The investigation, which is still ongoing, began after several students came forward to report that some students had continued working and shared answers on the spring final for Computer Science 70 after the exam had ended. Recent discussion regarding the incident by was sparked by a post on social news website Reddit on Saturday.

According to students and members of the teaching staff, the crowdedness and logistical difficulties of Haas Pavilion, where the exam took place, made it easier for students to cheat. Although the staff members were aware that the Math 54 class would be taking an exam at the same time, they expected the room to be able to accommodate the 1,000 students taking their exams.

However, the crowdedness forced GSIs to check identification after the exam, causing exam collection to take 15 to 20 minutes. CS 70 students also sat in the back, making it difficult to hear any announcements from the room’s single sound system.

“The Haas Pavilion was so echoey — no one could actually hear,” said Dhruv Garg, a campus junior majoring in electrical engineering and computer sciences. “(When the professor said time was up), it wasn’t clear whether her instructions were targeted towards just her class or everybody.”

According to GSI Chenyu Zhao, witnesses brought the cheating incidents to the attention of the teaching staff after the exam. Within an hour, the professor posted on the class’s forum, notifying the class of the incident and urging the class to take responsibility.

“The cheaters are going to be hurting the grades of all the honest students in the class,” Professor Sahai wrote. “They deserve no mercy or loyalty after doing such a despicable act to their fellow students.”

The electrical engineering and computer sciences department’s academic dishonesty policies recommend that cheaters be failed for the corresponding courses and that students be expelled after a repeat offense. According to the Center for Student Conduct, if students fail to resolve the incident with their professor, they will receive an alleged violation letter to either accept their sanctions or go to a hearing.

Ultimately, less than 2 percent of the class was found to be guilty. For those who confessed before grades were turned in, grades were readjusted to remove points possibly gained on an extra question. Those who still have not confessed, according to Sahai, will at least fail the class, and the university will decide the subsequent punishment. The investigation is ongoing.

Students said that the cheaters had no justification for their actions, given the professor’s helpfulness and fairness throughout the semester.

“The professor and GSIs threw homework parties, which were very helpful,” said Alex Danilychev, a campus sophomore and computer science major. “We also had extra credit opportunities throughout the semester. I could’ve easily gotten three times the extra credit I got if I wanted to.”

The students had a range of responses, varying from surprise to anger, compelling them to report anything suspicious they witnessed. According to the professor, more than 20 people came forward with reports.

“There was a positive side in that the discussion that happened afterwards generated a shared sense that something was wrong and not acceptable,” Sahai said.

Contact Mary Zhou at mzhou@dailycal.org

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AirBears2 will make wireless use more secure by encrypting all data traffic passing through its server. The new network also aims to make it easier for users to connect by no longer requiring repeated user logins after initial authentication.

Additionally, AirBears2 will be available throughout the entire campus, except in the residence halls and in locations where the department of electrical engineering and computer sciences manages wireless access.

“Anybody coming by campus with the right equipment could basically grab copies of (data) traffic on the old AirBears network,” said Isaac Orr, manager of network operations and services at IST. “That is not the case with AirBears2.”

In addition to increased security, the new network will make it easier for users to connect to the network through multiple devices by allowing the user-generated key to be shared.

During the first use, each user will generate a unique electronic key. This user-generated key can then be shared across multiple devices, allowing synchronized connectivity to the Internet on computers, cellphones and tablets.

According to Michael Green, campus director of telecommunications, AirBears2 will not be offered on Monday in the residence halls because of issues with bandwidth allotment and increased legal protections that are needed when offering Wi-Fi in living quarters. Green said he is optimistic about the university offering a single wireless network across the whole campus.

For the past two years, UC Berkeley has been partnering with AT&T to try to improve network connectivity by adding more Wi-Fi hotspots. With AirBears2 and the Wi-Fi expansion, IST representatives said students should experience better performance when the system is under high usage.

“We are online all the time, and the Internet is just something that is integrated into our education,” said UC Berkeley senior Dasha Burns. “It’s great to see the university taking the initiative on something that is our everyday experience at Cal.”

AirBears will still be available to the campus community and guest users, but IST representatives encourage all students, faculty and staff to use AirBears2.

Contact Chase Schweitzer at cschweitzer@dailycal.com

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Randy Adam Romero/Staff

Michael Bao’s friends call him Mikey, and on the weekends, they all play Mario games on the Wii. Bao, a second-year EECS major at Cal, is known for not being particularly good at Super Mario Bros. — but when it comes to making games, Bao’s friends turn to him for answers.

In April 2010, when he applied to work on a “Half-Life 2” mod — a game developed as an expansion pack of sorts for the original game — called “Age of Chivalry,” Bao didn’t expect it to go very far. “At first, we were very much just a mod team. We were just a bunch of people who were like, ‘Oh, we should make a game,’ so initially we had no idea what we were doing,” he said.

Three years later, “Chivalry: Medieval Warfare” is an extremely successful indie game with a 79 on Metacritic and a large player base via Steam, an online gaming platform. It is known as one of the first high-quality medieval warfare titles of its kind, praised for its combat mechanics and multiplayer matches.

When the team — called Torn Banner Studios — decided to transition from a mod to a full-blown game, Bao was made lead programmer. He was in his junior year of high school and had only been programming seriously since his freshman year. “Requirements were a little more lenient (for the mod project), so I managed to sneak on during that. When we decided to transition to a full-blown project, I got switched over too,” Bao explained.
On top of everything, he was a self-taught programmer, and he had never used the Unreal Development Kit. The UDK is the free version of Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 3, which many developers use as a foundation of sorts for their code. In order to work on “Chivalry,” Bao had to quickly learn the ropes of the Unreal Engine.

For Bao, a lot of the value of his experience came from learning rather than getting access to gaming events or making money off of the game’s royalties. He says his experience with real-world programming has helped him in his computer science classes at Berkeley.

“I think a lot of people think that game development is really hard, and that’s why they shy away from trying to do it — but I think that once you get into it, it’s actually not that bad,” Bao said. “It just takes a lot of time and dedication. If you’re willing to put the effort into it, you can get it done.”

For Bao, putting effort into “Chivalry” meant working 20 hours a week for very little pay, and he says it became more of a “full-time job” toward the end of the project. “Mike was in front of his computer all the time. I’m surprised he ever ate or slept,” Kevin Lin said rather facetiously. Lin lived in Foothill with Bao during fall 2011 and spring 2012, when Bao was working on “Chivalry.” Gautam Tammewar, another former dorm-mate and friend of Bao’s, added, “He’s either at his computer or playing Mario with us.”

Bao worked tirelessly, sacrificing sleep and grades, all out of love for the project. “The game wasn’t about just one person’s vision but the entire team’s vision,” Bao said of the team’s dedication to the game. “If no one wanted to work on it besides the boss, then it wouldn’t be a game worth making.”

The team believed in “Chivalry” because it knew the game could find success. Crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter and Indiegogo as well as indie-friendly platforms like Steam make it easier for small developers to get noticed, and services like Humble Bundle give more players access to high-quality indie titles.

“I really like the fact that indie games can do so well in the gaming industry, just because the Internet is so friendly to indie games in general,” Bao said. “I think it’s one place where people with passion for something can really have success, and that’s one of the reasons why the gaming industry is so awesome. People who love what they do come together and do it. You can definitely tell when someone worked on a game that they really cared for.”

Bao added that the amount of time and effort he put into “Chivalry” was the exception to the rule when it comes to indie game development.

“A lot of people do this in their free time, whether it means an hour a week or eight hours every day. There’s a lot of cool indie projects out there; you could probably join one by sending them an email and saying, ‘Hey, I’m a programmer. I don’t really know Unreal, but I can learn it really quickly,’” Bao said. These kinds of indie projects make game development accessible to students or those looking to break into the gaming industry.
Bao expects indie games to grow even more popular thanks to the open nature of PC gaming and the iOS and Android mobile markets. For aspiring game developers, this means that a pet project might turn into a career or, at the very least, an invaluable learning experience.

“As long as you have someone to do the art and someone to do the programming, you can make a game,” Bao said. He added that, even if the project is not successful, it’s always worth doing in the end.

Contact Kallie Plagge at kplagge@dailycal.org. Check her out on twitter at @kirbyoshi.

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John Chaung/Courtesy

In a few years’ time, people may be able to unlock their personal devices without even lifting a finger, thanks to researchers at the UC Berkeley School of Information. Instead of symbols and characters, thoughts may be the new key.

In a study entitled “I Think, Therefore I Am,” which was announced earlier this month, professor John Chuang of the School of Information, along with three UC Berkeley students, found that brain waves can be used to differentiate individuals and therefore establish a means of security authentication in the form of a “passthought” rather than a traditional password.

“You can think of your favorite player in a soccer game and his stance, or you can think of the most delicious hamburger you’ve ever eaten,” said School of Information graduate student Charles Wang, who worked on the study. “And then the system will reboot itself, and you’ll be authenticated. I think that’s wonderful.”

Though Chuang does not believe that brainwave authentication will completely replace traditional text passwords, he states that it is the likely next step in computer security and that the use of EEG brainwave sensors and other biometric methods will likely develop quickly as further research is conducted.

“I think we have demonstrated that (brainwave authentication) works, and therefore it is worthwhile to pursue further,” Chuang said.

In addition to passthoughts, which are specific memories, the researchers explored other mental tasks, such as blinking, breathing, moving fingers, viewing certain colors, thinking of sports and singing a song in one’s head. Their findings showed that brainwave patterns remain distinct from individual to individual, regardless of the mental task.

“Even if we all sing the same song in the same way, maybe there’s still something fundamentally different about my brainwave patterns from yours that we can distinguish,” Chuang said.

Though Chuang’s work builds upon previous studies in the field, his is the first to use a consumer-grade NeuroSky brainwave sensor, a single-channel EEG reader. Previous studies have traditionally relied on multichannel EEG readers instead.

“Their work looks very promising,” said Doug Tygar, a professor of computer science and information management at UC Berkeley. “I think the study is very interesting and really opens new doors in research.”

The initial study displays the possibility for thoughts and brain waves to be the security tools of the future. Not only does the study show that it is possible, but it also demonstrates that this kind of technology can potentially be easy to use and accessible to the average person.

“We don’t have to sacrifice usability for security,” said Hamilton Nguyen, an undergraduate senior studying electrical engineering and computer sciences who contributed to the study. “You can have a secure system that’s (also) easy to use.”

Though future research is needed before brainwave authentication can be widely implemented, a number of issues brought up in the study must be further investigated, researchers say.

For one, researchers need to develop faster and simpler ways to establish user brainwave profiles that can be easily applied to the larger population.

Still, the potential for growth is large. Both Chuang and Wang discussed the potential advantage of brainwave authentication in wearable computers, such as Google Glass.

Although voice recognition and other more traditional biometric methods for computer security are more readily available, Chuang is convinced that EEG sensors and brainwave authentication could potentially be the next step.

“When we go to mobile devices and wearable computers, I think there’s a great application for brainwave authentication,” Chuang said. “It’s intuitive and something that’s not awkward to perform while walking down the street.”

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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Illustrated by Katherine Velicki/Staff/File

Spring is setting in, and boys, you know what that means: tank tops, shorts and bikini-clad girls on Memorial Glade. During those cold winter months, you may have forgotten about the existence of that other sex under layers of bulky, cozy clothing, but we’re sure that these warm weeks to come will jog your memory.

But then, you may ask, how does one interact with these strange creatures?

For a lot of guys, talking to a potential love interest is effortless — they’re suave, seamlessly picking up on social cues and always saying the right things. But this intuition is far from universal — especially at an institution as academically advanced as Berkeley, many males crumble during conversations with female peers.

From Romeo’s smooth lines at Juliet’s balcony to Jay Gatsby’s opulent parties and the ways of modern pickup artists, the art of “wooing women” has been deeply pondered and debated for centuries. But this week, the Clog stumbled upon a College Confidential thread that brings the topic to Berkeley. Tantalized by “the abundance of gorgeous women at Berkeley” and surging with “sex hormones,” a second-semester Cal EECS major asked for a “mode of action” to win a girl’s interest. As expected from an anonymous Internet thread, his simple request was answered with a barrage of racist, sexist and often irrelevant advice — so we decided to tackle the issue.

Although there is no foolproof algorithm for “wooing” women, here are six tips that will improve any guy’s chances of winning a Berkeley girl’s affection.

1. Start face-to-face.

Yes, even if you are the master of Google, you should always start a relationship with a girl in person. You can probably find her number, email, address, friends, favorite activities – you name it – online, but using this information before she has divulged it specifically to you is … creepy.

2. What’s she doing?

Not all moments are meant for intersexual conversations. Before you get acquainted with a girl, make sure it’s a convenient time. If she’s rushing to class, on her cellphone or focusing intently on something, don’t disrupt her — even the most handsome, charming man in Berkeley could be coldly received by a preoccupied woman. Instead, strike up a conversation with someone who’s ready to talk. For instance, girls standing in the endless lines of the GBC or eating lunch alone at Foothill will probably welcome your company!

3.  Establish common ground.

Since most people are inherently self-interested, it can be extremely advantageous to find things in common with a girl. These similarities will enhance your first impression and make you “stick” better in her mind. While similar classes, interests, hobbies or upbringings are classic examples, you can connect with someone over something as simple as the weather (Berkeley provides plenty of excitement in that category), an outfit or your plans for the day.

4. Treat her like an individual.

Though a pickup artist may stress that his secrets will work on any woman, remember that every girl is unique. Throwing the same pickup line at 100 girls won’t get you anywhere. With time, find out what makes her laugh, what makes her mad and what makes her excited about living. Showing a genuine interest in the facets of another person’s character will at least win you a valuable friendship and, if you’re lucky, maybe even a partner in love.

5. Be authentically YOU.

Girls are equipped with a radar for detecting fake personalities. You don’t have to play the role of slick douchebag, drown her in a list of your accomplishments or pretend to like her favorite bands — just be confident in yourself! Women flock toward truly confident men, and who knows — the right girl might find your “flaws” endearing. Oh, and never ridicule other people to boost your standing in her eyes. Women want a man who stands calmly on his own two feet.

6. Leave a little mystery ;)

If your first interaction is going well, don’t overstay your welcome. Don’t follow her home. Don’t sit through one of her classes just to prolong the conversation. Women love men of mystery! After you’ve gotten to know her, ask nonchalantly for a phone number or last name (for Facebook) if your meeting went well. But then, say goodbye. If a woman divulges her number, she’ll probably be thinking about you for the rest of the day.

Contact Katherine Velicki at kvelicki@dailycal.org.

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Kelly Fang/Senior Staff

As technology continues to advance at an exponential rate, so has the demand for people who know how to create and work with it, and UC Berkeley is looking to ensure that its graduates don’t get left in the dust.

Its efforts come at a time when some experts are claiming that computer-programming knowledge is integral to staying ahead in the technology age. In fact, they argue, programming is a new form of literacy that may soon join the ranks of reading and writing skills.

In fall 2009, Dan Garcia, a professor in the department of electrical engineering and computer sciences, piloted a new and revamped computer science course for nonmajors called Computer Science 10: The Beauty and Joy of Computing. CS 10 is a lab-based class in which students learn the basics of programming that can be applied to any field of study. The class serves as a model for the new AP Computer Science course being developed by the National Science Foundation for high school students.

“We live in an era where folks are growing up digitally literate, but they are only literate as passive consumers of digital content,” Garcia said. “We believe that this is a crucial time where people need to be not just consumers but producers of their futures.”

A 2006 paper published by Jeannette Wing, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, concluded that computational thinking will be a fundamental skill used worldwide by the middle of the 21st century, just like reading, writing and arithmetic.

As part of its effort to promote the importance of computational thinking, the campus has announced that this year’s On the Same Page program, designed to engage the UC Berkeley community on a single topic, focuses on the dawn of the computing age.

Alix Schwartz, the director of academic planning for the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters and Science, said the theme was chosen to get students thinking about computing and its importance in society. According to Schwartz, 8,000 copies of books about this topic will be handed out to new students, and George Dyson, a famous author and technology historian, will be a speaker this year.

“What is so great about this program is that it unites the campus,” Schwartz said. “This is a chance for the entire campus to participate in a dialogue about the importance of computing in the future.”

However, this program may just be the gateway for drawing students into the world of computer programming and its potential global impact.

In a live Google Plus Hangout last month, President Barack Obama emphasized the need for talented coders, saying that American high schools should teach students programming skills to allow them to pursue any career with or without a college degree.

Code.org recently released a short film arguing that coding is a “superpower” that everyone should learn. The video, which featured testimonials from programming giants like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, has received nearly 10 million views on YouTube.

With this premise gaining momentum across the country, Garcia said he wanted to encourage non-CS students at UC Berkeley to learn computing skills as well.

“We’ve transformed the course for nonmajors to be much broader because we thought to ourselves, ‘If this was the only (computer science) class they were going to take, what would we want to teach them?’” Garcia said.

According to Garcia, the course has received significant recognition since its inception. In addition to being one of five national pilots for the new AP CS course, it was selected as a Bears Breaking Boundaries winner for its innovative curriculum in 2009.

The course is now being offered as a part of the UC Online Instruction Pilot Project, an initiative designed to integrate online courses for credit in the undergraduate curriculum.

Garcia said that the number of students who took the course and wanted to come back as teaching assistants was phenomenal.

“I have testimonials from 17 students without being solicited who have come back to tell me that the course really changed their outlook on computing and programming,” Garcia said. “Several of them are now CS majors or minors.”

Samir Makhani, a junior majoring in EECS, took CS 10 during his freshman year in fall 2010 having had no prior programming experience.

“After taking the course, I was convinced CS was the path for me,” Makhani said in an email. “Exactly one year later, I TA’d the course for 3 semesters, and am currently one of Dan’s most senior/experienced TAs. I really enjoy being involved in CS10 because I want students to experience the thrill of programming, just like I did.”

Makhani is currently part of the effort to take CS 10 to edX, an online platform that would offer the course for free to thousands of students around the world.

For Garcia, the next step is to make computer science a required course at UC Berkeley.

He said he is dismayed by the disparity between the percentage of undergraduate students who take an introductory CS course at Stanford University and those who take one at UC Berkeley.

According to Stanford University’s website, more than 90 percent of its undergraduates take a CS course, while only around 30 percent take one at UC Berkeley, Garcia said.

Garcia added that he is planning to expand the CS 10 course by making it a Discovery Course within the College of Letters and Science. Such courses are designed to appeal to nonmajors who “want to take intellectual risks,” according to the university website.

Garcia referenced the book “Program or Be Programmed” by Douglas Rushkoff as indicative of the importance that programming skills hold today. In today’s society, he said, people are either learning to program or being programmed by everything around them.

“It’s all about empowering people to learn to program so they can feel like they have the place in this ever-evolving technology world,” Garcia said.

Pooja Mhatre is the lead research and ideas reporter. Contact her at pmhatre@dailycal.org and follow her on Twitter @phmatre.

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Henry Ascencio/Staff

What began as a class project for two UC Berkeley graduate students turned into a real-life software security collaboration with T-Mobile.

EECS graduate students Jethro Beekman and Christopher Thompson discovered a vulnerability in T-Mobile’s “Wi-Fi Calling” feature for Android that could potentially allow hackers to access and modify calls and messages made by T-Mobile users on certain Android smartphones.

T-Mobile’s Wi-Fi Calling feature allows customers to text and make phone calls over Wi-Fi when cellular service is unavailable, similar to the way Skype connects calls through an Internet connection.

“Jethro had just recently gotten his new phone that had this Wi-Fi calling feature,” Thompson said. “Both of us are security-minded people, and … we were thinking, ‘What can we do to look at this feature and figure out if it’s secure or not secure?’”

Beekman and Thompson began by testing network connection security on their own smartphones and discovered that the connection on an open wireless network  was extremely vulnerable to “man-in-the-middle” attacks, which allow hackers enter between the smartphone user and the T-Mobile network.

“Vulnerabilities like this are common — this is not at all unusual,” said David Wagner, a professor in the campus department of computer science whose graduate class on computer security prompted Beekman and Thompson’s investigation. “Their work falls into a broader context where other researchers have found similar vulnerabilities in other software. (Beekman and Thompson) decided to look at smartphones to see if they have the same problem.”

Over the course of their experiment, Beekman and Thompson made software modifications that enabled them to access phone lines, change the outgoing number on phone calls and view and modify outgoing text messages.

“Theoretically, an attacker could use this to change someone’s call to go to a toll number … and cost you money,” Thompson said.

The researchers found that the Samsung Galaxy S II, HTC Amaze 4G, myTouch and myTouch Q were most vulnerable to security threats due to the type of technology they use for network connection.

Beekman and Thompson explored the security issue last semester and presented their findings to T-Mobile in December.

They worked with the security team at T-Mobile to validate their findings and make sure that the problems were resolved. The company provided them with a test phone, which they used to assess vulnerability before and after the security update to ensure that the issue was fixed.

According to the researchers’ report, T-Mobile released a security update to its Android users on March 18 that resolved the issue.

“T-Mobile did a great job of responding to the vulnerability,” Wagner said. “They sent updates that will fix the problem for all their customers. That’s a model response for a computer software company to take.”

Contact Jennie Yoon at jyoon@dailycal.org.

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The “Wizard of Wozillia” will return to his alma mater this May as keynote speaker for the 2013 Commencement ceremony. Bam, that’s Berkeley. You all know about Woz, Steve Jobs and Apple and how the entire modern era of computers is basically a footnote of their work. But did you know that Woz invented the first universal programmable remote control? Or that he survived a plane crash? Here are 10 things you probably never knew about the legend, Steve Wozniak.

He has his own category on Jeopardy! For $1,000: “Woz was the creator of this ’80s event that brought music fans out to see an all-star lineup”

He competed on Dancing with the Stars. As far as we know, he is the only person who can pull off the cha-cha-cha in a pink feather boa.

He dated Kathy Griffin. Did you know that the ever-naughty female counterpart to Anderson Cooper’s New Year’s Eve Live romanced Woz? Here he is on her show in a bear convention.

He cameoed on Big Bang Theory. And called Sheldon a nerd. Major swag.

He is a third-degree Freemason. National Treasure profiled it. He’s on par with 14 Presidents, Mozart and Bach.

He has four patents, 10 honorary doctorates of engineering and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. He’s is listed next to the Wright Brothers, Walt Disney, Edison and Tesla. That’s Berkeley.

He has a street named after him. Woz Way is located in San Jose, the capital of the Silicon Valley

He gave a Game Boy to President H.W. Bush. Woz also scored 702,000 playing Tetris on his Game Boy.

He graduated UC Berkeley in 1986 as an EECS major. That’s not easy to do.

He is a really good friend. We cried when he talked about Steve Jobs too.

Image Source: The DEMO Conference under Creative Commons

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The Master of Advanced Study in Integrated Circuits program, offered through the department of electrical engineering and computer sciences, will allow working professionals to earn a master’s degree from the campus in two years while continuing their careers. The program is scheduled to begin in fall 2013.

“This program is intended for the working professional and, as such, is structured so that it can be easily consumed in the evening hours or anywhere in the world,” said Jan Rabaey, a professor in the department. “Completion of this program will open doors for you to become a leader in some of the most innovative companies in the field.”

The program requires students to complete at least seven courses and a final design project that resembles work in the semiconductor industry. The Internet-based system includes interactive lectures, virtual office hours and discussion forums to facilitate discussion between students, teaching assistants and professors.

“What’s really exciting about this online program is that we are going to include all of the key components of our live courses into the online offering,” said Tsu-Jae King Liu, a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences who helped organized the online program.

The integrated circuits master’s program is the second professional degree program at UC Berkeley that is predominantly online. The first, an online master of public health degree program, was created in spring 2012.

Additionally, the School of Information is currently in the process of creating a one-year online master’s program, according to AnnaLee Saxenian, dean of the school.

“(Online education) opens access and defies limits on physical space to (enroll) students,” Saxenian said.
There are concerns, however, about the limitations of an online degree in the field of electrical engineering.

Online courses would prevent students from getting adequate lab experience, said Min Joon Seo, a UC Berkeley alum who graduated in May 2012 with a degree in electrical engineering and computer sciences and now works at Oracle Corporation.

“It is questionable how much a student can learn in only two years,” Seo said. “Courses in electrical engineering … inevitably involve physical lab experiences like actual fabrication of integrated circuits. I fear that an online degree will be inadequate.”

“It is questionable how much a student can learn in only two years,” Seo said. “Courses in electrical engineering … inevitably involve physical lab experiences like actual fabrication of integrated circuits. I fear that an online degree will be inadequate.”

Contact Dan Kwak at dkwak@dailycal.org.

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Kore Chan/Staff

In any given public place, it’s not uncommon to find children using smartphones or tablet computers.

The world has become a place where anyone can compute anywhere at any time, but it wasn’t always that way. Before UC Berkeley electrical engineering and computer science lecturer Brian Harvey began teaching on campus, he was a high school teacher, one of the first in the country to put computers in the hands of young people.

Computers were hard to come by in the 1980s, but Harvey pushed to acquire professional level hardware for his high school students to learn with. And even after moving on to teaching UC Berkeley students, Harvey has worked to make computer science accessible to all students, including non-majors.

The Daily Californian sat down with Harvey, who will retire at the end of this school year, to discuss what motivated him to encourage young people to learn about computer programming.

Q:  How did you become involved with K-12 computer education?
A:  I had been working as a computer programmer in the 1970s, and I was getting sort of bored with it, so I started to look into teaching and got a high school math (teaching) credential. I figured I would just be a math teacher, but as it turned out, a high school in Massachusetts happened to be looking for someone to start a computer department.

Q:  How did you get involved with computer programming?
A:  I got involved with the Artificial Intelligence lab my freshman year at MIT by accident. I was working at the radio station there, and somehow found myself in charge of the mailing list for monthly program notes. To maintain a mailing list, you need a computer, and they had a computer system you could fool around on, but freshmen weren’t allowed to use it. I discovered the AI lab because they would let anyone come in and use their computer. So I was happily maintaining my mailing list on the computer, and I found a bug in the text editor. I brought it to one of the official systems people, and the guy said, “I’m busy. Why don’t you fix it yourself?” I said, “What? They’re going to let a freshman with no experience mess with their system?” And he said yeah. He showed me where to find the source files, and I got in there, and there was no turning back.

Q:  How did your experience learning about computers affect your philosophy at a teacher?
A:  Decades later, when I became a teacher, that was the kind of environment I wanted to create. I didn’t want there to be curriculum. I wanted it to be a place where kids could come in and hack (program). I’m a huge fan of the exploratorium.

Q:  How did that philosophy translate to teaching at UC Berkeley?
A:  Well, I like building learning environments. I never liked standing at the front of the room lecturing. I prefer to put the tools — all the computers, programming languages, gadgets — in front of the students and let them learn what they want to. That’s why I’ve spent so much time working on the sort of self-taught version of Computer Science 61A (the first core class for computer science majors). I hope it will outlive my retirement.

Q:  What does the future of computer science hold for students?
A:  It’s a very exciting time. There’s huge amounts of data to mine now, so it turns out we’ve got to do some fundamental reinvention of basic things. Until pretty recently, you had to be a genius-type programmer to successfully handle data on that large scale, and we’re starting to find ways to improve on that. And the economy seems to be bad for everyone except computer programmers, so it’s a good time to become one.

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