high school programming & python

[Warren 'The Howdy Man' Ockrassa]

Just ran into a horror-story followup to this.

The young peron I mentioned before in a reply to the originator of this
thread told me today what his teacher's agenda actually is for his
"computer programming" class.

Now in reading the following bear in mind this syllabus is in use now in
one school in Wisconsin for 15- to 18-year-olds, none of whom
necessarily have a deep background in *math* logic, let alone
programming, OSen, kernels, etc.; in fact this is being taught on Win32
systems:

  First segment: Pascal.

  Second segment: C.

  Third segment: C++.

Yes, this "programming" course, in *one* year (9 months!), tosses *three
separate languages* at its students. At its 15- to 17-year old students.

You don't have to have a background in education to know this is a
*horrible* pedagogical approach.

Of course an integrated approach in Perl would be superior, vastly.
Python, though, is the even-better choice here, because it is a
more-intuitive language, more accessible to the average teenager now in
the US.

I'm not putting forth a specific argument here; I am just pointing out
that, at least in this particular part of the US, computer "programming"
classes suck. They are not integrated, are too technical, and teach
nothing of real world value... because they are too focused on
particulars of system syntaxes for one language, not on wider-scope,
overall models for how good programs should be written to begin with.

My own syllabus would be more like:

  First segment: CLI and basic functionality

  Second segment: OS and low-level function accessibility

  Third segment: Some intro to OOP and GUI (i.e., packaging the first
two!)

Of course Python can cover all of this. Of course, it was *designed* to
do so...

--
    warren ockrassa | nightwares | mailto:warren at nightwares.com
                    http://www.nightwares.com/