ru...@yahoo.com wrote:
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html
A later paper by the same authors...
(http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper3.pdf)
These papers are fascinating reading, not only for philosophy sake in a
great study in epistemology, but for a good clean study in good science
and an appropriate measure of the scientific method in an interesting
case study that 'failed'. In that regard it was a huge success!
The authors recognize (in paper [2]) that while their findings disproved
their hypothesis the advances they made through good science have left
the door open for further study. This is good news for the field of
philosophy generally, and for epistemology in particular.
-------
I too have noticed the general 'case' put forward in paper(1): namely,
some people just don't seem to get it on the surface, and we can't
figure out why. On the other hand, I have 'always' been able to teach
computer science (programming in particular) to 'anyone' given enough
time, attention, creativity, and caring. In fact, when I find someone
who is exhibiting low aptitude potential (let's say zero '0') then I
must allow even more time, more attention, much more creativity, and a
lot more caring.
I remember a line from "Mr. Holland's Opus," (a great movie, by the
way) where Mr Holland is explaining to the coach why a certain young man
has not any musical acumen --- and the coach says, "..you telling me you
can't teach a willing kid to beat a drum...?... then you're a lousy
teacher!" Holland ended up teaching us all a lot more than how to beat
a drum, before the end of the movie....
The point here is that aptitude says what a person has been conditioned
for at this 'point in time' to be able to do... but says nothing about
what re-conditioning might do for a transformed life! If I can't teach a
kid how to program a computer, I'm a lousy teacher!
-------
I grew up with computers. But kids today have 'magical' thinking about
these machines, because they didn't grow up with them. If you started
out (like I did) on the Altair 8800, or the Wang 700, programming in
machine code, it became very clear rapidly why a high level language of
some type might be beneficial ( and you could relate how the language
constructs made the translation to machine code possible ). It was
easier for me to learn programming, because I evolved with it.
On the other hand, kids today are dumped into a first comp sci course in
programming and plopped in-front of a Hugs interactive shell and then
are expected to learn programming and be successful by trying to grasp
pure functional programming in Haskell(!) in a ten to 12 week term and
we wonder why so many students are failing their 'first' programming
class!! Give me a break. No, give them a break.
Guido van Rossum has said in one of his interviews (can't remember now
which one) that BASIC is a terrible first computer language... and I
agree... but, it was a lot better than Hugs! But that's not my point,
my point is that Python is better still. Why? Because Python can be
taught at a *very* rudimentary level ( input, control, arithmetic, logic
and output ) in almost a BASIC or REXX procedural style -- top down --
so that students 'get it'. Then, in subsequent classes down the road
(much later) Python can grow and expand with the student's
re-conditioning for more in-depth expansion of concepts and knowledge.
At the graduate level Python will still be there... challenging students
to extend and expand in ways that were not even possible to discuss in
the first introductory course. It seems to me that if the goal of comp
sci courses at universities and colleges is 'education' that comp sci
professors and instructors would get a handle on this.
If you can't teach a willing kid to write a functioning computer program
then you're a lousy teacher.
kind regards,
m harris
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