Re:Skills Poor Programmers Lack
by Izkata on Monday July 22, 2019 @06:24PM
(#20502865)
It often goes much further than that.
I was a teacher's assistant in the intro-to-programming courses in college for 3 years, and eventually realized what students were seeing. Now, with some new hires, I'm seeing the same thing:
They think the expression is "if (.. == ..) { .. }"
Not "if (..) { .. }"
The simple explanation of what boolean expressions are, and that any boolean expression can go in those parens - and that it's the same thing as storing the result to a variable and then using that variable - is like a lightbulb suddenly blinks in their head.
I was a teacher's assistant in the intro-to-programming courses in college for 3 years, and eventually realized what students were seeing. Now, with some new hires, I'm seeing the same thing:
They think the expression is "if (.. == ..) { .. }"
Not "if (..) { .. }"
The simple explanation of what boolean expressions are, and that any boolean expression can go in those parens - and that it's the same thing as storing the result to a variable and then using that variable - is like a lightbulb suddenly blinks in their head.