11–20 of 188 posts
That's awesome, but I think it would be much more accessible for newbies if they included download links and installation steps. I have friends who might be interested in this for whom just the installation could be a daunting hurdle.
Click on Python.
I'm not sure how many of the Khan Academy tutorials you could get through...
Interesting that he uses Python to teach the examples. Python is what I learned first. Does anyone have an opinion on whether Ruby or another language is better suited for teaching basic programming concepts?
For starting out programmers, I think it really doesn't matter which language that's used, as long as the language supports strong type safety, the ability to create data structures, and, ideally, also has garbage collection. Java, Python, and Ruby all work for this. In a perfect world, the language would also support C-style pointers, but GC is more important feature for a brand new programmer. Initially, the goal s…
They found that students who were taught Python instead of Java scored higher on their tests. Languages like Python and Ruby make it far easier for people to jump straight into the code. If I'm learning about linked lists why do I need this main method? Ruby and Python have lots of abstractions which make it easier for someone learning to be able to focus on the problem at hand.
Computer science is a little different, because people have been learning CS online since well before Khan Academy.
That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc.
See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive example (which seems to be well done; the teacher takes it as slow as humanly possible): http://www.khanacademy.org/video/recursive-fibonacci-example...
The top comments are from people not knowing the difference between the equality and assignment operators:
"Why do I get an error with a single equal, but not with a double? This is what hung me up for a while."
...I don't know the history of this particular user, it's possible he/she skipped a bunch of the basic lessons and decided to learn recursion...but I wonder if there's a better way to somehow make sure people get the basics down, in an online teaching environment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For starting out programmers, I think it really doesn't matter which language that's used, as long as the language supports strong type safety, the ability to create data structures, and, ideally, also has garbage collection. Java, Python, and Ruby all work for this. In a perfect world, the language would also support C-style pointers, but GC is more important feature for a brand new programmer. Initially, the goal s…
Actually research has shown that it does make a difference: [Why complicate things?: introducing programming in high school using Python]( http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1151880 ) They found that students who were taught Python instead of Java scored higher on their tests. Languages like Python and Ruby make it far easier for people to jump straight into the code. If I'm learning about linked lists why do I need t…
As someone taking a data structures course in post-secondary school where the facilitation language is Java, I've struggled more with the Java development environment than I have with actually understanding the data structures and the implementations. Even the Java specific implementations are simple once you can get your package and classes playing nice and compiled to bytecode.
This is not a slam on Java, just an observation from personal experience that some interpreted languages like Ruby and Python tend to make it easier to do casual programming exercises or tasks than those needing any compiling prior to execution, such as C, C++, and Java.
That's awesome, but I think it would be much more accessible for newbies if they included download links and installation steps. I have friends who might be interested in this for whom just the installation could be a daunting hurdle.
http://www.python.org/download/
Compare that to the Firefox download page, where it auto-detects everything it needs to know about your computer and gives you one simple, unambiguous giant "download me" button that just works. If this was a conversion funnel, python would be losing most of their money (i.e. potential users) at this step.
I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…
Interesting that he uses Python to teach the examples. Python is what I learned first. Does anyone have an opinion on whether Ruby or another language is better suited for teaching basic programming concepts?
For starting out programmers, I think it really doesn't matter which language that's used, as long as the language supports strong type safety, the ability to create data structures, and, ideally, also has garbage collection. Java, Python, and Ruby all work for this. In a perfect world, the language would also support C-style pointers, but GC is more important feature for a brand new programmer. Initially, the goal s…
The biggest issue I've faced with my courses where Java is used to teach the material is having to deal with Java IDEs and boilerplate code required to test tiny bits of code and the resulting behaviour. Interpreted languages or those with REPLs tend to not have this problem from what I've observed.
Note: I know about BeanShell, but I've had poor results with it. Maybe my environment is at fault, but it seems to miss functionality as basic as command history, which makes editing commands very tedious.
I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…
I remember I first bought a Java book to learn to program when I was around 15-16. I tried for days but couldn't figure out why the first example program wouldn't work, it was because it wasn't System.out.print1n but System.out.println. In the font the code was written in, I couldn't tell. Because of that it wasn't until at least a year later that I didn't try again.
I've never used a Khan Academy video but that's out of pure negligence on my part, not skepticism. That said, I have always wondered how effective video is as a teaching tool for programming? I guess when I think about it, it's the same delivery tool as an in-person lecture, but in some ways, more effective since you can pause, rewind, etc. See the comments on this article about how to do a Fibonacci recursive exampl…