[Novalug] OT - US Schools not teaching basics of computer science

Jameson Burt jameson_novalug@coost.com
Tue Feb 18 10:38:19 EST 2014


Python (or Perl) seems good for getting things done for yourself,
rather than web presentation to others (which pure html does an OK job).
A simple Python/Perl program can balance your checkbook, with flexibility.

It would be nice to learn a program language that has application to other academic classes.
Maxima (in Linux distributions) can solve math problems (for engineering/math classes)
and has "some" programming structure, though it could use more programming structure.



On Tue, Feb 18, 2014 at 01:04:37AM -0500, Peter Larsen wrote:
> On 02/17/2014 02:43 PM, jerry w wrote:
> > Creativity is difficult to teach, but most try to train it out of
> > students.
> >
> > These days, perhaps Python.
> >
> > Java later.
> 
> That depends on what you want to teach. If you simply want to introduce
> the concepts of programming I agree, that Java is not the right place to
> begin. However, if you're training someone in a wide set of programming
> techniques and language components, then Java has it all - and you can
> move to C/C++ once you master Java to get a good sense of how to manage
> your own memory allocations and the tricks that comes with that.
> 
> But for the person who just wants to do script type programming or just
> to understand what programming is about, Python/Perl are good places to
> keep the focus.
> 
> >
> > C
> > C++
> >
> > Assembly
> 
> These languages would only be for the real CS students.
> 
> >
> > The classics, Lisp/Scheme, Prolog and god / HP forbid, COBOL for
> > perspective.
> 
> Those can be taught or self-learned later. Much later. Once you have
> learned to program in a few languages, and you learn the theory behind
> programming you can start recognizing other and even new programming
> languages much easier and won't really need training in them.
> 
> >
> > Pascal was one of my early languages.
> 
> It wasn't where I began, but it's where my CS began. And the reason is
> the same as why Java has become the language to learn from.  It has all
> the components of programming langauges. All the types of data
> structures, patterns etc. that other languages usually only implement a
> subset of.
> 
> >
> > Now there is Scratch for the interactive GUI lovers...  Might be
> > needed to hold young people's attention.
> 
> Android development is getting a lot of kids to look at Java now.
> Because they want to program in a GUI. However, most modern apps today
> uses the web as the GUI and that's really a huge set of langauages and
> frameworks to manage. I would not expect students to have deep knowledge
> of anything advanced on the web - particular if it's just a bachelor.
> Understand what CSS, HTML, JS, XML, JSON etc. is yes - but not being
> able to really master all of them. I would instead teach the student
> something like "node.js" and simply have them rely on the framework to
> build the guis for them. GUI development with IDEs is also fairly easy
> with all kinds of languages.

-- 
Jameson C. Burt, NJ9L   Fairfax, Virginia, USA
jameson@coost.com       http://www.coost.com
(202) 690-0380 (work)



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