Re:Java in College: "You might as well be teaching Chinese t...
by rms on Saturday December 20, 2008 @01:49AM
(#404369)
>glossing over a lot of details that students need to know.
If you're teaching them object oriented programming. Why would you be teaching beginners object oriented programming?
I give the engineering programming classes at Pitt a fair amount of credit. Two semesters -- the first semester covers HTML as a reasonably useful introduction to the idea of structured text files, then Matlab to introduce if statements, loops, and functions in an environment with a friendly console. The second semester was C. Mostly everyone got it -- those that failed out of engineering didn't fail because of programming class.
The classes were taught/conceived by a professor whose primary research interest is engineering education.
If you're teaching them object oriented programming. Why would you be teaching beginners object oriented programming?
I give the engineering programming classes at Pitt a fair amount of credit. Two semesters -- the first semester covers HTML as a reasonably useful introduction to the idea of structured text files, then Matlab to introduce if statements, loops, and functions in an environment with a friendly console. The second semester was C. Mostly everyone got it -- those that failed out of engineering didn't fail because of programming class.
The classes were taught/conceived by a professor whose primary research interest is engineering education.