Wait, what does he mean about the shift key? I pushed shift, then pushed a, and the a is still lower case.
Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
11–20 of 145 posts
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#12About 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.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#13Several 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…
The 1/3 of college students that have great difficulty with learning the fundamentals of programming can certainly learn it -- but it won't come naturally, and it will need to be slower and more personalized than how it is currently being taught. Differentiated instruction is the appropriate educational buzzword.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#14Why on earth are those three types of student all in the same class?
No system exists to identify the slow programmers before they get to class and most colleges don't have the resources to offer the more personalized instruction needed to the slower learners.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#15Several 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…
The 1/3 of college students that have great difficulty with learning the fundamentals of programming can certainly learn it -- but it won't come naturally, and it will need to be slower and more personalized than how it is currently being taught. Differentiated instruction is the appropriate educational buzzword.
I think personalization is the key, too.
Why are we teaching programming with a human? At what point are we finally going to have machines that can work 1-on-1 with humans, at their pace, until they grok concepts.
Some people learn more quickly, some don't. Let's not punish one group or the other.
Let's teach interactively, but not with humans!
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#16I 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 agree with you. I started my CompSci degree a few years ago without any programming experience. The first intro-class was quite challenging as I had never programmed before. It took me a while to get used to the quirks but I became better after sufficient practice. Like anything else, programmers only get good after they have put in the hours to learn programming and the programming language. Its like music or sports or even academics. Practice makes perfect.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#17I snuck into the roster for an intro to Object Oriented Class when I started grad school, which was taught in Java. I took physics with the engineers in college and this was about as hard conceptually for me. But it was one of those things where it was hard until I stepped away for a while and then came back to it. Then it wasn't so hard anymore. Just too much info to take in at once I found. Loops were the hard part…
Recursion for me. I still grapple with it sometimes.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#18Several 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."
Yeah and the reason was that 500 years ago reading and writing was college level material. Now they start teaching the alphabet at what age 5? Then again most print material is targeted to a pretty low reading level. So even if learning programing early becomes more common that still doesn't make it easy because chances are the majority won't be very good at it just like many aren't good with the written word.
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#19About 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?
Re: Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese to a monkey."
#20I've noticed this with higher-level concepts too. There are people who simply can't grasp the concept of a mind that doesn't work like a human mind. There are people who simply can't grasp various levels of meta-thinking - like the distinction between metaethics and object-level moral decisions.
You can keep trying to point in the direction of the meta-level but they just can't look in that direction, like they're in Flatland and you're trying to point "up".
And at least according to them, some of these people are programmers.
It seems there are multiple "gears" that you can have or not have, not just the "programmer's gear". I suspect I'm missing a social gear or two, because there are things I can't see, even after the fact, no matter how often they're pointed out to me.