Re:Don't Distract New Programmers with OOP
by Goladus on Sunday December 15, 2013 @01:39PM
(#6910285)
Even basic things in a CS curriculum like data structures and algorithms require abstract approaches and gain very little from knowing low-level details.
I'd disagree somewhat. Data structures, from a CS perspective, often involve learning about low-level implementation details (why is accessing a hash O(1)? Why do array elements have to be the same size? What's the difference between representing a graph as a linked list versus a 2-dimensional matrix?). It's similar with algorithms.
Even though you CAN use completely abstract computational models to learn algorithms, many of the most important algorithms are designed around tradeoffs between real-world resources and being able to map abstract algorithms to a low-level language like C is a very useful skill to those who have it.
I'd disagree somewhat. Data structures, from a CS perspective, often involve learning about low-level implementation details (why is accessing a hash O(1)? Why do array elements have to be the same size? What's the difference between representing a graph as a linked list versus a 2-dimensional matrix?). It's similar with algorithms.
Even though you CAN use completely abstract computational models to learn algorithms, many of the most important algorithms are designed around tradeoffs between real-world resources and being able to map abstract algorithms to a low-level language like C is a very useful skill to those who have it.