The author mentions the answer in the first paragraph:
ECE 352 was the weedout class that would be responsible
for much of the damage.
Weed out courses are common in undergraduate education. In some disciplines the logic is plausible because the resources available for upper division undergraduates are limited and vast numbers of Freshmen choose the track. The first year biology sequence is a good example.
The problem is that weed out classes substitute the easier task of deciding who is prepared for the harder task of preparing students. The author's success in the class was primarily due to the skills and knowledge they brought to the first lecture: relative success in the class was not a result of what was taught but of what was not taught. The "difficult" final still only required a few hours coding and not developing the habit of coding every day for several hours.
In my field, architecture, structures is the notorious weed out class at the undergraduate level, and truss design is the the rock which dumps all but an arbitrary few into the sea. Architects don't design trusses in contemporary practice. Hell, outside engineers employed by fabricators structural engineers working on buildings rarely design trusses (mostly they specify their structural requirements).
But my structures course was different. I studied architecture in grad school. Grad schools weed out during admissions and afterward their goal is largely to prove they made the correct decision. Having been in the industry before schooling. I could see that my structures course taught the important elements for practising and skipped the difficult for the sake of difficulty.
Interestingly, participating in Coursera classes I have seen that the more accomplished teachers tend to focus more on what is important and less on how hard the class should be. When the instructor wrote the book, maybe they know that the ideas are hard enough.
> The problem is that weed out classes substitute the easier task of deciding who is prepared for the harder task of preparing students.
I don't think this is the intent, at least in some disciplines. For example, I minored in math and went through the weedout class. It wasn't intentionally difficult (for some it wasn't even difficult). It weeded people out because it was the first class where you actually learn what math is - proofs, mostly. The people who thought it was going to just be algebra/calculus backed out.
I think maybe an important point is that almost no one fails the course - it was structured and taught such that anyone who cared could get through it. People backed out because it wasn't what they thought it was, not because it was too hard.
Not all schools do that, however. Some have weedout classes with 30% or higher failure rates (I'm looking at you GA Tech!). This wasn't just a wakeup call with a C, "Oh, maybe CS isn't for me." It was more, "Here, we threw this course together for the 3rd CS course, we'll poorly introduce terminology and use TAs (some were awesome) who are only one semester ahead of you and terrible teachers. Your next 3 courses, that depend on this, will be much easier and better taught. Good luck!" And then 30% or more would fail.
The difference is that in the math class, what sent people away was not a lack of success but a lack of interest. The people who remained at least found the idea of performing proofs better than a sharp stick in the eyey. In the author's class a person could be interested and passionate about coding and not succeed and a person who felt that a few hours solving a homework was a lot of time spent coding could.
Right, I get that. My point was that there is a legitimate way to weed people out of a major, and that lumping all weedout classes together as evil isn't really fair.
If every professor feels compelled to thwart the admissions policies by failing an inordinate number of students, either the university should re-think its admissions policies, or the professors should find other work.
The problem is that weed out classes substitute the easier task of deciding who is prepared for the harder task of preparing students. The author's success in the class was primarily due to the skills and knowledge they brought to the first lecture: relative success in the class was not a result of what was taught but of what was not taught. The "difficult" final still only required a few hours coding and not developing the habit of coding every day for several hours.
In my field, architecture, structures is the notorious weed out class at the undergraduate level, and truss design is the the rock which dumps all but an arbitrary few into the sea. Architects don't design trusses in contemporary practice. Hell, outside engineers employed by fabricators structural engineers working on buildings rarely design trusses (mostly they specify their structural requirements).
But my structures course was different. I studied architecture in grad school. Grad schools weed out during admissions and afterward their goal is largely to prove they made the correct decision. Having been in the industry before schooling. I could see that my structures course taught the important elements for practising and skipped the difficult for the sake of difficulty.
Interestingly, participating in Coursera classes I have seen that the more accomplished teachers tend to focus more on what is important and less on how hard the class should be. When the instructor wrote the book, maybe they know that the ideas are hard enough.