Teaching Programming - was that Schools Linux Dist stuff
Hi all, I've just spent the last hour readling all the postings that happened over the weekend, and here's my thoughts. 1) A lot of Frank said is right - there you go Frank, bet you never expected to read that? I am, however, not as emotionally charges as Frank. 2) VB should NOT EVER BE TOUGHT TO ANYONE EVER!!!! (Okay, I get emotional sometimes). Recording Macro's, then editing them is ABSOLUTELY the wrong way to get into learning. I like to think that I am young enough to remember my school/college days and the process I went through to learn my profession, while being old enough to be able to look back objectively. The methods used to teach me, I believe are just as valid today as they were then. Structure, order, logic, and top-down analysis and design are essential if we are to teach proper programming - irrespective of which language we use. We used to write our programs on coding sheets and walk across the campus to key them into gwbasic on DOS 3.3 8086 PC clones. We made sure the program was correct *before* we even touched keyboard. Now I know that is a little extreme, but the basic concept is still there. I believe that the teachers who that think that 7 year old kids will get bored not writing a GUI program are not doing these kids any justice. However, at the same time, there is no reason why this same structured teaching could not be used with something like Delphi, Kylix, etc. which will give them some eye-candy and help motivate them. The User Interface, be it a GUI or a TUI, or even a command line, is a valid and diffecult topic to cover, and such tools as Delphi/Kylix, or KDevelop/Glade would be excelent here, but when teaching programming, the main goal should always be qualitity of code, again, irrespective of language. As for the other topics of this thread, I remain quiet as I do not hold enough information/experience to hold an opinion, but I do hold the fear that this country is going to get to the point that we will not have enough real programmers, and get stuck with grown-up 'script kiddies' (For real, read correctly trained program analysts/designers/coders) I think that this will be true in many other industries too. -- Gary Stainburn This email does not contain private or confidential material as it may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown and undisclosed purposes - Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000
Hi all, Here's my two penneth worth, Good argument, taught myself VB - nice but limited use (windows only), taught myself cobol - loved every minute of it, still do, taught myself (well it was a further ed lecturer) pascal - loved every minute of it, still do I have a lunchtime class (I'm not a teacher remember) of volunteer pupils learning to program in pascal using FreePascal (www.freepascal.org I think) under windows, they use the dos command line and the msdos editor, for flowcharts they use dia, for documentation abiword - these pupils range in age from 11 years to 16 years and have no problem with these applications - wait until I get them onto Linux. I have also written several pages for out intranet on programming in pascal - there are kids here who go into the school library and teach themselves during thier own lunchtimes..... These kids are learning structured programming techniques - define the problem, write it in 'psuedocode', draw up a flowchart if necessary, then code it, compile it, edit it, compile it again, run it and test it. My eight year old daughter wants to learn pascal (but she wants to learn it under Linux - she doesn't like windows!) At this school we are introducing pupils to Linux and Mac OS/X - face it, more than any other skill pupils need to be able to adapt and convert thier skills from one platform to another - pupils can do this BUT teachers won't even try! Face it guys, us 'ere ICT professionals have to, as part of our jobs, adapt, learn and implement technologies that we have never seen before - don't expect teachers to do this... (awaits flame war from teachers on list). I have my reasons for making this statement - I've had twenty+ years in education as a technician / systems admin - 5 in further ed with cracking staff who knew what they were doing and could adapt between different os's and applications -strangely enought 95% of these people were not teachers - they were ex industry for one reason or another! Anyway, enough rant - teach pascal, then c or c++, teach basic if you have to but, use a structured version that runs on the command line - kids don't give a damn about the pretty interface - if it says 'hello joe bloggs' on the screen and they've written it themselves then they are happy..... Alan ----------------------------------------------------- Alan Harris Network Manager Bryngwyn School Tel : 01554 750661 Fax : 01554 758255 E-mail: alanh@bryngwyn.carmarthen.sch.uk ----------------------------------------------------- Notes: 1. The contents of this email may be snooped on by interested government parties for unknown purposes! Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, 2000. 2. The opinions expressed in this email are personal and may not be shared by Bryngwyn School. -----------------------------------------------------
Well I was taught and subsequently also lectured VB at university. At school we used BBC Basic (showing my age now) and even worse COMAL. Is that still around?
VB is an ideal tool for rapid development or teaching GUI building but as I
have found being on both sides of the spectrum it is at times unstable and
encourages bad programming. Also as I have found to my peril it is rarely
cross platform in the sense that things behave differently even on
different versions of Windows! There was talk of a Mac version for a while
did that every materialise?
Anyway I am biased but the company I work for now develops and sells a
cross-platform developer tool (see my sig for the platforms). Also its much
more cost effective for schools typically around $25 per user (min 10). In
addition we expect to launch a free set of tutorials for schools on how to
use just about every aspect of the product.
Anyway kind regards and happy teaching!
Rod
Rod McCall.
Runtime Revolution Ltd
On Mon, Feb 04, 2002 at 10:57:22AM +0000, Gary Stainburn wrote:
Hi all,
I've just spent the last hour readling all the postings that happened over the weekend, and here's my thoughts.
1) A lot of Frank said is right - there you go Frank, bet you never expected to read that? I am, however, not as emotionally charges as Frank.
I was going to go into one on what crappy cars Ford produce.....but I thought I better keep Gary onside if possible. I guess I'm picking up this diplomacy lark slowly but surely ;)
2) VB should NOT EVER BE TOUGHT TO ANYONE EVER!!!!
Here, here!
participants (4)
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'Frank Shute' -
Alan Harris -
Gary Stainburn -
Rod McCall