4 ms·

Carnegie Mellon launches free high school CS curriculum

63 points by pplonski86 8y ago

souprock 8y ago
The article mentions "rigorous Advanced Placement courses". The test for Computer Science AB hasn't existed for years, and it has been even longer since the tests used a language without garbage collection. The available tests haven't been rigorous for the past two decades. This is off too: "This isn't 'drag and drop' programming," Kosbie said. "We're teaching them to use Python, a text-based programming language that is the most widely taught language at the university level." Nothing prevents a drag-and-drop code editor from being used with a serious language. On the other hand, Python is nothing to get excited about.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago
  The drag-and-drop comment clarifies that this is a curriculum for a real intro to programming class, not some avant-garde educational experiment.
- harry8 8y ago
  "Python, not scratch." But explained without using jargon for those who aren't jargon fluent. I'd love to see anyone make a better fit of it than they did from the perspective of their target audience. It's not obvious to me how to do it but someone may have good ideas.
blendo 8y ago
Sounds like a good, challenging course for 9th graders, but is there room in the curriculum to provide this course to all kids? They already have 4 separate courses in math, science, language arts, and social studies/history/poli sci. And an art/music/shop elective. And maybe physical eduction. Perhaps secondary school math instruction should evolve to include basic CS concepts? (Or blend CS into a combined math/science/CS double-length course?) A minor quibble: the first line of code listed on the web site is: Polygon(72, 47, 85, 65, 55, 66, fill='lightGreen') Named arguments instead of raw integers might help kids keep the argument/parameter relationship front and center.
bra-ket 8y ago
they should just focus on "cracking the coding interview", it's all that's needed to get a job in CS

63 points by pplonski86 8y ago

The article mentions "rigorous Advanced Placement courses". The test for Computer Science AB hasn't existed for years, and it has been even longer since the tests used a language without garbage collection. The available tests haven't been rigorous for the past two decades. This is off too: "This isn't 'drag and drop' programming," Kosbie said. "We're teaching them to use Python, a text-based programming language that is the most widely taught language at the university level." Nothing prevents a drag-and-drop code editor from being used with a serious language. On the other hand, Python is nothing to get excited about.

SamReidHughes 8y ago
The drag-and-drop comment clarifies that this is a curriculum for a real intro to programming class, not some avant-garde educational experiment.
harry8 8y ago
"Python, not scratch." But explained without using jargon for those who aren't jargon fluent. I'd love to see anyone make a better fit of it than they did from the perspective of their target audience. It's not obvious to me how to do it but someone may have good ideas.

blendo 8y ago

Sounds like a good, challenging course for 9th graders, but is there room in the curriculum to provide this course to all kids? They already have 4 separate courses in math, science, language arts, and social studies/history/poli sci. And an art/music/shop elective. And maybe physical eduction. Perhaps secondary school math instruction should evolve to include basic CS concepts? (Or blend CS into a combined math/science/CS double-length course?) A minor quibble: the first line of code listed on the web site is: Polygon(72, 47, 85, 65, 55, 66, fill='lightGreen') Named arguments instead of raw integers might help kids keep the argument/parameter relationship front and center.

bra-ket 8y ago

they should just focus on "cracking the coding interview", it's all that's needed to get a job in CS