3 ms·
"Because that's how a computer actually works" So what? That is kind of like saying that people need to understand how an airplane works in order to ship a pa
by betterunix 13y ago
"Because that's how a computer actually works"
So what? That is kind of like saying that people need to understand how an airplane works in order to ship a package overnight. Sure there is value in understanding how a computer works, and that will probably be taught later in the curriculum; but teaching students how to think abstractly is far more valuable.
"the sequential execution concept is something that is intuitive"
So is the concept of reducing one expression to another; we teach algebra as exactly that long before we teach anyone how to program.
- Goladus 13y agoSequential instruction is learned before expression reduction in real life... So what? That is kind of like saying that people need to understand how an airplane works in order to ship a package overnight. But people DO need to understand a bit about the process of shipping a package, if they want to estimate when it will arrive, or if they want to be able to read the online tracker, or even know that they must bring the package to a particular place before fedex will ship it. Or if the package does not arrive, what would you have to do to find it? Generally speaking, understanding how a computer works is important to programming because the essence of programming is mapping a real problem onto the available computational hardware. Not that I want to argue against learning about expression reduction, I would agree that should be done sooner than later, but it's not an argument against learning sequential algorithms.