CSE 92 is a unique opportunity for undergraduates in computer science at UCSD to expand and refine their academic skills.  Students will improve their ability to read and write English, and they will also learn a new paradigm for writing programs.  The class will meet once per week, on Fridays from 2pm to 3:20pm, in Center Hall room 218.  

The course will have two main components.

• First, each student enrolled in the course will choose one important book and write two short papers that include an an analysis and critique of the observations and arguments of the book.  The instructor will help all students individually to outline, draft, and revise their papers.  The objective of this part of the course is to give all students the ability to read and write with depth and precision.
  
• Second, students will learn the concepts of functional programming and do a project using the ML language.  This part of the course will teach an appreciation for elegance and high-level thinking in software development.  The objectives of this part of the course are similar to those of courses that use Scheme and the book Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. 

The course carries two units of credit.  Each student will be evaluated 1/2 on his or her written papers, 1/4 on the final ML programming project, and 1/4 on a final exam.  Students must take the course for a letter grade.  The prerequisite for CSE 92 is CSE 12.  Although the course is designed for lower-division students, upper-division CSE majors may also enroll.  The section id for registration is 544091.  The class meets once per week, on Fridays from 2pm to 3:20pm, in Center Hall room 218.

HELP WITH WRITING

"The Writing Center offers the UCSD community FREE one-to-one conferences on any kind of writing project ... Various workshops are offered, including ... essay writing ... The OASIS writing test assesses your strengths and weaknesses in writing and editing academic papers. ... Individual tutorial services are available to students whose first language is not English."

BOOKS TO CHOOSE

• High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles H. Ferguson
• High Tech Start Up: The Complete Handbook for Creating Successful New High Tech Companies by John L. Nesheim (2nd ed.)
• Competing on Internet Time: Lessons from Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft by Michael A. Cusumano and David B. Yoffie
• In the Beginning... Was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson
• Findings of Fact on Microsoft by Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson
• Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace by Lawrence Lessig
• Republic.com by Cass Sunstein
• The Control Revolution: How The Internet is Putting Individuals in Charge and Changing the World We Know by Andrew L. Shapiro
• Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century by Simson Garfinkel
• After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering by Steve M. McConnell
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
• Secrets of Software Success : Management Insights from 100 Software Firms Around the World by Detlev J. Hoch, Cyriac R. Roeding, Gert Purkert, Sandro K. Lindner
• Computer Power and Human Reason : From Judgement to Calculation by Joseph Weizenbaum
• Computers Ltd: What They Really Can't Do by David Harel
• Computation and Human Experience by Philip Agre
• The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer Is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution by Donald A. Norman
• Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity  by Jakob Nielsen
• The Social Life of Information by John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid
• Questioning Technology by Andrew Feenberg
• Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System by Dan Schiller
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson
• Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences by Geoffrey C. Bowker and Susan Leigh Star
• Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man by Marshall McLuhan
• Avatars of the Word: From Papyrus to Cyberspace by James Joseph O'Donnell
• Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate
• A History of Modern Computing by Paul E. Ceruzzi
• Aramis, or the Love of Technology by Bruno Latour
• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at Nasa by Diane Vaughan
• The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
• Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by Annalee Saxenian
• Digital Divide: Computers and Our Children's Future by David Bolt and Ray Crawford
• The Internet Edge: Social, Technical, and Legal Challenges for a Networked World by Mark J. Stefik
• The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order by Francis Fukuyama
• End of Millennium by Manuel Castells
• The Virtue of Prosperity: Finding Values In An Age Of Techno-Affluence by Dinesh D'Souza
• The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization by Douglas S. Robertson
• Consulting Demons: Inside the Unscrupulous World of Global Corporate Consulting by Lewis Pinault
• The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
• Blown to Bits: How the New Economics of Information Transforms Strategy by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster
• The Economic Laws of Scientific Research by Terence Kealey
• Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian
• Friction-Free Economy by Ted Lewis
• The Gorilla Game: Picking Winners in High Technology by Geoffrey A. Moore, Paul Johnson, Tom Kippola
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary by Eric Raymond
• The Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen, Manuel Castells (Epilogue), Linus Torvalds
• Free for All: How Linux and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans by Peter Wayner
• "The New Yorker" Looks at the Age of Affluence by David Remnick

Most recently updated on May 12, 2005 by Charles Elkan, elkan@cs.ucsd.edu.