Progress Through Projects

The Computer Science 50 Fair last Friday displayed an impressive array of novel ideas and innovations, as students showcased their final projects to the public in a celebration of the course’s culmination. Among the many projects that have been taking the Harvard community by storm are websites, mobile applications, and tools to improve student life. As we saw and continue to see, CS50 is a course that teaches students valuable skills and that benefits the greater community by creating conveniences that ease our daily challenges. In that sense, we congratulate CS50 for encouraging innovation through computer programming, even despite potential controversy and security threats. In a day and age when the Internet represents the future, it’s imperative that Harvard students make use of this opportunity. That a significant amount of students is eager to acquire skills offered in a rapidly expanding CS50 is heartening in light of Harvard’s status as a liberal-arts school. We hope this upward trend continues and that CS50 attracts increasing numbers of students, improving Harvard as a whole.

That said, as we take advantage of the CS50 projects, we must bear in mind potential vulnerability and security issues. Excellent an introduction as CS50 is into the field of computer science, students should take precautions when supplying personal information to student-made websites or other projects. Students should be most wary about providing passwords or other login information, as many student projects store passwords in plaintext, which can present vulnerabilities. However, these concerns extend beyond password protection to other fields of information that could be sensitive or personal. We urge students to exercise their common sense in providing this information by using different passwords or by simply sharing less information, as much of it could potentially be accessed by people with sufficient programming experience. This risk is particularly present in student projects rather than in established websites, since the former have less experience ensuring security than do their professional counterparts.

On that note, we would encourage the CS50 staff to help students employ better security measures for their final projects and p-sets, as this can help both creators and users alike. Teaching fellows and course assistants can urge their students to take rudimentary precautions when creating their projects and can warn the general community, as well, about being vigilant in their use and sharing of information.

Improving safeguards should be a priority of Hack Harvard, an initiative started by the Undergraduate Council and the I3 Innovation Challenge that chooses student projects it believes will significantly contribute to Harvard life and promotes them to the rest of the community. Those projects chosen by Hack Harvard, especially, should receive extra attention to ensure security, given these projects’ popularity and potential for growth.

CS50 and its affiliates have consistently produced some of the most useful and valuable tools on campus, ranging from Shuttleboy, an SMS application that allows students to track the shuttle’s progress, to HarvardCourses, a website that greatly simplifies the process. Just as these ideas have come from the teaching staff of CS50, we look forward to seeing similarly inventive efforts from students themselves as they continue to gain proficiency. Initiatives like Hack Harvard are vital in bringing out student ideas and marketing them to the community. We applaud efforts like these that create the opportunity for large-scale promotion of student innovation and that work toward serving the community in the long term.