David MacQuigg wrote:
>We need lots of examples where programming is useful to non-programmers. I
>already mentioned the real estate agent
> needing to digest some data from the property appraisers office. For the
> shop teacher: How about a homeowner wanting
> to lay tiles, avoid wastage, and slivers that look bad along the edge. If
> you know Python, it is quicker to write a little
> program than find one, purchase and install it, read the manual, struggle
> with a bunch of stuff you don't really need,
> and maybe not get what you want in the end. I can think of lots of examples
> in engineering, but they are not ordinary
> problems that would seem relevant to high school students. What we need is a
> collection of relevant problems,
> easily solved with a quickie program.
These are not so easy to find. For many of these types of problems, creating a
spreadsheet is more
efficient that writing a program. (Why re-invent the wheel?) One could argue
that having more people know how to use Excel is a good thing and goes part of
the way to having a population that's more savvy at
computers/math/problem-solving. That's another discussion.
But the
criteria of "relevant problems, easily solved with a quickie program"
is tough to meet. Not much gets through that filter. Problems that are
relevant and complicated enough to be interesting usually require a moderately
complex program to solve them. The non-programmer has to make at least some
investment in learning the basics (variables, loops, control structures,
operators, lists, I/O) before taking on even the simplest problem-solving using
a program. So we need to convince people that it's: a) not that hard and
b) worth it.
Warren Sande.
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