"Probably it was the wrong course. I think coding should start with
building web pages. A calculator can't do that."

HTML is called "markup language", but does anyone here really think it's a
programming language? Even though is gets more complicated over time, it
pretty much doesn't have variables or do interactive things, and is for
displaying things, not manipulating things.

My point about math and programming is that the curriculum for the average
intro programming class appears to have been developed circa 1972 and never
tweaked.  I'm in Programming for Engineers right now, which is the
prerequisite for the classes that looked useful.  So far we have written
lots of small programs to add numbers, find modulos, make a simple loop.
All this would have been exciting before calculators.  But, yeah, we have
calculators now.  And, actually, we had calculators before we had
widespread access to affordable computers.  Writing a page long program to
add some numbers makes no sense.  It's probably the least efficient way to
solve the problem.  Nothing about the coursework shows computers as useful
at solving problems.  Everything about the coursework shows computers as
clunky inefficient, difficult to use calculators.  And... here is something
we haven't done...  We have not yet called a function from inside a
function.  So, the whole object oriented thing has not yet appeared, and
it's past midterm time.

From having looked at a bunch of syllabi online for different intro level
programming classes, I think my experiences are the norm.  The intro
classes cover things you can do more easily without coding.

This type of curriculum is off putting to at least some people.  It also
isn't necessary.  I think it's possible to design a curriculum where
students could have something to show that would be worthwhile now, as
opposed to worthwhile in 1972 when adding many numbers at once was a big
deal.

-Wilhelmina Randtke


On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 1:57 AM, Thomas Krichel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>   Wilhelmina Randtke writes
>
> > Pretty much the whole entire entry level programming class for the
> average
> > class covers using code to do things that you can do much more easily
> > without code.
>
>   Probably it was the wrong course. I think coding should start with
>   building web pages. A calculator can't do that.
>
>   Cheers,
>
>   Thomas Krichel                    http://openlib.org/home/krichel
>                                       http://authorprofile.org/pkr1
>                                                skype: thomaskrichel
>