Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

> It seems like you are using an appeal to reason with your collaborator and > that appeal is not working. I don’t have a suggestion for your specific case, > but you might consider what concerns/fears your collaborator might have for > sticking with perl; i.e. what is your collaborator's

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

On 2016-03-25 10:21 AM, Steve Haddock wrote: To further digress, What can I say to my old-school collaborator who insists on teaching his students PERL, de novo? He claims not to like Python's cryptic error reporting. (I agree but there is so much to offset this.) I have tried everything

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

My first programming language was TeX. ;-) I try to steer people to asking a better question, in ways alluded to in many of the responses. I often end up replying with "Best for what?" If the questioner is asking about best to learn programming?, then there probably isn't a best language.

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 03:33:55PM +0100, Giuseppe Profiti wrote: > Hi Titus, > I have a couple of questions about your mail. > > 2016-03-25 14:52 GMT+01:00 C. Titus Brown : > > My usual response to the question of "what programming language should I > > learn?" is: > > > > *

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

I've had similar discussions with people at my university who insist on teaching IDL (for those who have no experience, a commercial scientific programming language that has fairly limited use these days). Many of the students I have spoken to have said that after getting out of university they

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Steve, It seems like you are using an appeal to reason with your collaborator and that appeal is not working. I don’t have a suggestion for your specific case, but you might consider what concerns/fears your collaborator might have for sticking with perl; i.e. what is your collaborator's deeper

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Hi Titus, I have a couple of questions about your mail. 2016-03-25 14:52 GMT+01:00 C. Titus Brown : > My usual response to the question of "what programming language should I > learn?" is: > > * Python or R, because those are the two languages being used by many >

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

I tell people that my only CS course was taught in Pascal (this gets a few laughs) and that I don’t remember any of it. I add that learning Pascal set me up to learn pretty much any language I needed much easier than the first time through Pascal. Finally, I point out that they may learn

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

My only suggestion is to maybe point out that Perl is probably not what his students will be using once they leave his group. But there are many good responses to that. He may not care that Perl is not being used in industry much anymore, either, but I think this is important for people who

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

To further digress, What can I say to my old-school collaborator who insists on teaching his students PERL, de novo? He claims not to like Python's cryptic error reporting. (I agree but there is so much to offset this.) I have tried everything including translating his code to Python to show

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

My usual response to the question of "what programming language should I learn?" is: * Python or R, because those are the two languages being used by many computational scientists, being actively developed, and with rich existing ecosystems of libraries and tutorials; * choose between them

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

> On 25 Mar 2016, at 00:04, alexsa...@gmail.com wrote: > > The best programming language is the one that allows you to do what you want > in the timeline you have to with the efficiency you need while keeping it > simple enough for you and for the ones that will come to read the code. >

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

On Thu, Mar 24, 2016 at 11:27 PM, Giuseppe Profiti wrote: > Anyways, "what is the best programming language?" is something that > they asked. I have my programming language of choice, but the > demotivation section in SWC guidelines helped in devising a better > answer

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Related to the "best programming language" question, Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho's PhD thesis (https://jyx.jyu.fi/dspace/handle/123456789/47698) is probably the most rigorous investigation of evidence standards in programming language design available. Long story short, there were only 22

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

There is also the point of best for what job? Best programming language discussions are mostly just flame wars, and I like to address them by saying there is no best programming language; it depends on the knowledge of the person doing the coding, what they are trying to accomplish, and possibly

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

The best programming language is the one that allows you to do what you want in the timeline you have to with the efficiency you need while keeping it simple enough for you and for the ones that will come to read the code. On Thu, 24 Mar 2016 23:28 Giuseppe Profiti,

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Related, even if not properly in topic. While attending the SWC train the trainers course in September, I took a note about the "just" and how to keep an I-can-do-it attitude in the learners. Then, in January, I had the chance to try to be more aware of that while teaching Python in a Master's

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

One approach is to pre-empt it - I make a point of saying in my intro that this stuff is genuinely hard, that I shouldn't imply otherwise by saying "just" (or equivalent), and inviting people to keep score. We can then compare everyone's scores at the first coffee break, and since they're

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Does any one have a tip for how to recover from accidentally doing these things? I've tried to explain why I'm apologising for saying "just", but that *just* seems to make it worse. Cheers, Adam On Thu, Mar 24, 2016, at 05:30 PM, Steven Haddock wrote: > Yes, I think that is the one. The

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Yes, I think that is the one. The J-word!! Thanks Lex. > On Mar 24, 2016, at 14:22 , Lex Nederbragt wrote: > > Perhaps this helps? Look for "Things You Shouldn't Do in a Workshop" on > http://swcarpentry.github.io/instructor-training/09-motivation.html > > Lex >

Re: [Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

Perhaps this helps? Look for "Things You Shouldn't Do in a Workshop" on http://swcarpentry.github.io/instructor-training/09-motivation.html Lex > On 24 Mar 2016, at 22:02, Steven Haddock wrote: > > TL;dr Can someone point me to the post about teaching guidelines? > > A

[Discuss] Phrases to avoid when teaching

TL;dr Can someone point me to the post about teaching guidelines? A little while ago Greg or somebody posted a set of examples of things to avoid saying (“You can simply…”, etc). A friend of mine (really!) is teaching a class and she realized she should avoid saying “You have probably all done