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>>In the first programming course many students can't judge "what works and what doesn't" yet That's what the instructors are there for...
by enraged_camel 10y ago
>>In the first programming course many students can't judge "what works and what doesn't" yet
That's what the instructors are there for...
- detaro 10y agoFrom my perspective (I've TAed a bunch of intro-level courses, taught in various languages): You can tell them, yes. But as you rightly say, an important thing is to experiment and (IMHO) to see for yourself what works and what doesn't. And that part works best if it fits their abilities. Experimentation should lead them past what they've learned from you, but not into to much confusion, which for absolute beginners can be incredibly demoralizing. More talented students will go into different languages and weird stuff anyways, I'll help them when they ask questions or I see something they are doing I can contribute to, but I can't run a course matching their abilities as an intro-course. Again, I'm not saying you can't do it in JS, but it's not a decision of "let's use JS because I want people to learn JS". And if having JS in there is the goal, nothing wrong with running a course using multiple languages and using JS as one of the later ones. Ideally, after a good set of intro courses your students have seen enough that they can pick up most languages relatively easily, and then, when they need them, learn what current best practices and their ecosystem are.
- phailhaus 10y agoSure, given enough instructors and a huge amount of time you could probably teach it. But starting with javascript gives you almost no benefits and saddles you with the huge burden of attempting to teach a language known to have many quirks and strange conventions.