This is an old, old debate, people have been questioning for years the relative value of pure vs. applied maths, or science vs. engineering in a teaching environment.
On one hand, there's a strong argument for in letting students see real life examples, and how they might actually *use* the concepts they're being taught. Then again, there's also value in teaching the theory, showing students the bigger picture and giving them the mental toolkit necessary to formulate new applications by themselves. At the end of the day though... we need both. Everybody has a slightly different learning style and will respond to lessons in a different way; neither pure theory nor mindless copying of established patterns is enough to properly teach any subject! On 25 October 2010 07:53, Knubo <[email protected]> wrote: > In my opinion this comes down to what you want to accomplish. If you > let people play with web applications they will most likely get more > stuck with html and CSS (and maybe even Javascript) than actually > learning how to program. I think that most universities want students > to teach students how to code - learning how to do web programming can > come later. (doing web development well with CSS/Javascript/HTML isn't > a simple task, I'd say that it takes a couple of years to become good > at it if you do it full time) > > This was at least how my first programming course was trying to do at > the University of Oslo. In later courses programming concepts was > teached - data structures and algorithms. Some other course tought us > functional programming (we started with OO) and even glanced at Prolog > and some later courses tought us about complexity of algorithms > (things like traveling salesman problem, O notation, NPC aso). We > didn't really focus on any framework or any other techniques. Sure we > knew about the web and in some courses we were encouraged to write our > own home pages even though it was not required. > > ...now though if you want to go down the route with developing for the > web, why not teach students Javascript? In this way you can still > learn programming techniques (using functional programming) and you > also teach them a useful skill in process. > > KEB > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "The Java Posse" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<javaposse%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en. > > -- Kevin Wright mail / gtalk / msn : [email protected] pulse / skype: kev.lee.wright twitter: @thecoda -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en.
