> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dave Watts [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Sunday, December 08, 2002 2:22 AM
> To: CF-Talk
> Subject: RE: ColdFusion for kids
> I hate to be a wet blanket, but I'm not a big fan of teaching
> CF programming to kids, for several reasons. First, I'm not
> sure that we should be teaching programming to kids
> generally; on the list of things that everyone should learn,
> I think it's pretty low. There's a difference between
> learning basic computer skills (which, sadly, are necessary
> for almost everyone nowadays) and learning how to program. I
> think it's a sad commentary on the state of the computer
> industry that people have to spend so much time learning
> basic computer skills, actually - these things are supposed
> to be easy to use, but of course they aren't, really. I'd
> much rather see every student have a firmer grasp on the
> "three Rs" than have them all able to churn out web
> applications. I'd rather see civics classes again, actually.
> I just don't think programming is all that important, I guess.
My personal wish is that children got more lessons in "how to think"
than in "what to think".
In this case I think that programming may be a boon... Critical thinking
is woefully misrepresented in American cirricula. Programming can
encompass a good portion of those critical thinking skills that are so
lacking today.
Of course there are other ways, but in general I personally would rather
less focus on rote learning and more focus on independent, critical
thought and information gathering.
> Second, for those students who want to learn programming, I
> think it's more important to focus on core programming
> concepts than it is to teach the specifics of CFMX. I'd
> rather see them learn programming using a lower-level
> language than CFML, and a more general-purpose language, too.
> I think Java and Python would be better languages for
> learning how to program.
I agree with this... In theory. I started a long time ago and we
learned Turbo Pascal (turbo because you had strings!) in our "advanced
computing" high school course ("basic computing" used, you guessed it! -
BASIC). It was good, but the general concepts were available in
anything. I still remember that I understood recursion first there.
However it also didn't give me much to follow up on. I could program in
T-Pascal on my TI-99/4A, but I really couldn't do much. Learning a web
language may convince students to stick with it, if for no other reason
than to keep up their own pages.
I think with CF you have the potential to teach the concepts without the
language getting in the way. Java may be a more useful stepping stone,
but remember that most computer classes in grade school/high school are
45 minutes less than three time a week - an easy to pick up language
that supports the concepts (CF, Python, perhaps even TCL or Pascal but I
really don't think Java) would be, I think, better.
CF also has the benefit of immediate fruit. You can "get your page up"
very quickly and that sense of accomplishment is a large part of the
learning process.
There's also a sense of familiarity as we might assume that all kids in
such a course are at least conversant with the web in general.
> Finally, for teaching purposes, you don't want to make things
> too easy - for example, if you wanted to teach someone about
> HTML, Notepad would be a better tool (I think) than
> Dreamweaver MX. I see this a lot, actually, now that
I agree totally. Only use shortcuts after you know the long way 'round.
> That's all well and good - if he's going to start working
> today as a consultant. In the long run, again, I think he'd
> be better served by learning general programming theory
> rather than the specifics of languages that may well be
> obsolete by the time he's ready to work in the field.
I would still argue that learning those theories may be easier in a
language that gets in the way as little as possible.
But I fully agree with you that whatever language is used, good
programming has to come before "cool tricks". But I think that the
simplest language that can teach those concepts should be used. That
might not be CF of course, but it could be.
Jim Davis
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