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In the "old days" there was a dividing line we noticed in class. If the student could understand pointers they would succeed, if not they wouldn't. It was qui

In the "old days" there was a dividing line we noticed in class. If the student could understand pointers they would succeed, if not they wouldn't. It was quite accurate for the time. Today things are higher level so I think there is room for a wider range of folks. One group are folks that are great at spreadsheets and the like. Gamers or someone who is interested in tinkering with javascript. Perhaps they have a technical career that requires attention to detail.... a tax lawyer, medical billing, accountant? Music? Ok. Otherwise it will be tough. My first thought is to sit them in front of the PBS Computer Science Crash course series. (Can be found on Youtube but need NewPipe or PBS app to watch commercial free. Watch at .8x speed or slower, because I feel they speed it up to appeal to hyper teens.) If they can get through to the last episode before giving up, I think they deserve a shot and encouragement.

hirvi74 5y ago
> If the student could understand pointers they would succeed, if not they wouldn't. What were common hang-ups that people had with pointers? I guess, it's safe to assume I am of a younger generation than you, but I may have had a bit of an unfair advantage (compared to my peers) when I dabbled with C because I studied assembly (x86 and a bit of ARM) prior to C, so pointers weren't exactly foreign concepts. I do not think about this on a daily basis, so it's easy for me to forget how good things are these days. I can't tell you the last time I even thought about/used pointers, since I mainly use the fancy "magic under the hood" languages these days. For pure geeky fun, assembly and C were my favorites... Something about the memory management and pain brings back fond memories, even if I never made anything overtly special with them.
- digisign 5y ago
  As developers know, pointers require you to work with a variable that points to another variable. It is one more level of indirection, and one needs to keep additional information in short-term memory to understand the code. For whatever reason, a significant portion of students can't deal with it and give up. At the time, there were no "CSS expert" type of jobs to focus on instead. Perhaps Excel jockey or IT management as mentioned, but a different major entirely. Perhaps one reason is that the traditional C syntax for it is rather cryptic. Personally, first learned it in (Turbo) Pascal, which I found easy to learn (with its ^ syntax), and with that made learning it in C easier later.

hirvi74 5y ago

> If the student could understand pointers they would succeed, if not they wouldn't. What were common hang-ups that people had with pointers? I guess, it's safe to assume I am of a younger generation than you, but I may have had a bit of an unfair advantage (compared to my peers) when I dabbled with C because I studied assembly (x86 and a bit of ARM) prior to C, so pointers weren't exactly foreign concepts. I do not think about this on a daily basis, so it's easy for me to forget how good things are these days. I can't tell you the last time I even thought about/used pointers, since I mainly use the fancy "magic under the hood" languages these days. For pure geeky fun, assembly and C were my favorites... Something about the memory management and pain brings back fond memories, even if I never made anything overtly special with them.

digisign 5y ago
As developers know, pointers require you to work with a variable that points to another variable. It is one more level of indirection, and one needs to keep additional information in short-term memory to understand the code. For whatever reason, a significant portion of students can't deal with it and give up. At the time, there were no "CSS expert" type of jobs to focus on instead. Perhaps Excel jockey or IT management as mentioned, but a different major entirely. Perhaps one reason is that the traditional C syntax for it is rather cryptic. Personally, first learned it in (Turbo) Pascal, which I found easy to learn (with its ^ syntax), and with that made learning it in C easier later.