ESP Biography



MARC HELD, Mr. Interdisciplinary-man



Major: CS

College/Employer: Northeastern/Zazu

Year of Graduation: G

Picture of Marc Held

Brief Biographical Sketch:

I'm a sophomore at Northeastern University (right down the road from MIT), but I've got a whole load of diverse backgrounds.

I was a graphic designer in a former life, a roboticist in another one (just to name a few). I think the only thing I haven't been yet is "normal"



Past Classes

  (Clicking a class title will bring you to the course's section of the corresponding course catalog)

M2436: How to Design Programs (Intro to Comp Sci) in HSSP Summer 2009 (Jul. 12, 2009)
Kick the crud out of any Freshman College computer science course by learning Scheme and learning it well. I plan on teaching you more about computer science in a few weeks than most people learn in a year of college. This course isn't only for beginning computer scientists, people who know other languages could always learn how to think functionally (more about this in the course). Plus, we'll get to build video games! The only prereqs are that you want to learn how to think about programming. We'll be using a lot of strange concepts that you wouldn't usually get in your run of the mill intro computer science course, but It'll help cement your brain into being fantastic with code.


M2438: How to Design Classes (Intro to Comp Sci: OO style) in HSSP Summer 2009 (Jul. 12, 2009)
Kick the crud out of any Freshman College computer science course by learning Java and learning it well. I plan on teaching you more about computer science in a few weeks than most people learn in a year of college. This course isn't only for beginning computer scientists, people who know other languages could always learn how to think functionally and Object-orientedly (more about this in the course). The only prereqs are that you want to learn how to think about programming. We'll be using a lot of functional programming in java (yes, I know... functional and java in one sentence!?!) but if you've got some other previous programming language in your brain it might be easier. This course will be challenging, but rewarding. If you have no experience coding, I suggest taking How to Design Programs (Intro to Comp Sci) but if you really really would rather learn java, give me an email.


C1839: Mac OS X is better than j00 in Splash! 2008 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2008)
One of the most well thought out Operating Systems in the OS world has a cult following, wanna find out why? I'll go over the graphic design aspects as well as the actual operating system stuff.


S1845: How to cope with being a geek in Splash! 2008 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2008)
You're not weird. You're better than they are. Come to this lecture to see why. We'll go over: "The difference between geeks, nerds, dorks, and losers" "Staying cool while being geeky" "Things to avoid so you don't move into nerd territory" If you've got any questions or would like me to cover something special, send me an email at heldgeek at gmail dot com


S1923: Domo Arigato, Build a Robot-o in Splash! 2008 (Nov. 22 - 23, 2008)
Learn the history of - and build some - Robots. We'll be building a simple vibrobot by the end of the class.