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I think you are intentionally simplifying my statements, and the intents of educators, in an intentionally disingenuous way. If you are not being malicious, the

by sqeaky 10y ago

I think you are intentionally simplifying my statements, and the intents of educators, in an intentionally disingenuous way. If you are not being malicious, then I apologize, but the only way I can interpret you seems to indicate you have an axe to grind. Let me provide an example of a language complexity that hinders education, presuming education cares about things common to many languages like function, types, control flow, classes and objects. In C++ there is a strong separation of declaration and definition, this is required for silly, technical and mostly historical reasons. Teaching all of the concepts needed to make sense of why the compiler cannot elide definitions included twice is not useful when trying to teach about anything other than C++. Another example, in Java there is much boilerplate and an implicit package scope when scope specifiers are omitted. Most languages need little boilerplate and in order to understand why the implicit package level specification is bad (or good if you disagree with me), one must understand the concept of public and private already. For each language I know I can highlight such things. There is plenty of room for simplified teaching languages then extra courses to cover language specific things. None of this should be taken as a general defense of how programming is taught. I just mean that whatever problems there are, seem not to stem directly from the use of education oriented languages. I even think that classes focusing on specific languages should more closely resemble the real world, but not all people are ready for such detail.

threatofrain 10y ago
> I think you are intentionally simplifying my statements, and the intents of educators, in an intentionally disingenuous way. You're telling me that: (Pyret intervention) -> (educators not struggling with complexity) -> (education outcome) was so bad you think I'm dishonest? And you think that's the "only way" you can interpret the situation? And just in case you're wrong -- sorry? 1. Proposing a causal relationship: (independent variable) -> (dependent variable) 2. Proposing complexity: (independent variable) -> (mediating factors) -> (dependent variable). This is a fucking good start to any policy conversation. Where else do you find this online?
- sqeaky 10y ago
  I wanted to give you the opportunity to rebut, but instead you have degenerated to swearing, red herrings and an inappropriate breakdown to formal style rational logic. This discussion clearly has too many factors to be argued by formal proof. We cannot prove our premises nor prove an argument is formally sound. Therefor we must rely heavily on induction as many trades do, both software development and teaching are trades in many regards. Each often requiring action without the time or ability to formally prove and instead relying on large scale informal experimentation. The very existence of unit tests demonstrates how clearly practical programming cannot be formally proven and the existence of the whole fields of psychology and sociology ought to serve as basis for teaching impossibility to formally prove. This seems so obvious I hadn't felt the need to state it previously. I presumed you capable and understanding and knowing this. I inferred that someone choosing to represent the argument in such way must see the situation is too complex to break down like this and must be misrepresenting the facts or they must not be competent to discuss this topic. Because I presumed your competence I felt you must be misrepresenting the situation, I now see I was mistaken.
- matt4077 10y ago
  Your point wasn't completely absurd in the beginning, but now you're wilfully misunderstanding the arguments. It seems you're hedging some sort of grudge against educators?
  - threatofrain 10y ago
    Asking for a statement of relationship between proposed intervention and proposed outcome is not even near absurd. Pedagogical researchers in policy do this all the time. For example, Fiona Phelps has researched into gaze aversion in multiple contexts, one of which is pedagogical, and in there she proposes an intervention for educators, and she discusses outcomes. She is interested in making a causal link between intervention and outcome. It should also be noted that the causal model she discusses is simple, discussable, falsifiable, affirmable, has few factors and few measurement instances. Discussing simple causal models is standard professionalism in pedagogical policy literature... or any other empirical field involved in policy. Is it that scary to say that a Pyret or Python intervention should have a relationship to CS graduation rates, upper division performance, GPA, or some other stated policy outcome? Not stating your intervention outcomes allows you to go statistical fishing. One can say the same thing about iPads in schools. It's not wrong to ask what outcome variables the school intends to affect with an iPad intervention. Maybe the effect is there, but we can't begin discussion unless the proposed intervention is willing to state its predicted outcomes. Why are you <not> pushing for a discussion of outcomes?

by sqeaky 10y ago

threatofrain 10y ago

> I think you are intentionally simplifying my statements, and the intents of educators, in an intentionally disingenuous way. You're telling me that: (Pyret intervention) -> (educators not struggling with complexity) -> (education outcome) was so bad you think I'm dishonest? And you think that's the "only way" you can interpret the situation? And just in case you're wrong -- sorry? 1. Proposing a causal relationship: (independent variable) -> (dependent variable) 2. Proposing complexity: (independent variable) -> (mediating factors) -> (dependent variable). This is a fucking good start to any policy conversation. Where else do you find this online?

sqeaky 10y ago
I wanted to give you the opportunity to rebut, but instead you have degenerated to swearing, red herrings and an inappropriate breakdown to formal style rational logic. This discussion clearly has too many factors to be argued by formal proof. We cannot prove our premises nor prove an argument is formally sound. Therefor we must rely heavily on induction as many trades do, both software development and teaching are trades in many regards. Each often requiring action without the time or ability to formally prove and instead relying on large scale informal experimentation. The very existence of unit tests demonstrates how clearly practical programming cannot be formally proven and the existence of the whole fields of psychology and sociology ought to serve as basis for teaching impossibility to formally prove. This seems so obvious I hadn't felt the need to state it previously. I presumed you capable and understanding and knowing this. I inferred that someone choosing to represent the argument in such way must see the situation is too complex to break down like this and must be misrepresenting the facts or they must not be competent to discuss this topic. Because I presumed your competence I felt you must be misrepresenting the situation, I now see I was mistaken.
matt4077 10y ago
Your point wasn't completely absurd in the beginning, but now you're wilfully misunderstanding the arguments. It seems you're hedging some sort of grudge against educators?
- threatofrain 10y ago
  Asking for a statement of relationship between proposed intervention and proposed outcome is not even near absurd. Pedagogical researchers in policy do this all the time. For example, Fiona Phelps has researched into gaze aversion in multiple contexts, one of which is pedagogical, and in there she proposes an intervention for educators, and she discusses outcomes. She is interested in making a causal link between intervention and outcome. It should also be noted that the causal model she discusses is simple, discussable, falsifiable, affirmable, has few factors and few measurement instances. Discussing simple causal models is standard professionalism in pedagogical policy literature... or any other empirical field involved in policy. Is it that scary to say that a Pyret or Python intervention should have a relationship to CS graduation rates, upper division performance, GPA, or some other stated policy outcome? Not stating your intervention outcomes allows you to go statistical fishing. One can say the same thing about iPads in schools. It's not wrong to ask what outcome variables the school intends to affect with an iPad intervention. Maybe the effect is there, but we can't begin discussion unless the proposed intervention is willing to state its predicted outcomes. Why are you <not> pushing for a discussion of outcomes?