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Comment by yfr | Hacker News Reader

The name of this course is amusingly similar to one offered at CMU, "Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science", the content seems similar as well. Perhaps MIT was inspired by it?

[1]: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/15-251/

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The course is copied from CMU's. I have a friend who TAed the first iteration of the MIT course and was a former 251 ta @ CMU. The goal of the mit course was to offer their students the same experience as CMU's class because it was highly successful and they relied heavily on my friend's experiences as a tax at cmu to build the course.

In general, I view this as a good thing. Universities should take the best material they can find and offer them to students even if it's not original.

This was one of the greatest courses I took at CMU, when Dr Stephen Rudich lectured. The course's fame derived not only from the challenging material, but all the stories and magic tricks Dr Rudich would perform. It's not clear from the MIT course description if the latter is included.

In general, I view this as a good thing. Universities should take the best material they can find and offer them to students even if it's not original.

Check the dates: the MIT course is "As taught in 2008".

CMU's "Great Theoretical Ideas in Computer Science" (formerly known as "How to Think Like a Computer Scientist") dates back to at least 2003 and possibly earlier. It's fairly infamous. It would not be surprising if MIT's drew inspiration from it, nor would it be wrong if it did.

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