3 ms·

I think the problem is how the subject is taught. I remember my first CS class, and there was quite a bit of diversity that quickly disappeared after the first

I think the problem is how the subject is taught. I remember my first CS class, and there was quite a bit of diversity that quickly disappeared after the first test when people started dropping the class. (I'm pretty sure something like half the class disappeared, and I don't think this is at all unusual). So why did all those people initially find interest, and then disappear? I remember the way they taught it was VERY dogmatic Java/OOP. Putting aside my personal feelings on those subjects, that's like teaching someone to swim by throwing them in the ocean without a life jacket. I tutored some other students, and picking up the language AND the IDE and the debugger and understanding compilers -- it was too much. I remember trying to learn java as a kid and being baffled, and then picking up QBasic and basically getting it immediately. QBasic teaches you some awful habits of course, but for a beginner it's much easier to reason about and it will teach you how to think like a computer. I'm not suggesting we go back to teaching QBasic, but it has to be something other than Java. I think CS departments throw everyone in the deep end with an awful curriculum, and then act surprised that everyone leaves except the hardcore nerds that already knew these subjects before they got to school.

kutkloon7 9y ago
I remember this too. For me it was the other way around. I learned QBasic - which I still think is awesome, even it was for DOS only - first. Then I learned C# in my first year at uni and it was a breeze. There were basically the people who could program, and the people who could not. You could see the double bell curve in the grade statistics.
- Bartweiss 9y ago
  To forestall the usual HN discussion: the double bell curve result has not, contrary to popular summary, been found invalid. Dehnadi & Bornat (2006) was the seminal two-hump paper, which was widely circulated but never peer reviewed. In 2014, Bornat (who was Dehnadi's advisor) retracted it. However, the situation is an odd one. None of the data was ever called into question. The basic methodology has seen criticisms raised, but has not been clearly invalidated. Several subsequent experiments (Dehnadi, 2009; Dehnadi et al., 2009; Bornat et al., 2012) confirmed, at least, that the aptitude test consistently produces two humps. Rather, Bornat issued his retraction in the face of his commentary on the studies. He described having a bad reaction to SSRIs in 2006, and subsequently making a large number of wild and grandiose claims about the work. These included calling the aptitude test "100% accurate", flatly stating that some students couldn't learn to program, and publicizing third-party claims about gender in the data set. This is all very weird. The study stands uncorrected. Dehnadi seems to have gotten caught in the crossfire, since his paper was retracted for extra-textual reasons. No one has really settled the question of how predictive the aptitude test is. The only major follow-up I've seen, out of Toronto, is simply wretched. (They used CS course grades after curving to argue about distributions!) So: double bell curve. Not proven, not retracted, still widely supported by anecdote. http://wiki.t-o-f.info/uploads/EDM4600/The%20camel%20has%20two%20humps.pdf http://wiki.t-o-f.info/uploads/EDM4600/The%20camel%20has%20t... http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-two-humps-programming-aptitude-test-canned-for-overzealous-conclusion/ http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-... http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hump_retraction.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hu... http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/papers/2016/icer_2016_bimodal.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/papers/2016/icer_2016_bimodal...
  - kutkloon7 9y ago
    That's funny, I never heard of the result. Thanks for the information!
SkyMarshal 9y ago
This reminds me of A Scheme Story, referenced at the end of PG's essay Beating the Averages. http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html

kutkloon7 9y ago

I remember this too. For me it was the other way around. I learned QBasic - which I still think is awesome, even it was for DOS only - first. Then I learned C# in my first year at uni and it was a breeze. There were basically the people who could program, and the people who could not. You could see the double bell curve in the grade statistics.

Bartweiss 9y ago
To forestall the usual HN discussion: the double bell curve result has not, contrary to popular summary, been found invalid. Dehnadi & Bornat (2006) was the seminal two-hump paper, which was widely circulated but never peer reviewed. In 2014, Bornat (who was Dehnadi's advisor) retracted it. However, the situation is an odd one. None of the data was ever called into question. The basic methodology has seen criticisms raised, but has not been clearly invalidated. Several subsequent experiments (Dehnadi, 2009; Dehnadi et al., 2009; Bornat et al., 2012) confirmed, at least, that the aptitude test consistently produces two humps. Rather, Bornat issued his retraction in the face of his commentary on the studies. He described having a bad reaction to SSRIs in 2006, and subsequently making a large number of wild and grandiose claims about the work. These included calling the aptitude test "100% accurate", flatly stating that some students couldn't learn to program, and publicizing third-party claims about gender in the data set. This is all very weird. The study stands uncorrected. Dehnadi seems to have gotten caught in the crossfire, since his paper was retracted for extra-textual reasons. No one has really settled the question of how predictive the aptitude test is. The only major follow-up I've seen, out of Toronto, is simply wretched. (They used CS course grades after curving to argue about distributions!) So: double bell curve. Not proven, not retracted, still widely supported by anecdote. http://wiki.t-o-f.info/uploads/EDM4600/The%20camel%20has%20two%20humps.pdf http://wiki.t-o-f.info/uploads/EDM4600/The%20camel%20has%20t... http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-two-humps-programming-aptitude-test-canned-for-overzealous-conclusion/ http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/18/the-camel-doesnt-have-... http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hump_retraction.pdf http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/staffpages/r_bornat/papers/camel_hu... http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/papers/2016/icer_2016_bimodal.pdf http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/papers/2016/icer_2016_bimodal...
- kutkloon7 9y ago
  That's funny, I never heard of the result. Thanks for the information!

SkyMarshal 9y ago

This reminds me of A Scheme Story, referenced at the end of PG's essay Beating the Averages. http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://www.trollope.org/scheme.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html http://paulgraham.com/avg.html