In this episode, we talk with David Malan from Harvard University, Professor of the Practice of Computer Science in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He teaches Computer Science 50, Harvard University’s largest course.

Our conversation focused on CS50 tools. An overview of the tools is in a YouTube video David provided. We spent most of our time talking about help50 and style50. Help50 is a tool that, when fed error output, returns a suggestion or question a student should focus on to help interpret the error output. Style50 is a tool to help students fix the style of their code by highlighting what to change. However, David emphasized that he wanted the tool to require the student to change the code themselves.

When asked about something awesome in CS he’d like to share, David talked about containerization, especially tools like Docker. In CS50, they use containers on both the server and client-side. He finds they are a great way to package up everything for students.

His Too Long, Didn’t Listen (TL;DL) focused on encouraging fellow teachers to see if someone else has already created an educational tool that would fit their needs rather than reinventing the wheel.

See the transcript on the website (https://csedpodcast.org/blog/season1_episode1/)