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Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

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Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#21

Post by fredgrott »

wallflower wrote: post #16
bsaul wrote: post #15

As a sidenote, France happend to have exactly this teaching programs in elementary schools in the 80s. We had a language called "LOGO" running on thomson mo5. Instructions where "move the tortoise 20 front", then "rotate tortoise 90°", etc, and we would do pretty graphics on the screen and be happy. Or at least that's how i remember it. A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me recently how that thing…

> A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me how that thing digusted him from computers for 20 years. Can you please elaborate? Was it the infantilism? Or something else? Does your friend pursue coding now? Logo and other "beginner" languages are more about introductions to using computers to create, not about teaching programming.

no opposite..lookup learning theory.. MIT, etc

LOGO was crated as part of the new learning theory explorations at MIT and else where during the 1980s..

But in your friend defense Logo was designed for kids at a certain mental age...obviously your friend was beyond that age when exposed to LOGO

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#22

Post by quanticle »

xmonkee wrote: post #20
wallflower wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me how that thing digusted him from computers for 20 years. Can you please elaborate? Was it the infantilism? Or something else? Does your friend pursue coding now? Logo and other "beginner" languages are more about introductions to using computers to create, not about teaching programming.

Can be a couple of things 1. It intimidated him. Happened to some friends of mine. 2. He realized history is better than writing procedural code . Should have learnt haskell

You do realize that LOGO is a Lisp variant, right? It's not exactly procedural.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#23

Post by rimantas »

dasmithii wrote: post #8

As essential as computational literacy has become, I feel a bit uneasy here. Take mathematics for instance. What students learn in school is important, yes, but it causes a hatred toward math in general. In a typical high school, 90% of kids dread Algebra, Geometry, and PreCalc. These classes are miserable to them, and consequentially, they associate mathematics with their aversion from imposed education. Because of…

I am sure anyone who struggles with algebra will struggle with programming even more. Handling abstractions is not easy for everyone, for whatever reasons.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#24

Post by graycat »

mantrax5 wrote: post #7

Ultimately it all comes to cybernetics. Understanding how systems work, understanding how to change systems, and how to design new systems. Not about programming itself. We were designing systems for millennia before computers existed. All the basic algorithms we use in programming today were invented before computers. Computers just happen to make systems a lot more reliable, performant and scalable (if designed rig…

You have unusually good insight.

> Not about programming itself.

Basically correct. So, the grades 1-8 or so work in 'computer science' will be of questionable value.

E.g., my wife had no background in computing at all. I taught her programming at the level of if-then-else, do-while, allocate-free, call-return, try-catch, plus quite a lot in about a week. Then I gave her a lecture on 'rule-based', 'expert system', 'artificial intelligence' (AI) programming, and right away she wrote a nice, first program. I gave her a second lecture, and right away she wrote the best, early AI program I and my research group ever saw. No biggie. For 'computer science' in grades 1-8, looks like mostly a waste of time.

> All the basic algorithms we use in programming today were invented before computers.

Not really. E.g., there are books with collections of algorithms by, say, Knuth, Sedgewick, and others, and more on, say, error correcting codes and how transactions work in relational database, that really are "basic" but were invented just for the world of computing and digital communications.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#25

Post by mantrax5 »

graycat wrote: post #24
mantrax5 wrote: post #7

Ultimately it all comes to cybernetics. Understanding how systems work, understanding how to change systems, and how to design new systems. Not about programming itself. We were designing systems for millennia before computers existed. All the basic algorithms we use in programming today were invented before computers. Computers just happen to make systems a lot more reliable, performant and scalable (if designed rig…

You have unusually good insight. > Not about programming itself. Basically correct. So, the grades 1-8 or so work in 'computer science' will be of questionable value. E.g., my wife had no background in computing at all. I taught her programming at the level of if-then-else, do-while, allocate-free, call-return, try-catch, plus quite a lot in about a week. Then I gave her a lecture on 'rule-based', 'expert system', 'a…

Error correction codes and transaction models have existed before computers have, of course the schemes people have settled with before computers were designed to fit within the limits of what people could work with back then, with no computers to do the quick math for them.

People have used a simple form of error detection checksum when copying books manually (like the Bible) thousands of years ago.

Retransmission requests based on error detection like the above have been use over various pre-electronic communication channels, like telegraphs, which is a form of error correction scheme.

Of course anything that requires a modern CPU to compute wouldn't be feasible, but the basics of it, the seed, was.

Transaction protocols can be observed before computers especially in military protocols where "distributed coordination" and consistency of command are crucial for carrying out a military mission. Their channels of communications were slow and unreliable.

I suppose I don't have to also point out same military protocols often required a log where every formal exchange is written down in order, for later review if needed. Here are your modern day database transaction logs.

I can also cite famous examples of encryption schemes going back to the Roman empire, before computers existed, but we all know those.

We assign names to various inventions and we tend to think no one before had any idea like that, but truth is good ideas keep getting "reinvented" over and over, and the only difference is the level of sophistication that computers afford us in combining such concepts and building upon them into more complex schemes.

By the way in ancient Egypt, every person would be registered and written down in a set of books, books would be split and sorted by a hash of their name for easy look up.

Yup. Ancient Egypt had a hash-based index for their database of people (and books are the hashmap buckets).

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#26

Post by imjustsaying »

About 10 years ago, I took a Computer Science AB AP class my sophomore year in high school. It was all in Java.

Man, that was head-slammingly difficult for an intro course. The prereqs said only a knowledge of Algebra was required. But it took a lot of time to get used to. The only kids who did well were the ones who had already been programming for a couple years.

I didn't even know how to do command-line prompts in windows. I remembered a few things back when I had to use MSDOS to fire up games, but that was about it.

That all being said, I sincerely believe everyone should learn how to program. And I furthermore sincerely believe the public school system should stay as far away as possible from trying to impose a model for a one-size-fits-none way to do so.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#27

Post by btgeekboy »

bsaul wrote: post #15

As a sidenote, France happend to have exactly this teaching programs in elementary schools in the 80s. We had a language called "LOGO" running on thomson mo5. Instructions where "move the tortoise 20 front", then "rotate tortoise 90°", etc, and we would do pretty graphics on the screen and be happy. Or at least that's how i remember it. A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me recently how that thing…

In the US, I used a similar program on Apple IIe computers, running LOGO and moving the turtle. And, similarly, I enjoyed it, while some of my classmates found it boring or difficult.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#28

Post by graycat »

mantrax5 wrote: post #25
graycat wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have unusually good insight. > Not about programming itself. Basically correct. So, the grades 1-8 or so work in 'computer science' will be of questionable value. E.g., my wife had no background in computing at all. I taught her programming at the level of if-then-else, do-while, allocate-free, call-return, try-catch, plus quite a lot in about a week. Then I gave her a lecture on 'rule-based', 'expert system', 'a…

Error correction codes and transaction models have existed before computers have, of course the schemes people have settled with before computers were designed to fit within the limits of what people could work with back then, with no computers to do the quick math for them. People have used a simple form of error detection checksum when copying books manually (like the Bible) thousands of years ago. Retransmission r…

> Of course anything that requires a modern CPU to compute wouldn't be feasible, but the basics of it, the seed, was.

I still believe that what Hamming did in coding theory and the Reed-Solomon codes, etc., are 'basic' and new since computers.

But, you are correct that transmission error detection and correction were old needs with old solutions. E.g., there was parity with teletypewriters and old paper tape for error detection and then retransmission for error correction. Yes, and the improvements Hamming, etc., made for computers were not feasible before computers, but I still believe that, while the problem was old and had old solutions, the work of Hamming, etc. was new and 'basic'.

Yes, heap sort doesn't really work as a sorting technique before computers, but trying to dream up heap sort is not easy -- just for the heck of it, once I set aside reading how heap sort worked and tried to dream up such a thing for about two weeks and couldn't do it. Heap sort's darned clever.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#29

Post by bsaul »

wallflower wrote: post #16
bsaul wrote: post #15

As a sidenote, France happend to have exactly this teaching programs in elementary schools in the 80s. We had a language called "LOGO" running on thomson mo5. Instructions where "move the tortoise 20 front", then "rotate tortoise 90°", etc, and we would do pretty graphics on the screen and be happy. Or at least that's how i remember it. A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me recently how that thing…

> A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me how that thing digusted him from computers for 20 years. Can you please elaborate? Was it the infantilism? Or something else? Does your friend pursue coding now? Logo and other "beginner" languages are more about introductions to using computers to create, not about teaching programming.

I think that teaching programming doesn't necesseraly make you enjoy programming. Just like with any topic, the first step is to make people sufficently interested in a subject to have them be willing to spend some time doing boring stuff. At that time, computers weren't as ubiquitous as they are now.

Re: Reading, Writing, Arithmetic, and Lately, Coding

#30

Post by bsaul »

fredgrott wrote: post #21
wallflower wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A friend of mine who's now an history researcher told me how that thing digusted him from computers for 20 years. Can you please elaborate? Was it the infantilism? Or something else? Does your friend pursue coding now? Logo and other "beginner" languages are more about introductions to using computers to create, not about teaching programming.

no opposite..lookup learning theory.. MIT, etc LOGO was crated as part of the new learning theory explorations at MIT and else where during the 1980s.. But in your friend defense Logo was designed for kids at a certain mental age...obviously your friend was beyond that age when exposed to LOGO

Oh, no, i wasn't probably clear enough. We have the same age, et both did that course at the same age. We just happend to have a very different opinion on that period.
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