This really has nothing to do with Java, except it happens to be the language he's teaching. A more accurate title would be 'Programming in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."' as it would be equally applicable to any programming language.
Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
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Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#32I just finished helping to teach an introductory programming class as well (HTML and JavaScript -- one step below the Java class). I also observed a surprising range in the ability of the students to grasp programming. Hardest class ever all the way to easiest class ever. Another funny thing I noticed is that many students had the idea that they could get credit for non-functional code. They would treat it like a mat…
i remember another student complaining to the teacher, "so you're not giving me credit because i'm missing a for loop?"
i wish i was the teacher. i would have explained that "missing a for loop" isn't something like, say, having an injured arm. it's more like having an arm that was recently sawed off and is spraying and pouring copious amounts of blood all over the place
you have to be strict in those cases I think. programming requires precision, and if a person can't muster it then they shouldn't be fooled into thinking it's something they can major in, because then their time will just be wasted
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#33I don't believe that programming is something you need to just get. I've seen a lot of people struggle on assignments like these as a TA. Usually, it's that they're missing certain concepts, but they don't know which ones and they can't debug themselves. If you know 70% of basic Java, you won't be able to create a working solution. You'll get tripped up on a type mismatch error that just makes you bonkers until you g…
I have to wonder if a language with less syntax would be easier to pick up. Start people that are totally new to programming with something like Scheme or Ruby (surely there are even better ones than these) that requires less arcane punctuation to do things like hello world, then once they get the hang of things, slowly introduce them to more structured languages.
My university started the introductory course (for all majors, courses were common for the first 2 years) with scheme and most student seemed to understand it fairly well. We still had the 20% that were extremely fast because of having programming experience before (but learning scheme was a nice change compared to what they used to do) but the numbers of students completely lost seemed rather small.
So I think scheme is a very good choice for an introductory course...
Ruby is very nice (I'm mainly programming in it nowadays) but I'm not sure it's such a good choice for beginners, there are a lot of small details that could trip up beginners I think (block vs procs vs lambda vs method(:name_of_method), the eigenclass...)
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#34I don't believe that programming is something you need to just get. I've seen a lot of people struggle on assignments like these as a TA. Usually, it's that they're missing certain concepts, but they don't know which ones and they can't debug themselves. If you know 70% of basic Java, you won't be able to create a working solution. You'll get tripped up on a type mismatch error that just makes you bonkers until you g…
I have to wonder if a language with less syntax would be easier to pick up. Start people that are totally new to programming with something like Scheme or Ruby (surely there are even better ones than these) that requires less arcane punctuation to do things like hello world, then once they get the hang of things, slowly introduce them to more structured languages.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I must say that Python fits the bill.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#35About a third of his class needs to switch to a more challenging course. Every university should have a way to "place out" of introductory programming classes, just like you can place out of introductory (natural) language classes if you have previous coursework or are a native speaker. This should be done by demonstrating proficiency in the skills that will be taught in the programming course.
Well, sure, if universities were there to teach things , they'd invent ways to teach you using fewer classes. If universities are there to make you take classes until you get a piece of paper, why would they care?
Except that this is a pretty common practice: at most reputable schools, if you can demonstrate you don't need to take an introductory programming class, you can switch to a more advanced class.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#36I don't believe that programming is something you need to just get. I've seen a lot of people struggle on assignments like these as a TA. Usually, it's that they're missing certain concepts, but they don't know which ones and they can't debug themselves. If you know 70% of basic Java, you won't be able to create a working solution. You'll get tripped up on a type mismatch error that just makes you bonkers until you g…
I have to wonder if a language with less syntax would be easier to pick up. Start people that are totally new to programming with something like Scheme or Ruby (surely there are even better ones than these) that requires less arcane punctuation to do things like hello world, then once they get the hang of things, slowly introduce them to more structured languages.
Start with digital logic and machine architecture, work your way up.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#37Several people in the blog comments have cited the “camel has two humps” paper, which still hasn’t made it through peer review. There have been some failures to replicate the study. Perhaps their results were an artifact of the authors’ teaching style, i.e. they were just terrible at teaching, so the students who entered the class without knowing the material failed? I’m very skeptical of results that claim that some…
"I’m very skeptical of results that claim that some large fraction of the population is incapable of some mental feat like programming. 500 years ago the same was thought of reading, writing, and arithmetic."
Exactly. At birth we are basically no different from someone born 100, 500, 1000 years ago. People in the past we not stupid. In fact, the giants who's shoulders we stand on now are from the past.
This isn't to say the camel doesn't have two humps. I tried pretty hard in college to learn German, but by then it was too late. Kids can learn languages without even trying because they're wired to learn languages. Waiting till college to learn German effectively doomed me to failure.
A similar thing might be happening with programming. Some people don't start thinking about programming until pretty late, sometimes as late as college or beyond. Perhaps some of the people who "just can't get it" could have had a chance if they started sooner.
This would imply that there is no fix at the college level; the solution is to start introducing programming/logic earlier.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#38I don't believe that programming is something you need to just get. I've seen a lot of people struggle on assignments like these as a TA. Usually, it's that they're missing certain concepts, but they don't know which ones and they can't debug themselves. If you know 70% of basic Java, you won't be able to create a working solution. You'll get tripped up on a type mismatch error that just makes you bonkers until you g…
In Java, you can store an object in an array and then modify that object in both the array copy and the one you have in a regular variable because Java works by reference, not by copy.
LOL. In what language does array assignment result in a new copy of that data structure rather than a reference of it?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Array
In computer science an array[1] is a data structure consisting of a group of elements that are accessed by indexing.
Answer: None.
You'll get tripped up on a type mismatch error
Every real language has types. Java catches most errors at compile time. That's an advantage for students.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#39i think it's a matter of perspective. people's perspectives can be very different. it didn't hit me until i got really smashed one night and my vision became many times more detailed. the world looked beautiful. no doubt there are people that can see that clearly all the time, people who live in the world, as opposed to outside of it which is how it feels i am. those people are probably the ones who can "get" drawing, and who might wonder why it is that others don't get it
when it comes to programming however, i bet these people can confuse the letters on the screen for the program itself, or it might not be clear to them that the semantics of the language are rich and are more important for understanding it than its syntax is, and other fundamental misconceptions like that
i can see better if i put a lot of focus on it, but it would take practice to make it something i could readily call forth or sustain, and even then i don't know if i could see as clearly as when i'm drunk, or as clearly as someone for whom it is natural. going the other way, how do you show people what to look at when programming? i can give myself visual tasks like "try to perceive all of the individual blades of grass on the lawn at the same time," but what is an equivalent exercise for someone who finds programming difficult?
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, sure, if universities were there to teach things , they'd invent ways to teach you using fewer classes. If universities are there to make you take classes until you get a piece of paper, why would they care?
Except that this is a pretty common practice: at most reputable schools, if you can demonstrate you don't need to take an introductory programming class, you can switch to a more advanced class.
what schools? (I ask because I hope that my school was "reputable" but that was certainly not the case)