[Novalug] Teaching Computers Science

Clif Flynt clif@cflynt.com
Sun Sep 30 01:33:03 EDT 2007


On Wed, Sep 26, 2007 at 09:47:03AM -0400, Dan Arico wrote:
> My daughter is thinking about doing a computer science major in college. We've 
> been looking over a lot of schools and I'm noticing a certain lack of 
> consistency in the way it's taught.

  I taught for a semester at Grinnell College in Iowa.
  
  Their goal is to teach concepts, not implementation details.
  
  First year students study basic algorithms using scheme, second year
students get data structures using Java, and then various courses use
scripting languages, C, C++, assembler, etc.

  The idea is to get the kids to understand that the programmer's
toolbelt has more than a hammer on it and recognize which problems are
best solved by a functional, procedural or OO approach.

  I was very impressed by the school and staff.  I probably learned
as much teaching there as I did in all the courses I've taken.

  I do like the idea of exposing the kids to multiple languages.  Each
language has it's own way of looking at problems, and if you don't have
the mult-language breadth, you get stuck in a single world-view and
can't solve real world problems.  (This from someone who implemented a
lot of sorting algorithms in languages that  supported loops instead of
recursion.)

Clif

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