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Programming is something that not everyone understands, and teaching those that just don't understand programming is a monumental task. I've taught basic progr
by andreyf 18y ago
Programming is something that not everyone understands, and teaching those that just don't understand programming is a monumental task.
I've taught basic programming to a lot of people, and I find that the problem is on the other side:
Teaching programming is something that not everyone understands, and learning from those who just don't understand teaching programming is a monumental task.
Students come in with different views of the world - some of them have the metaphorical analogies in place to understand scope and curly brackets as "boundaries" or "bags", others don't. Explain it to them.
- gaius 18y agoWe had this discussion on another thread and concluded that Java's a very bad introduction to programming. To understand even Hello, World requires an enormous amount upfront: class HelloWorld { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello, world!"); } } What's a class? Why does the name of my class have to be the same as the name of the file (and why do I have to rename it on the disk if I change it?) What's "public", "static" and "void" mean? What's an array? What're arguments? Why is String capitalized when main isn't? What is this System business, why can't I just print? Why do I have a semicolon on the end of that line? If you want to teach people you've got to start from the freedom of using a suitable language, which means to all practical purposes LOGO, BASIC or Scheme. 10 PRINT "HELLO, WORLD!" Or (display "Hello, world!")
- jackowayed 18y agothat could well be the case, but do you think that schools around the nation will be able to find great programming teachers that understand teaching programming?