This seems to me to be another version of a very academic discussion about our "new" students, who all know how to "click"......Sorry, they are as the are. Trying to teach "programming" to undergraduate students for years now, I do see the problem from a different point of view. It is NOT a question of IDE's, debugging-Systems, sophisticated tools, not even languages. To me it seems to be a problem of missing applications. What I mean? Student: To program my first "hallo world" is simply boaring, I am not interested to print a simple sin-table.. and the like. What on earth all this programming is to be used for?
Some years ago Iswitched to: A simple editor, a plain compiler, and a textbased console and AN INTERESTING JOB to do. Say: simulate an atomobile on a 10 km long road with traffic lights. Answer the question: does it make sense to ignore speed limits or does it not?
So jump, dive, and swim..
And the advice to our beginners is: Start with a small program saying 'Program Speed Simulation Start' 'Program Speed Simulation Stop'
If that works, you know: I can use the editor, it worked I can use the compiler, it worked I wrote my first program, it worked. I save it as version 0, copy ist to version 1, and I will expand it now to version n+1. Output will be written to screen and (later) redirected to a file from where it can be plotted by eg. xmgrace or so.
We all in the teaching business should think about interesting 'real life' examples, it seems there are just a few! The sophisticated tools should NOT be used. To be honest: even the above example is - in my opinion - not real enough! What I mean? try to use "Kdevelop" (or any of the like) with beginners. Even the "hallo world" project creates "thousands" of files in the associated directories, no beginner will understand that not to talk about keeping track. I dropped it completely (for beginners, not for later real work).
If I am allowed to add one thing: my students are still using GPC 2004.12.18 Why? There is no newer binary available on "www.gnu-pascal.de", and beginners are NOT able to compile GPC from scratch. And: most Pascal users are not experts for c!
Mathias Uhle
M. Uhle sen. wrote:
This seems to me to be another version of a very academic discussion about our "new" students, who all know how to "click"......Sorry, they are as the are. Trying to teach "programming" to undergraduate students for years now, I do see the problem from a different point of view. It is NOT a question of IDE's, debugging-Systems, sophisticated tools, not even languages. To me it seems to be a problem of missing applications. What I mean? Student: To program my first "hallo world" is simply boaring, I am not interested to print a simple sin-table.. and the like. What on earth all this programming is to be used for?
Some years ago Iswitched to: A simple editor, a plain compiler, and a textbased console and AN INTERESTING JOB to do. Say: simulate an atomobile on a 10 km long road with traffic lights. Answer the question: does it make sense to ignore speed limits or does it not?
So jump, dive, and swim..
At least this creates an intellectual challenge to students, but the wrong one. In fact, you are saying "I am teaching a boring discipline (science/craftmanship/art) so I am trying to make it interesting by finding an interesting application (Anwendung)".
I find that horrible. Only those students that find programming *itself* interesting, will later be good programmers and we really don't need to bother with the rest (they had better start a career in politics or marketing or so). Again, the task of teachers is to lead pupils into this wondeful new world, i.c. programming and exact thinking, and bring young people to spiritual maturity, rather than trying to "amuse" them with an interesting application. And - if you do not strongly believe *yourself* that programming as a discipline (science/craftmanship/art) can be interesting, you will never be able to bring your students to real enthousiams for what you are teaching.
Sincerely,
Adriaan van Os
Hi all!
I'm watching this conversation. I also think that nobody will be a programmer who finds it boring. I know, no matter how interesting stuffs you show, they find it boring. Believe me, I tried to draw the attention of my mates to programming, but I always had to give up.
1. I'm a 18-year-old student. 2. I find programming a really interesting subject. 3. However, I never learnt programming in school, because teachers really don't teach this subject here. I asked adults to teach me some things, read books, documentations on the Internet, tried many things on my own. 4. Programming is my life. I really want to be a programmer, when I grow up. I hope I can accomplish it.
When I was playing games on my old DOS machine, I also asked the question: "These games are really cool, but how are they made?" Since that time, I learnt many things of programming, most of them are far from games.
If somebody finds it all boring, then you can't teach him. They'll find other occupations for themselves they will like. It's no use to worry about it, since there are enough programmers in the world. If you worry about the balance of the occupations, think about why there are 4 university students of 5 who wants to be an economist. Do we really need so many economists? (Sorry for this off-topic.)
Bye, MegaBrutal
Am Samstag, 18. August 2007 12:56 schrieben Sie:
M. Uhle sen. wrote:
....
Some years ago I switched to: A simple editor, a plain compiler, and a textbased console and AN INTERESTING JOB to do. Say: simulate an automobile on a 10 km long road with traffic lights. Answer the question: does it make sense to ignore speed limits or does it not?
So jump, dive, and swim..
Adriaan van Os answered:
At least this creates an intellectual challenge to students, but the wrong one. In fact, you are saying "I am teaching a boring discipline (science/craftmanship/art) so I am trying to make it interesting by finding an interesting application (Anwendung)".
I find that horrible. Only those students that find programming *itself* interesting, will later be good programmers and we really don't need to bother with the rest (they had better start a career in politics or marketing or so).
Sorry, maybe I did not make it clear enough:
I do have the same opinion: If somebody does not develop a deep interest, she/he never will be a good programmer, but:
My students are studying mechanical engineering. Programming is just one subject for them. But the regulations say they must do it. Trying different methods, by the time I found, that they achieve much better results (read: put more effort into it) when they are confronted with interesting challenges. By the way, there are other jobs as well: program a lift for a four storage building (model on the desk), measure the speed of a rotating disk using korrelation on two signals from optical sensors and the like. As soon as something is "moving" they like it.
Again, the task of teachers is to lead pupils into this wondeful new world, i.c. programming and exact thinking, and bring young people to spiritual maturity, rather than trying to "amuse" them with an interesting application.
I cannot see that I should not look for an interesting application. Programming - in my opinion - is not just intelluctual fun, what it is, but it longs for applications. So why not find an interesting one?
And - if you do not strongly believe *yourself* that programming as a discipline (science/craftmanship/art) can be interesting, you will never be able to bring your students to real enthousiams for what you are teaching.
Sincerely,
Adriaan van Os
Sorry, again a remark: Only very few of those who study mech. eng. will develop this enthusiasm (which I claim for myself) but it helps if they see that it can result in more than a few coloured pictures on a screen!
Mathias Uhle
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Adriaan van Os -
M. Uhle sen. -
MegaBrutal