How Not to teach a computer language
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How Not to teach a computer language
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#2Nice, it's the embodiment of every negative stereotype of CS programs.
Has anyone thought to compile a list of schools outside the MIT/CalTech/CMU/... level that still teach something resembling computer science? Or are they all just bad IDE trade schools now?
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#3Falls flat on its face as an example of how not to design a website (doesn't display anything in Safara on an iPad).
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#4HTML, SQL and VB.net... as courses in a Computer Science program? I don't understand. You might as well have a course on PowerPoint.
Where I'm from, Computer Science is an applied mathematics discipline. Our introductory courses are topics like Data Structures, Discrete Mathematics and Formal Models of Computation.
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#5As someone who has interviewed many programmers (and hired a few) over the passed two years, I find a surprisingly low correlation between education level and competency. An M.S. in C.S. does not impress me the way it used too. :)
Also, in programming there seem to be a lot of people who have a good education, even significant experience, but struggle to do the work. I wonder how much this is true of other fields, like accounting, mechanical engineering, or medical. Higher quality education in those fields? (Certainly more education and training in medical.)
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#6Not that I'm defending a bad teacher, but to say programming vocabulary isn't needed in the real world is a sign of a bad programmer. Being able to communicate exactly what you're doing is as important as actually doing it.
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#7Falls flat on its face as an example of how not to design a website (doesn't display anything in Safara on an iPad).
Yup. Nothing displayed on the iPhone as well.
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#8HTML, SQL and VB.net... as courses in a Computer Science program? I don't understand. You might as well have a course on PowerPoint. Where I'm from, Computer Science is an applied mathematics discipline. Our introductory courses are topics like Data Structures, Discrete Mathematics and Formal Models of Computation.
Indeed. The school I attended had two disjoint (as in, nobody ever took both), non-required introductory "programming language" courses whose goal was to give the students a language in which to complete the assignments for the real CS.
Other courses would cause you to learn languages (for example, one would cause you to learn Scheme, one would cause you to learn Prolog) to demonstrate particular quirks of language design, but that's a means to an end. Most of them were things like "Algorithms", "Foundations of Computer Science", and "Introductory A.I."
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#9Not that I'm defending a bad teacher, but to say programming vocabulary isn't needed in the real world is a sign of a bad programmer. Being able to communicate exactly what you're doing is as important as actually doing it.
It was a poorly written sentence but I think he's trying to say the tests themselves are irrelevant. That's to say, the students aren't being taught anything they can later use in the real world, only how to pass the test.
Knowing how to pass a test isn't particularly valuable.
Re: How Not to teach a computer language
#10Falls flat on its face as an example of how not to design a website (doesn't display anything in Safara on an iPad).
Haha, that was the exact same i was thinking!