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Burd speculated that one factor behind the increase he sees is the greater adoption of mobile devices and consumer electronics. Mobile devices are putting compu

by pj 17y ago

Burd speculated that one factor behind the increase he sees is the greater adoption of mobile devices and consumer electronics. Mobile devices are putting computers in the forefront of people’s lives the same way that PCs did in the 1980s, he said. So kids want to be computer scientists so they can build iPhone apps... Colleges are going to have to start teaching Objective C now? I don't know... I used to think teaching that low level stuff like assembly and verilog were bad ideas, but the more I think about it, the more I realize it really shapes the mind into a programming machine. Learning the high level stuff is pretty easy once the low level foundations are instilled in the mind. Kids coming out of college today don't understand linked lists or binary trees or sort algorithms. You don't have to be able to code all of them from scratch, but understanding those concepts expands the mind and actually makes "real world" programming easier because you can understand the ramifications of your decisions.

thetrumanshow 17y ago
I'm sure back in the MS-DOS era someone said the same things about college students needing to learn vacuum tubes and punch cards before moving on to high level languages such as BASIC.
- pj 17y ago
  The issue is "skill development" vs "mind development" BASIC, or any particular language is a skill.
  - cmos 17y ago
    I had to teach a new college grad (comp sci) working in my office what DOS was. He didn't like to fiddle with 'computer stuff'. As I was walking him through 'CD' and 'mkdir' I almost had him type 'format c:' just to see what would happen. So, some basics should be taught.
cstejerean 17y ago
I agree with you about needing to teach low level things like data structures and algorithms, but I don't see why teaching Objective-C would be a bad idea. If anything it's lower level than Java in that you can still teach people about pointers and memory allocation, etc.
- pj 17y ago
  I don't think it's a bad idea. I suppose I did imply that with my tone. My thoughts were more inline with it being a fad and very narrowly focused more than it being bad. It'll be critical to get kids interested in programming and if they have an iPhone and can get excited about producing apps that run on them and make their lives better, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just not quite as generic as C++ or something like that.
samlittlewood 17y ago
Very like getting engineering apprentices to make a 1 inch steel cube using only files. Serves no direct purpose, but you gain a lot of understanding of the materials and tools. Edit: Or these for machinists: http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b201/michael0100/reducedturnerscube.jpg http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b201/michael0100/reducedtu...
hernan7 17y ago
Well, I went to college in the '80s and they did teach us assembly and algorithms. And we had to program in BASIC for one of our labs. And then Pascal for another lab, and another in Prolog, C, functional programming, etc. They surely can teach CS the same way today, no? Replace Pascal or BASIC with Objective-C and/or JavaScript, and it's more or less the same thing.
jessta 17y ago
actually they should be able to code all of them from scratch. They don't have to know all the details by heart or be able to come up with the concept from nothing, but if given Wikipedia as a reference, any developer worth anything should be able to implement these basic data structures and basic algorithms without much trouble.

by pj 17y ago

thetrumanshow 17y ago

I'm sure back in the MS-DOS era someone said the same things about college students needing to learn vacuum tubes and punch cards before moving on to high level languages such as BASIC.

pj 17y ago
The issue is "skill development" vs "mind development" BASIC, or any particular language is a skill.
- cmos 17y ago
  I had to teach a new college grad (comp sci) working in my office what DOS was. He didn't like to fiddle with 'computer stuff'. As I was walking him through 'CD' and 'mkdir' I almost had him type 'format c:' just to see what would happen. So, some basics should be taught.

cstejerean 17y ago

I agree with you about needing to teach low level things like data structures and algorithms, but I don't see why teaching Objective-C would be a bad idea. If anything it's lower level than Java in that you can still teach people about pointers and memory allocation, etc.

pj 17y ago
I don't think it's a bad idea. I suppose I did imply that with my tone. My thoughts were more inline with it being a fad and very narrowly focused more than it being bad. It'll be critical to get kids interested in programming and if they have an iPhone and can get excited about producing apps that run on them and make their lives better, there's nothing wrong with it. It's just not quite as generic as C++ or something like that.

samlittlewood 17y ago

Very like getting engineering apprentices to make a 1 inch steel cube using only files. Serves no direct purpose, but you gain a lot of understanding of the materials and tools. Edit: Or these for machinists: http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b201/michael0100/reducedturnerscube.jpg http://i20.photobucket.com/albums/b201/michael0100/reducedtu...

hernan7 17y ago

Well, I went to college in the '80s and they did teach us assembly and algorithms. And we had to program in BASIC for one of our labs. And then Pascal for another lab, and another in Prolog, C, functional programming, etc. They surely can teach CS the same way today, no? Replace Pascal or BASIC with Objective-C and/or JavaScript, and it's more or less the same thing.

jessta 17y ago

actually they should be able to code all of them from scratch. They don't have to know all the details by heart or be able to come up with the concept from nothing, but if given Wikipedia as a reference, any developer worth anything should be able to implement these basic data structures and basic algorithms without much trouble.