> Actually, I have, because I've done a fair bit of embedded development Can't argue there :) > Factoring a quadratic by hand is something I expect a CS major

> Actually, I have, because I've done a fair bit of embedded development Can't argue there :) > Factoring a quadratic by hand is something I expect a CS major to know how to do Agreed, I'm more concern about teaching programming while asking such a task. Once you have solid foundation, you can have valuable insights by doing this exercise about float based maths, moving variables around, naming things, translating maths to code. But before that, I think it would hinder learning. > And someone who knows how to factor a quadratic by hand knows a number of formulaic (suboptimal) steps to perform it-- the exact kind of things that's easiest to translate to code before you have gotten into that mindset of explicit thinking. I disagree, because it takes 2 abstracts things and mix them together. It's a harsh first step. As a teacher, I get better results when I map coding to some concrete reality first. Later on, yes, you can mix. > I'm teaching a secondary student to program right now. In his core math class he's doing a lot of trig. In turn, we're doing a whole lot of exercises like "make these dots chase the other dot using atan2 and sin/cos". This is what I'm talking about. I have terrible results with those for anybody who doesn't really love maths. But creating small games and analysis the text of their favorite song are instant hits.