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Do Kids Still Program?
Journal written by hogghogg (791053) and posted by
Cliff
on Fri Apr 28, 2006 10:24 PM
from the loss-of-impetus dept.
from the loss-of-impetus dept.
From his journal, hogghogg asks: "I keep finding myself in conversations with tertiary educators in the hard sciences (Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, etc.) who note that even the geeks—those who voluntarily choose to major in hard sciences—enter university never having programmed a computer. When I was in grade six, the Commodore PET came out, and I jumped at the opportunity to learn how to program it. Now, evidently, most high school computer classes are about Word (tm) and Excel (tm). Is this a bad thing? Should we care?" Do you think the desire to program computers has declined in the younger generations? If so, what reasons might you cite as the cause?
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No there's MySpace (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No there's MySpace (Score:4, Funny)
The rest get too excited about majoring in some science or engineering in college and end up at schools without females, let alone sex
Parent
Re:No there's MySpace (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:No there's MySpace (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:No there's MySpace (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't been in school in a decade, so I don't know how much worse it may have gotten, but things have been on the way downhill since before I was in school myself.
I've recently become a fan of Richard Feynman, and he has some scathing things to say about the teaching of Algebra when *he* went to school. I'll relate one of his stories as best I can from memory, but I do highly recommend reading his "memoirs" such as "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" even if the lectures he gave on physics do not interest you.
He talk about when he was learning mathematics himself, as a kid -- I believe he was about 10-12 and he'd taught himself algebra from a book called "Algebra for the Practical Man" or some such -- at any rate, his cousin (I think) was learning Algebra in school at the same time. And he told Richard he was having a hard time with some problem, say 2x + 4 = 8, solve for x and Richard said, "Oh, you mean '2'?" and his cousin said, "Yes, but you did it by arithmetic; we have to do it by Algebra."
Feynman then makes the claim that this is evidence of how the school system is in decline; he knows the important thing isn't how you get the answer, it's understanding how these things relate and (he explains all this much better than I do) that schools had invented this "process" called "Algebra" where you could follow some rote steps and arrive at the right answer with no understanding whatsoever of what you were doing.
Tell me if that last part doesn't ring true for the education YOU received in Algebra. It certainly does for me.
-Chris
Parent
yes, they do! (Score:5, Interesting)
they're programming calculators like the TI-83 Plus and TI-89
not only that, but they're learning C, ASM, and BASIC... wow!
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Interesting)
And it's a shame because pretty much any science degree you are going to be doing some programming for data analysis (MATLAB, python, etc....).
Thinking back I remember programming the Apple II's in our computer lab during lunch in 6th grade instead of playing outside. The neat thing about those computers is you had a very simple easy to use programming environment built into the computer. I'm not sure what computers are like now in schools, but my guess is they are heavily locked down and only include office applications and a web browser. That's just too bad.
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
The school they are in now is much different. It's a mix of Macs, Windows, and Linux with no lockdown at all. No real net connection, but the research machines in the library have them. Ironically, even though the Windows machines are fully loaded with MS Software and games all the kids are clamoring to use the aging Mac G3s and the one old G4. I find it amusing, my self.
-WS
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes there won't be any formal instruction. Is that a problem? Would any self respecting slashdotter posting at midnight on a friday admit that they needed to be taught programming by a teacher? How much formal teaching did you need to learn the Apple II's built in language?
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it's not so much that gifted kids need a teacher to tell them how to program. They need a teacher to encourage them, and that is what's missing. When I was in school teachers didn't mind me spending my time in the computer lab during lunch. And they thought it was really neat what I was doing. Now days I think they just care to put all the kids in a neat rows of seats and bore them to death with lectures.
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:4, Interesting)
I think many teachers already have a hard time anticipating what the computer is going to do. The thought of letting the kids make it do something different must be terrifying for them. At least, that was my experience.
Every so often, you find a clueful teacher or two. Problem is, as computers get more complex, the bar for cluefulness keeps rising and all the clued get jobs in industry.
--JoeParent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
For the most part, I was lucky, though. It is the one way I can think of that having out of date equipment was a boon. Most of my schools had machines running windows 3.1, and therefore a full copy of dos including the qbasic.exe binary. That always excited me, being able to add functionality to a machine with something I created. Then again, I'm most of the way through a computer science bachelor's degree now...
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:4, Insightful)
Also 'back in the days', computers were cool but couldn't do anything so to say. You had to develop software you wanted yourself. What you did with computers was program them (and play a few games). Nowadays an abundance of cool applications is already available in many flavours. Why program?
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Informative)
Mine did. Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal.app; % python.
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Interesting)
In my school the computers are very very very locked down. If you right-click the desktop and go to Properties, there are absolutely no options. The screen is all fucked up to be blanked out of options. So we can't have roaming profiles (which baffles me, I cannot stand that shitty blue taskbar and crap like that). Also, by using network booting, they force Windows XP to load on some really really really old computers, which baffles me as well. Why is this bad? Because kids can't tell the difference! One girl was working on a video project (in shitty WMM) on an old computer. She then wanted to finish it off and get it encoded and when she hit encode the computer just froze entirely. She said she didn't save at all either (her fault). I had to tell her that she had to do it again and that if she saved it would be okay but then I had to tell her that these computers she was on are not made for video encoding and if they didn't freeze on encoding they would take a year to encode anything at all. She was then all confused because I used the word "encoding" and pissed off.
My only hope for not using that piece of shit IE at my school is putting in my flash drive (USB 1.0 on the old computers that have USB so I never try) and running Firefox off of it (which works okay). I can also run several other apps. Otherwise, I wish my school would use OpenOffice also instead of buying a million licenses for M$ software (Office) (Right now I have to keep OO and M$ format on my flash drive). Whenever there's a legally freeware alternative to anything, it's like they completely ignore it. Firefox would be great on the systems, along with the teachers using Thunderbird instead of Outlook, etc.
As far as programming, schools get a huge discount when they join some kind of thing with M$ and then they get Visual Studio and the license also allows students to take it home and install (I pirate mine for now). My school has not done this and I don't think they plan to. Since I'm taking the online course in AP Computer Science next year, I have yet to figure out how one would do programming without a compiler installed.
Staying on topic, I guess I am a kid (17 about to turn 18, started doing shit at 11). I have experience in HTML, C, C++, and Java. I have not mastered any yet, but still working on it. At age 11, my parents got me a decent computer (although it was a Compaq
Pretty much everyone else at my school has no clue (there are a few that do). They have no idea how computers work and they recently learne
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you dumm??? :) You don't talk to girls about encoding!! Seriously ... watch some more TV and a bit less PC's :)
Jokes aside, I don't think that the whole world needs to know how PC's are working. I don't think that the majority of people need to know that. As long as you know how to operate a word processor and a spreadsheat program, maybe some software to create presentations (notice how I am using generic terms).... I think you can be considered computer literate. To be able to program in C++ in notepad and compile it using a command line interface, I THINK goes beyond the purpose of computer literacy. I don't think that locked down computers are a bad thing. In fact from what you've been saying (software loading off pen drives, accessing external proxies...) I don't think you computers at school are actually locked down enough. Keep in mind that computers at school are not you computers at home. It's there for public use and has to cater for mostly kids. I don't think that schools should make it a priority on their schedule to allow 12-13 year olds change their desktop picture, color of the taskbar and access porn!
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Interesting)
Cool. The thing is, learning languages isn't really the most important thing to consider when programming - languages can be picked up depending on requirements at any time. Once you know the fundamentals of one it's easy to pick up another.
The real art of programming comes from an understanding of algorithms and complexity. You can know every feature of a language but without the ability to apply it in an efficient manner that works it's not going to get you far. The focus on filling people's heads with syntax is a serious failing of many college courses. There should be more time spent on the fundamentals of programming theory with a single language being taught alongside to show how this theory is put into practice.
When you familiarise yourself with common methods for every day problems you'll start to notice ways to make your own solutions more elegant and efficient. You'll be able to tell which algorithm takes more operations to process some data set or which one requires more RAM... then you can implement it in any language that takes your fancy. To me, that's the important stuff in programming. You have all the time in the world to learn languages, but without this stuff it won't come to much.
I learned this the hard way. I say it here so you don't have to
Luckily there is as much free help on algorithms out there as there is on any programming language. I just found a decent looking algorithms tutorial collection [oopweb.com] and there's also the Dictionary of Algorithms and Data structures [nist.gov]. Hmmm... looks like I found some weekend reading material!
Oh, and there's no shame in designing on paper... the day will come when you don't need to do it, but until then it does no harm. Jees, I sound like an old fart here. I'm in my 20s, I swear!
Parent
Advice to the young (Score:5, Interesting)
Just so you know, computer science has almost nothing to do with programming. You'll write some code to explore compsci concepts, sure, but no respectable college will make that the focus of your degree. I mention this because there were a lot of surprised freshmen at my school, and I'd like to help you not be one of them.
I have experience in HTML, C, C++, and Java. I have not mastered any yet, but still working on it.
Apprentice: "I still have so much to learn..."
Intermediate: "I know this language inside and out!"
Expert: "I still have so much to learn..."
If you think you've mastered a language, you haven't. Don't let yourself forget that.
Parent
Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Funny)
What? screwing up the XML file?
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
There is a certain rightness about Lisp same as with *nix. No other language I'm aware of even comes close in the ability to expand programmers minds. It's like comparing budwieser to scotch or absynthe.
Smalltalk is another 'right' language. Pick up the original manuals for Smalltalk/80 and the sense of rigour and completeness is abundant, no silly syntax add ons.
Likewise C. I defy any programmer to pick up Kernighan & Ritchie and not be impressed by the sheer brevity of the language.
Now pickup Stroustrup, or a Java book or Perl or Python. What hits you is the cacaphony of discord, the single pure note lost amongst the poor orchestration.
When C++/Java/Perl/Python have long since been consigned to the garbage colletor in the sky Lisp/Smalltalk/C will still be used to solve problems. I rather think the current period of programming will be seen as the dark ages before the re-birth.
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Funny)
(((((((Hopefully(the))(result(of(the))car)(cdr)(r
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Insightful)
> intelligent people have this irrational phobia about parentheses?
> What is it about them that causes people's minds to lock up? I can
> understand complaining about other aspects of Lisp, but this?
It's quite simple, really. Each parenthesis has a slightly different function in the context of the larger program, yet you cannot tell this quickly from looking at them. I mean, look at the above joke sequence, and tell me if there are 7 or 8 parentheses at the opening left side of the sentence (by glancing, without counting). And yes, you can use a program that does parenthesis matching to avoid having mismatches, but it is about more than having the numbers balance, because an infinite number of different configurations of parentheses can have balanced numbers but different behaviors.
Control structures more like the C style have been significantly more popular because there are visual markers indicating function. { and ( are used in different contexts, as are ", ',
So it's not that people are afraid of the parentheses, it's that the parentheses are cumbersome to visually parse into meaning whenever complexity rises. In C style code, a single routine which is becoming more complex tends to simply get longer sequentially. In LISP, a single routine which is becoming more complex tends to get more depth of parentheses, and you start getting structures that look like: ))) (( in the middle. Let's take a piece of example code:
(cond
((< x 400)
(cond
((< x 100)
(prin1 'XC) (decf x 90) )
(T
(prin1 'C) (decf x 100) ) ) )
(T
(prin1 'CD) (decf x 400) ) ) )
I now take a working piece of code, change only a few parentheses, and the behavior has changed. In this case, it should crash, but there are less trivial cases where code will actually run but do something different. Either one is of course bad, since in an ideal situation, a human programmer should be able to discern the function and behavior of a program easily by visual inspection.
(cond
(< x 400)
(cond
(< x 100)
((prin1 'XC) (decf x 90) )
(T
((prin1 'C) (decf x 100) ) ) )
(T
((prin1 'CD) (decf x 400) ) ) ) )
And I'm sure any reasonably competent LISP program can look at the simple code example above and figure out what is wrong with it, but this isn't the point. The point is, the language hinders this process with its symmetry, rather than helps it. For most tasks, languages shouldn't be chosen for their reductionist beauty, but instead, for their ease of use for forming complex structures with human psychology in mind.
I hope that clears it up.
Parent
Re:Programming (Score:5, Insightful)
So if I write something in Perl it is a script ?
When I write the same functionality in Common Lisp and run it using clisp, it is a script ?
When I compile it with CMUCL or SBCL, then it suddenly becomes a program ?
I hate this bloody artificial division between 'programs' and 'scripts'. They are all a way of automating things, be it for embedded applications or data processing, and I use Perl daily for data processing, from starting up external applications, gathering data, process results, store and retrieve data from a database and generate reports.
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Re:yes, they do! (Score:5, Funny)
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Define Program (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Define Program (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this is heresy, but bear with me for a moment. No, HTML isn't Turing-complete, and anyone who's done any kind of dynamic content work with Javascript, PHP, etc. is well aware of HTML's limitations. Nonetheless, writing a web page in plain HTML is much, much closer to "real" programming than it is to the way most people interact with computers.
Most people do something on a computer that gets an immediate response. Hit a key in a word processor, see the letter you typed appear on screen. Click a mouse button in a game, shoot the bad guy. Type a URL into a browser, get a page.
OTOH, writing a page in HTML (using a text editor, I mean) even a page that just says "Hello, world" on a colored background, requires understanding the concept of code. Instead of action-and-response, you have text that makes the computer do something that does not follow immediately from the text at the time you enter it. This may seem trivial to techies, but it's an enormous conceptual leap for most users -- and once they've made that leap, programming as a concept is no longer nearly so mysterious.
This is the way it worked for me, as an adult. I was the kind of user whom non-techies think of as "computer-literate," which meant I could use all kinds of different programs and do some low-level troubleshooting, but I simply had no understanding of what programming was, and in fact had a kind of mental block against it dating from when my Dad tried to teach me C when I was a teenager in the 80's. It wasn't that I couldn't learn it, but I had convinced myself that I couldn't learn it, and that amounted to the same thing.
In the 90's, I decided that I really wanted to at least learn how to make a decent web page, so I started doing "view source" on every page I liked, and got reasonably competent at reusing other people's HTML. Next I started writing my own. Then I realized that a lot of the stuff I wanted to do would be a lot easier if I learned this Javascript thing people were talking about, and, well, off I went. By the time I found my way back to C (and C++, and PHP, and Java, and Perl, and MATLAB, and Python, and R, in roughly that order) I realized this programming stuff wasn't so mysterious and scary after all.
During my academic CS career, I saw a lot of people go this same route. Don't sell HTML short.
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Primitive interfaces (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, they are. (Score:5, Interesting)
The main issue here is that programming isn't necessary anymore for kids - whatever any kid wants to do they can rush out and buy a bit of software for, or find a utility online. All the functionality they'd want is at their fingertips already, so programming is left to the tinkerers.
And I rarely program anything for fun anymore because I'm overscheduled. Too many classes, too many bloody standardized tests, and programming itself isn't rewarded at the HS level because of a refocus on reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic. Out of the set of dedicated students, the more well off kids burn time at prep schools and cram classes, the less well off burn time studying. Few chances to program 'for fun' - I've got a really old RPG engine that I add bits and pieces to every now and then, but there's no way I can finish it anytime soon.
Re:Yep, they are. (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, you've got all that below your belt ... you must be a real hit with the ladies.
Who could teach it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Work in an environment where pay and job security is according to seniority, not competance. Work with lazy and dumb students who disrupt class, yet can not be kicked out or even (except in Texas) spanked. Get stuck doing odd jobs like minding the bus loading/unloading area and trying to stop food fights.
Work in a cubicle for $40000 to $150000 while surrounded by fairly intelligent nerds and all the Mountain Dew you can drink.
Gee, I dunno...
Re:Who could teach it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Simple things not cool any more (Score:5, Insightful)
There's little an amateur can achieve that is of any use to them - all their basic needs are satisfied by software preloaded on the computer, and if they do any programming it is likely to be on a calculator rather than a computer.
That said, people with a programmung bent (and probably flair) will continue to be attracted to programming - Its just that 'the others' won't.
Precisely (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, coming from... (Score:4, Informative)
It's Too Hard!!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:It's Too Hard!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Now let's look at the one continuity there, they were ALL Command Line environments. Sure I had Win 3.1 but I never did that much in it. And when 95 came out and I wanted to program MFC it seemed like way too much trouble for what I was trying to do. I was eventually able to come up with a patern for setting up the window and everything, but it was kinda more a pain in the ass than it was really productive. And I come to the last part... Now I program in linux. Sure you can do X-windows programming in linux (which I think is easier than MFC and Visual WhatEver++), but I've always gravitated towards simple things like kernel programming and utilities.
Back to my point, the command line based OSes were easy to learn to program with. Minimal setup for your program (heck, include and you're pretty much done.) output is exactly what you want (it's all just text anyway), it's easy to visualize, it's easy to learn, it's easy to get results quickly. Kids have short attention spans in general, so you want something that allows them to be somewhat productive quickly, so they can do a few things and see the fruit of their labor and think "Wow! That's cool! I just made that!" instead of some random windows error. That'll Hook them and they'll want to do more and learn more... sitting down to read a book to figure out the best windowing setup or if they want a DirectX window or a menu bar is kinda a pain and isn't going to grab many kids.
Parent
Re:It's Too Hard!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
My school doesn't offer any classes in programming, so I teach myself, but sadly, I'm not sure how many people would take it if they did offer it. Most kids my age are just lazy sheep; programming isn't required to graduate, and it isn't 'cool', so people don't take it, sans geeks.
Geek to sheep ratio is low though
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Re:It's Too Hard!!! (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:It's Too Hard!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Learning curve of linear vs OO? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was in elementary school we had this GREAT program called 'LAMP' (logic, art, mathematics, programming) where they took the smart kids out of class every once and a while and had us do extracurriculars in the above-mentioned subjects. The 'programming' aspect consisted of nothing but logo and some linear BASIC on TRS80s, but it at least got me interested in futzing with my Commodore 64 to the point where I could make rudimentary text programs and dream of mastering the 'poke' command.
Without an easy-to-learn language like BASIC where do you begin to teach the fundamentals of programming? The syntax, class structure, includes, etc of modern object-oriented programming languages are a huge barrier to picking up the basics. Would you start a third or fourth grader out on Java? C++? I certainly wouldn't be able to handle that - I had a difficult enough time making my LOGO turtle move around. Perhaps the best solution would be some sort of drag-and-drop IDE, like visual basic for 6 year olds, where children could understand the concepts of programming without being overwhelmed by the syntax all at once. Anyone know of one? I seem to remember something similar using java beans demoed by Sun while I was in college . . .
No more GWBASIC (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll take a stab at this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
He was hanging out on various web sites with all of the other cool script kiddies. In his mind, getting stuff from the web without knowing what it was; or designing web pages with a WYSYWIG HTML editor; or using a level-editor to make a new map -- all of that WAS cool. He just couldn't grasp that he wasn't doing anything difficult, and certainly not worthy of his haxor belief about himself. In reality, he was running other people's programs and using interfaces to do stuff.
Kids today either don't fully understand what it is they're doing, or think something utterly trivial is l337.
They can accomplish a whole lot of 'meaningful' tasks with the software which is readily available for free. They don't *need* to try and cobble together little wee programs to achieve minor tasks. Back in the day, we were happy to achieve tasks which are, nowadays, stinkin' trivial. Because the computer didn't do much unless we made it so.
Kids nowadays don't find themselves confronted with the need to program -- they're not staring at a blinking cursor trying to figure out what to do. They go onto teh intarweb and download it. They're not trying desperately trying to figure out how to write something to make the creation/management of D&D characters (or, whatever). They're downloading free (or pirated) software which already accomplishes what they need to do.
People aren't programming out of necessity anymore, they're running software on the magic box which has always been there. They don't need to think about how software gets made in the first place. The generation before them have filled in most of the gaps for them.
As a kid... (Score:5, Insightful)
For three years, I taught myself through online tutorials here and there. Freshman year of high school I did a lot of programming, because I wanted to show my stuff off the the computer programming teacher (the class is only offered to sophmores and higher). Last year, once I was in the class I discovered how terrible high school is. In a one semester class, the other students only had a rudimentary knowledge of functions and no idea what OOP was. Basically it was a study hall for me, though I did write a tic-tac-toe game in C using SDL to show I did something.
I'd have to say that my knowledge of C++ is pretty rough. I may know syntax, but I sure as hell don't know how to use it for anything complicated. That said, sophmore year, I competed in the National FBLA competition for C++ programming and got 6th! This absolutely surprised me. Surely there must be more people who know C++ than this?
I'm disappointed in the US, in my teachers, and the school board. I've tried as hard as I could to learn in high school, but I end up being a slacker. Even classes at the local technical college (I've taken C# so far) have been a disappointment.
In general, students aren't encouraged to do programming at all. Math books have logic cicuits, boolean logic, and tons of example BASIC programs, but teachers skip over them. Educators need to educate, not push kids through school.
Kids have moved beyond the computer as a tool. (Score:5, Insightful)
Kids are instant messaging and emailing their friends, creating articles on MySpace, creating nifty Flash movies, modding their favorite fps game and distributing their effort over the Internet for 1000s of others to enjoy. They are actually using computers for a purpose rather than as quirky, nerdy obsession
This is WAY more productive and creative than what my friends and I were doing with our computers in the 80s. Kids are not only creating (and hopefully learning along the way) but they are connecting with LOTS of other people in the process!
Perhaps us oldbies view the seemingly lack of interest in actually programming a computer as a problem because we come from a background where the computer was more about what it could potentially do for us rather than what it could actually do at the time. Programming was a necessity to fill that gap, often in relative seclusion and obscurity.
I'm sure our dads say the same thing about us young whipper-snappers not knowing the first thing about the cars we drive and nod knowingly to each other about what a tragedy that is.
Instant gratification (Score:3, Interesting)
I think there's also the problem that so many of today's kids are so used to getting instant gratification (i.e. - they're spoiled) that the sustained intellectual effort necessary to learn programming is simply beyond them.
I came to this realization in a (mandatory) Intro to Programming course I had to take at the local state college. 3 1-1/2 hour sessions a week, and half the class had disappeared before the end of the 3rd week; in the hall before class, I heard many of them complaining that they didn't 'get' the concepts behind programming: AND vs NAND, OR vs XOR, NOT, and so on. Non-decimal arithmetic (binary, octal, and hex) threw them completely. Boolean logic might as well have been Swahili for all most of them understood it. It was, as I said, a mandatory course; they were going to HAVE to take it to the end, sooner or later - yet most of the drop-outs simply didn't want to be bothered. The (very) few of us that already had some experience programming cruised through while the rest (including some taking it for the 3rd or even 4th time) applied whatever mental effort was needed to learn the subject.
I heard one of the disappeared comment to a friend "What do we need this crap for, anyway? All the programs we need are already written; you just have to know which one to buy or download!"
Some do... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, enter open source software. Guided by the right people and articles, anyone can learn to program. Guidance is the key word here. Most kids aren't going to go off and buy textbooks just to learn how to Do Cool Stuff.
A lot of programming is a mystery and there needs to be better education earlier in schools about what programming is. Programming is just like Math or Chemistry these days- it is required for many B.S. majors and can turn out to be hell if someone did not know what they were doing. In order to prepare kids for college, programming in a language like JavaScript would be a good starting tool. There is no barrier to learning JavaScript- the compiler exists in (almost) every web browser, which students should have access to.
Some of the problem is that few people how to teach at the High School level very well. VB is not a good language to learn on, and it causes awful headaches for students who later decide to learn Java and C. VB, though, seems to be what is taught, even though most students do not have access to a VB compiler at home. Learning in school is not enough- it is homework that is also important. I advocate teaching kdis HTML and JavaScript so they can make a cool web site with image rollovers, calculators, and other various algorithms.
Not only does this introduce the concept of programming, but it also gives students a great tool for publishing resumés and marketing themselves as an intelligent young people who have something going for them.
A nice web page can do a lot, even if it is just a little.
Re:Advice to smart people (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Advice to smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Better advice for smart people (Score:5, Insightful)
But what if you want to be this person [wikipedia.org] or this person [wikipedia.org] or this person [wikipedia.org]? These people did very wonderful things, but those wonderful things require that they have the education to do them.
My advice to smart people; don't drop out. It is possible to do wonderful things without a degree, but a degree will open much more doors, which makes doing those wonderful things much easier than without a degree.
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