Pair programming with the course staff

Your instruction in COMP 40 includes direct work with a member of the course staff, who will become a temporary additional member of your programming team. You will get this kind of instruction at least once during the term.

Purpose

Pair programming with the course staff gives you and your partner the opportunity to work directly with a staff member who is an experienced programmer. The staff member will not only advise you but will also contribute to your project—whether you are designing, coding, testing, or debugging. Your job is learn from and emulate the problem-solving skills of an experienced engineer. The purpose is to help you learn to build projects quickly and successfully, with little wasted effort.

Staff biographies

Ari Kobren is a researcher at Lincoln Laboratory; his group works on natural-language processing, image processing, and video processing, all on huge data sets. Ari is both an alumnus and a past TA in COMP 40. He continually strives to make the his programs more succinct and easier for others to understand.

Norman Ramsey has written tens of thousands of lines of code in at least ten languages. He has an eye for clean design. His major weakness is a tendency to leap with both feet at the first solution that presents itself.

Jesse Welch is a senior in the Tufts School of Arts and Sciences and a past TA in COMP 40. He has recently completed an internship at Microsoft and is planning a senior these on algorithms and techniques for automated testing.

Available Times

Your initial session with a pair instructor will take 40 minutes. We offer these times:

Jesse Welch Monday 7:00PM, 7:40PM, and 8:20pm
Ari Kobren Tuesday 7:00PM, 7:40PM, and 8:20pm
Norman Ramsey Wednesday 7:00PM–7:45PM, and 8:00pm–8:45pm

How to get a session

To sign up, send an e-mail to comp40pairprogramming@gmail.com. Please put your name and your partner's name on the subject line, and list up to nine times that work for you. You can find a calendar of available times at the bottom of this page.

In your email, please number times from 1 to 9, where 1 is your first choice. If two times are equally good, please give them the same number. Here's a sample: 

    From: newman@example.com
    To:  comp40pairprogramming@gmail.com
    Subject: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

    1. Tuesday 9/6 7-8
    2. Tuesday 9-7
    3. Wednesday 9/7 7-8
    3. Wednesday 8-9
You'll get your first session on a first-come, first-served basis. After your first, students who have not yet had a session will get priority.
Within two days, we will either assign you a time or let you know that all the times you asked for have been filled.

In case of scheduling catastophe

If a class, sport, or other conflict makes it impossible for you to have a session at a regularly scheduled time, please email comp40-staff with the details of your constraints.

Calendar of available sessions

Back to COMP 40 home page