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Just because you can compete in some rocket building competition or can program your Arduino to light an a 3x3x3 LED cube does not mean you have achieved a know

Just because you can compete in some rocket building competition or can program your Arduino to light an a 3x3x3 LED cube does not mean you have achieved a knowledge level to be successful in STEM. It's the details; I would think that our community would recognize that the most. Programming a pong game would probably seem like genius level intelligence to many outsiders. Sure, most here don't think that, right? That doesn't mean you understand serious computer concepts and the sort of things that are Knuth's "Art," right? It's fun to say "Who cares about solving these dumb, boring algebra problems, I can build a rocket by researching most of the things on the Internet." Sure someone who builds these kinds of things is probably more intelligent or perhaps had the chance to be more technical than your average everyday American but when you get into the details, I think we're talking about people that will successful in STEM and I just don't take seriously this romanticism of "project based learning." I mean, just because you can follow directions and build a rocket, doesn't mean you're going to be fit to work as a Quant or something like that. This just seems obvious to me. Of course, it goes without saying that you probably should have these kinds of projects. Definitely. These are great experiences. I doubt computer science would have even existed if people just had the attitude that "book learning" was for the birds or whatever and just "built stuff."

TeMPOraL 14y ago
> Programming a pong game would probably seem like genius level intelligence to many outsiders. Sure, most here don't think that, right? That doesn't mean you understand serious computer concepts and the sort of things that are Knuth's "Art," right? But not programming a pong game and just learning from the book also doesn't mean you understand serious computer concepts. I've seen examples of it at my university. "Understand" does not mean "repeat it on the next test", nor does it mean "repeat the definition you memorized from the book". It means being able to manipulate the concept in your mind, to infer consequences, to think of alternatives, and most importantly, to put it into use. So my belief still is that bulding stuff correlates with understanding more, than book-learning alone. (I'm not saying builders don't learn - they do, but not what they're told when they're told, but what they need when they need it).

TeMPOraL 14y ago

> Programming a pong game would probably seem like genius level intelligence to many outsiders. Sure, most here don't think that, right? That doesn't mean you understand serious computer concepts and the sort of things that are Knuth's "Art," right? But not programming a pong game and just learning from the book also doesn't mean you understand serious computer concepts. I've seen examples of it at my university. "Understand" does not mean "repeat it on the next test", nor does it mean "repeat the definition you memorized from the book". It means being able to manipulate the concept in your mind, to infer consequences, to think of alternatives, and most importantly, to put it into use. So my belief still is that bulding stuff correlates with understanding more, than book-learning alone. (I'm not saying builders don't learn - they do, but not what they're told when they're told, but what they need when they need it).