouldn't have been the case in other engineering disciplines.
Now, I'm sure some would argue "tough." What are you doing at MIT then? And certainly, there are SO many opportunities these days to get some grounding in a way that may not be as readily possible with chemistry much less nuclear engineering for example. But it is something I think about now and then.
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somenameforme
What makes you think this would not have been the case in other engineering disciplines?
I'm also a CS guy so I can't directly challenge this on the whole, but my experiences in some classes outside of this in other domains didn't feel like they were 'comfortably' paced at all. Without extensive out-of-class work I'd have been completely lost in no time. In fact one electrical engineering course I took was ironically considered a weed out course, for computer science, as it was required, and was probably the most brutal (and amazing) class I've ever taken in my life.
griffzhowl
Is the MOOC the same as the actual MIT course though? I went through one of the old Grimson Guttag Intro to CS courses on MIT OCW years ago, with zero programming background I found it a very gentle on-ramp with all the basics explained.
I think it was this one, unfortunately archived now. I don't know the new one
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-00-introduction-to-computer-sc...
ternus
It's interesting to see that MIT is still like this. Canonically, there were no classes that taught programming per se: if you needed that, there were (often volunteer-taught) courses over IAP, the January Independent Activities Period, that would attempt to fill the gap - but you were still expected to pick it up on your own. I taught the Caffeinated Crash Course in C way back when. Good times.
dnackoul
During my time there (late 2000s) there was a Software Lab (6.170) that focused on programming fundamentals and culminated in a four-person, month-or-so long project. At least at the time, it was one of the more notorious courses in terms of time investment. It was common for people to live like monks during project time.
Unfortunately I heard that class was retired and there was no direct replacement, which is a shame. It was an excellent crash course in shipping.
ghaff
Project courses were pretty notorious. I had a few. 2.70 (which I think is a different number now) in mechanical engineering was a HUGE time sink. [For others: was a design challenge competition with a live context.] Did another all-terrain vehicle competition in grad school which was probably an even bigger time sink.
ghaff
Way back in the day, you did have a few programming classes especially outside of CS/EE given that it was perfectly reasonable for students to have no or little prior exposure to computers and programming. See FORTRAN coloring book. And, as you say, although I haven't dropped by since pre-COVID, there was as you say a smattering of stuff during IAP.
But my general sense based on some level of connections is you're expected to figure out a lot of, for lack of a better term, practicalities on your own. I don't think there's a lot of hand-holding in many cases--probably more so in some domains than others.
kkylin
Yup. Back in my day there was 1.00, a Civil Engineering course, a pretty standard intro to programming in plain old C. I don't know if it still exists. There was nothing of that sort in EECS, though there are lots of IAP courses (which take place in January, before spring semester starts). IMO a month is about right to spend on (leisurely) picking up a programming language for fun. A friend and I learned APL that way.
icambron
In 2004 or so, 1.00 was an intro to Java course. I took it very cynically to pad out my units; I was a course 6 senior at the time. I got side-eyed by TAs a lot.
foobarian
I feel like anyone with enough talent to get into MIT will have no problem picking up a programming language in a month or two on their own. Heck there are freshmen there who write programming languages for fun
griffzhowl
Wasn't the SICP course a course in programming per se?
anonu
I always thought this practical side of development was missing in a CS or engineering curriculum. This is awesome.
For similar reasons I think arts and humanities students should take marketing and business courses.
russfink
Link to the About page that clearly describes the effort and rationale.
genix
very useful, took me couple months brute forcing to grasp the know hows because my school doesn't teach it. glad to see a course for it now getting out there
loughnane
Anyone know how/if this differs from the 2020 one?
Edit: Nvm, they comment on it. https://missing.csail.mit.edu/2026/development-environment/
LasEspuelas
There should be something like this available for any student at University, regardless of field. Perhaps less geared towards programming tasks but basic computing productivity.
tekknolagi
If you're interested, see also https://bernsteinbear.com/isdt/ by me and Tom
kratom_sandwich
Awesome course and I encourage everyone to check out the previous iteration (and the corresponding discussions on HN)
russfink
Conspicuously missing is a direct mention of AI tools. Is MIT, like others, side-stepping the use of AI by students to (help them) complete homework assignments and projects?
elephanlemon
If you click through the lectures they are mentioned in several of them.
There's definitely a tension at top STEM schools (probably especially in CS) between assuming students have some baseline knowledge of whatever field and just tossing them into the deep end of the pool and figuring out the practicalities on their own.
I did take one of the MIT intro CS MOOCs at one point for kicks. Very good. But it was more or less learn Python on your own if you don't already know it (or how to program more broadly). That doesn't really happen in a lot of other disciplines other than some areas of the arts.