Practical programming in schools?

[stealth977]

What I think is, There are 3 stages:

1 - Learning
2 - Applying
3 - Teaching

* Everyone needs to do the first stage: Learning , or you cant continue with 2nd or 3rd
* Applying requires high scientific skills, or we can say a brain specialized in analytic thought
* Teaching requires social skills, or a brain specialized in both speaking and literature

So, it is very possible that one specialized in scientific skills may lack the social skills, and one specialized in social skills may lack the scientific skills. But most unfortunate is, the ones lack both of them can be government employees and even teachers, maybe thats why the society is going down day by day, because the output of 3rd stage (teaching), is half the input of the first stage (learning)!!!

ismail,

[RedEyeCoder]

I thought I would share some of my experiences with programming teachers.

I did programming in high school and the teacher was worthless. Don't get me wrong, he was a great person and I enjoyed talking to him, but he just could not answer my questions and knew little of the language we were meant to be learning (pascal). This left me doing many hours of programming at home (which turned to be a good thing). The internet back then was a different place (its not that long ago really ~2000-2002) and the amount of information out there was not what it is today, I lived in a small town that didn't have a book store and only had a meager library, so theres was nothing else to do other than tough it out.

Then I go off to study games programming at a higher education college...

My first teacher was a total flop, I have never used C++ before and when I asked questions like "Why do I need using namespace std at the start of my application" I received responses like "bad things will happen" and nothing more. The result was, I rang my mum and asked for $90 to buy the C++ Primer book and I never looked back.

Much later in the course when I was taught by Kojack, and he still to this day remains the best programming teacher I have encountered. There were very few unanswered questions.

I guess my point is this; If you are a curious and self motivated learner (this has little to do with programming in particular) you should be fine. The content covered in high school had little real world application, but the skills acquired there have definite and lasting benefits.

[nikki]

My first teacher was a total flop, I have never used C++ before and when I asked questions like "Why do I need using namespace std at the start of my application" I received responses like "bad things will happen" and nothing more. The result was, I rang my mum and asked for $90 to buy the C++ Primer book and I never looked back.

Hehe...

Much later in the course when I was taught by Kojack, and he still to this day remains the best programming teacher I have encountered. There were very few unanswered questions.

Kojack was your teacher?

Kojack is old...

[Speedo]

"Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach."

*ducks to avoid chair hurled by Kojack*

Well that's often often the case at least in the US, because so much is done to discourage intelligent people from entering the profession (piss poor pay, all the dealings with idiotic parents, general disdain towards teachers by the public, etc) and regs governing hiring teachers are often completely idiotic (lots of high school level teachers don't have degrees in the subject they teach). It's very likely that your high school level programming teacher won't even have done any formal study towards programming - they probably just picked up the textbook and taught themselves enough to be able to teach the class.

Edit: It probably bears mentioning too that even at most universities teaching tends to suck because it's a very much a secondary priority compared to research for professors. In my personal experience, some of my best actual learning experiences have come at the community college level.

[darke]

But he was the exception, every other teacher at that college was awesome. A legal requirement for TAFE colleges in australia is that teachers must have a minimum of 5 years industry experience in the field they want to teach, so all my teachers had decades of engineering experience, whereas I've found many university professors have zero real world experience (pretty obvious when they teach Modula 2 as the base for a programming degree and c++ is a single optional 3rd year subject).

Ug, pre-2000 IT21 at QUT. From memory, 1st semester with two basic programming subjects (our of standard fulltime load of four subjects), one in C and and one in Modula 2, using Modula 2 to teach pointers and basicly ignoring explaining them in C. Second semester had Modula 2 explaining data structures (lists, queues, etc), and then in 1st semester 2nd year the next subject in the series was teaching the same data structures... but in C++!

At least the Modula 2 lecturers wrote their own implementation of Modula 2. Of course the scary thing is they managed to port a backend of GPM to the .NET framework...

[Kojack]

Yep, good old IT21.
It was a 3 year course, but I did it in 1.5 years because my tafe course gave me 1.5 years of exemptions.
So I got to avoid a lot of crap and just pick most subjects myself. But some crap ones I was forced to do, like the database subject (how to use MS Access). I skipped half that class and slept through the rest.

Hehe, right now if I walk to the window and look to the right I can see QUT. I should go home, so far today I've taught a class on methods of prediction in network games and run a simulated ai robot combat class tournament.

Kojack is old...

[nikki]

Kojack is old...

[darke]

Yep, good old IT21.
It was a 3 year course, but I did it in 1.5 years because my tafe course gave me 1.5 years of exemptions.
So I got to avoid a lot of crap and just pick most subjects myself. But some crap ones I was forced to do, like the database subject (how to use MS Access). I skipped half that class and slept through the rest.

Ya. It took them about 4 years, and the near total collapse of their student body due to the 2000ish IT industry crash, before they decided to redevelop the course to provide not only a decent enough theory course, but one that actually had some practical value to a student when they graduated. Thankfully they got rid of that nightmare of a "learn basic SQL and Z-notation (for no good reason)" class with MSAccess-plus-another-dodgyDB-system as well.

Curiously I'm one of the last currently doing IT21 (in it's third revised form I think, though I think their current standard course is up to IT23) that I started in 1997ish, though I've got extenuating circumstances. A minor interruption that lasted most of the early 200x years involving some nice eye surgeons stopping me from going blind was a very useful, if inconvenient, delay.

[Kojack]

Oh yeah, I've tried to repress all memory of the z notation class. That formally specifying stuff was damn annoying.

The worst subject was the one (can't remember the name) which used the BlackBox language. It's a version of Component Pascal. It's also the most unstable garbage I've ever used.

[nikki]

Second day of 11th grade. I went through the Physics textbook, learnt a few things. Some cool stuff there. We're finally learning proper vector stuff, the 'ijk' representation. Cross-product, dot-product and stuff, it's all there!

[KungFooMasta]

Its cool to see some of the younger generation so interested in learning. As a kid I was always playing games..