This is the end. I’m gonna stop writing this blog. I’ve said this multiple times, to my friends, to my readers, and to myself, but this time I’m truly stopping....
NYU should merge its CS departments into one department. By keeping the two departments, NYU is diluting every single aspect of NYU Computer Science. Everything from courses to clubs to...
Surprisingly, this isn’t another complaining post. Instead, let’s answer an incredibly common question: how the heck do Courant, CAS, the CS department relate to each other? NOTE: This is correct...
I’ve hesitated to write this post. Not because it’d be controversial or because it’d get me in trouble. But because I’m concerned that people might misconstrue or exaggerate the message....
Grades don’t matter. I’ve beaten around this bush before in my prior NYU CS rants by saying that students are overly obsessed with school, that they should care less about...
By Khanh Nguyen. NYU CS is bad. It lacks resources and a good curriculum. Many students complain about the lack of recruitment on campus and support from professors. Browsing recent...
I’d like to confess something. I’ve talked about the joys of reading on this blog before. I’ve given book recommendations; I’ve discussed how various books have really helped me; basically,...
I love to negotiate. Some people don’t. I guess they see it as nervewracking or even rude. I find it fun. When else can you make $5,000 simply by taking...
I mentioned in my why not NYU CS post that I haven’t been impressed with NYU’s CS majors. I’d like to expand on this. I don’t want my conclusion to...
In this episode of grumpy undergrad yells at cloud, let’s talk professor allocation. I’ve been critical of NYU CS of late, but there’s one area in which we’re undeniably strong....
Talk to a student about the big tech companies and you’ll often get an enthusiastic response. They study for hours, practicing technical interview questions. They beg their friends and acquantances...
I’ve talked about how problem solving is an intensely important skill for programmers. I don’t think that’s a controversial statement. Most programmers understand that to some extent or another, problem...
You probably shouldn’t go to NYU CS. I know, this is a pretty incendiary statement to make, especially coming from a blog on improving NYU’s CS community. But I figured...
It’s funny. I’ve written all these posts and I kept on thinking I’ve exhausted all the possible topics, yet I’ve never written a post on how to do better in...
We should all be more charitable. I’ve noticed that programmers can be quite uncharitable—uncharitable towards other programmers, uncharitable towards code, even towards companies. Code is always unacceptably bad. Companies are...
We recently wrapped up Spark, Torch’s mentorship program. Spark, if you’re not familiar, is a mentorship program where students are organized into batches with a few mentors. Each batch creates...
The Karate Kid is a bullshit movie. It’s about a kid who learns karate from a mysterious sensei, trains for like 3 months and wins a tournament against far better...
I’ve been working on Spark, Torch’s mentorship program, where I’ve been fortunate enough to meet the next generation of precocious NYU CS students. With a few of these students, they’ve...
Pessimism is a severely underrated quality of good programmers. It’s easy to write code that works when everything goes well. It’s profoundly hard to write code that doesn’t screw everything...
Happy Birthday Burn Rate! It’s officially been one year since I wrote the first post on this blog. What started out as a reddit comment on how to survive CSO...
I wrote a post talking about the topics you should know. While writing that post, I realized there were a lot of topics I’d like to put on the list,...
I do this fun exercise where I contrast how I learn for fun versus how I learn in school. One big difference is in having to take multiple tries to...
I’ve talked about interviews in previous posts. However some recent experiences helping others with interview prep has given me some more insight. Here’s a couple tips on how to prep...
Your résumé probably needs work. I’ve looked at a decent amount of résumés and it’s quite rare that I find an organized, well designed one. Here’s some tips on how...
I’ve written about a multitude of subjects on this blog. Mostly areas that everybody kind of agrees are important. Maybe people will quibble over a detail or two but nobody’s...
If you’re lucky and your internship hasn’t been cancelled, you’re working this summer. For some of you, the company you’re working for may be a little…less efficient with their HR...
Gap years and gap semesters are on everybody’s mind. Plenty of people online are declaring that they are going to take a gap year instead of suffer through online classes....
I’m going to do something a little different. Because this blog has clearly been lacking some self indulgence, I’m going to talk about my personal journey interning at various places....
I’ve been trying to come up with explanations for why concepts like code splitting, abstraction, and naming are important. One analogy came to mind recently. Imagine you’re moving and need...
Another notes from the underground /r/csMajors. I recently read a post asking if it’s too late to apply to fall internships. This surprised me because we’re a solid 3 months...
Nobody gets the same CS degree. Everybody takes courses with different professors at different times—and sometimes in completely different worlds. However there are some bit and bytes of knowledge that...
If there’s one thing I’d get rid of in the CS community, it’s early stage startups offering internships. You see this all the time, whether it’s on the opportunities mailing...
I’m a habitual browser of /r/csMajors and /r/cscareerquestions. I’m not really sure why. I’m not looking for advice and honestly I find a lot of the posts unrealistic, bordering on...
What’s the one thing you should care about when looking for an internship? Is it the tech stack? The salary? The free snacks? In my opinion it’s technical mentorship. Unless...
Maybe you came into NYU with some AP credit. Maybe you’re a little advanced in some area. Maybe you just pride yourself in being interdisciplinary. Whatever it is, you’ve decided...
Go on any forum for CS majors and you’ll find endless questions asking, inquiring, begging, pleading to know if CS is for them. This is not a surprise. CS is...
I’ve found that students make certain assumptions about classes. Some of these are based on their experiences in high school. Some of these are based on an…optimistic set of expectations....
For some reason, you might have some free time. Maybe you’re facing unexpected unemployment for this summer. Maybe your plans of traveling and eating your way through Mexico got canceled....
There’s a lot of discussion inside the CS world about imposter syndrome. For good reasons: It’s a topic that resonates with a lot of programmers. We’ve all felt inadequate or...
I’ve met more than a few people who have decided to pursue a masters degree, whether in the 5 years bachelors masters program or separately. And sometimes they’re worth it....
You want to be a CS major but you don’t have much programming experience. Maybe you’ve taken CSCI-002, the non major intro CS course. Maybe you just started learning Java....
I like programming. I spend a lot of my days thinking, reading and writing about programming and computer science. Until this semester, I had not taken more than one CS...
Ah programming languages. They’re a common subject of inquery: What language should I learn? How do I rate my language knowledge? How easy is it to learn a new language?...
“Reading?”, you inquire. “I didn’t get into computer science to read!” Yes yes, reading is scary. But it’s profoundly important if you want to be a better programmer. Contrary to...
Before I covered the entrepreneur side. Now let’s do the developer side. Do You Want It? Do you want to do a startup? If not, then don’t even entertain the...
It begins the practically the instance you learn an oodle of programming. It happens everywhere—a family reunion, a party, or really any social occasion. It always involves the same script....
Show of hands here, who hates Albert? No, not your buddy Albert, who I’m sure is a great person. I’m talking about NYU’s Albert, the wonderful course registration site that...
Happy New Year everybody! It’s pretty surreal writing 2020. Feels like the future. And what better time than the future to talk about new beginnings—specifically getting your first CS job....
Getting stuck sucks. There’s no way around it. Whether it’s not being able to find the missing semicolon or having trouble understanding this new library, being stuck is one of...
Side projects are incredibly important. They’re arguably more important than your actual courses in terms of job applications or even how much you learn. They help you learn practical technologies...
People don’t use email to its full potential. They hem and haw about sending an email. They wring their hands about minor wording. And worst of all, they don’t think...
Hackathons. Love ‘em, hate ‘em, they’re everywhere. It seems like every college has one. Whether you’re a computer science student or simply adjacent to programming, you always have the opportunity...
So you want a job. Not just any job though. A job at a place like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, etc. In programmer parlance, these are called “Big N” companies....
Welcome back to my guide to NYU CAS CS! Hope you enjoyed the last post. Here’s a few other topics that I feel are important for CS majors to know....
So you’ve decided to become a CS major. Maybe you like playing video games and want to make your own. Maybe you’ve been tinkering with computers your whole life and...
Assembly If you’re lucky, your professor won’t do a lot of assembly. However, sometimes you pull the short straw. Fortunately even when professors do cover assembly, it’s not in a...
Let’s set the scene. You’re a sophomore or junior CS major in NYU CAS. You’ve crushed Intro to Computer Science, destroyed it in Data Structures. You strut into your next...
Welcome to Burn Rate, Torch’s new blog! Torch is an incubator for NYU’s tech community. Our goal is to foster an environment where students can further their career ambitions as...