[Microbit-Python] Flat API

[David Whale]

I'm sure both GCSE and AQA specifications talk about abstraction and
decomposition - how can you do that without functions??

All our 11 year olds use functions in the schools I work with. We introduce
functions in Adventures in Minecraft (aimed at 11-15 year olds and mostly
syncronised to the GCSE curriculum) in chapter 3 and use them extensively
through to chapter 10 as a way to build up and test programs in small
incremental steps.

I personally think OCR are wrong on this.

D

___________________________________________________________
David Whale, B.Sc (Hons), MIET
*Software Engineer and IET Schools Liaison Officer, Essex*

email:  dwhale at theiet.org
twitter: @whaleygeek
blog:  blog.whaleygeek.co.uk

Co-author of the new book "Adventures in Minecraft" <http://amzn.to/ZGfxZG>
- lets get kids coding!


On 22 September 2015 at 16:09, Michael <sparks.m at gmail.com> wrote:

> Cool. I was more worried I'd offended you. Glad I haven't :-)
>
> (it's very difficult to tell over email, so try to err on the side of
> caution!)
>
> To explain where I'm coming from perhaps better,  I've been hanging out on
> the computing at school forum now for 2-3 years (or more), and randomly
> reply to python queries on there, and been rather surprised to see this
> response sort of response from time to time - either to my replies or to
> other people's:
>
>  ...  thanks for taking the time to write it. Although the fact that you
> recommend using functions also reminded me that we are not in the right
> territory: Functions are outside the scope of OCR GCSE programming, believe
> it or not (they are present in the AQA specifications though, so maybe I
> should switch…)
>
>
> (this was in a response to a simple question about validating input data,
> and simply suggested simple "isint" and "isfloat" functions to avoid
> repeating the same logic over and over...)
>
> That's a little scary to me, and it's always at the back of my mind -
> because it's a far more common perspective. That comment incidentally is
> from a teacher who is teaching 14-16 year olds rather than 11-12 year olds.
> (and yes, there were plenty of other replies from other teachers saying
> that was the wrong approach)
>
> It's interesting actually, if this was an API for CodeClubs (even for the
> same age range), I wouldn't even have worried at all.
>
> Anyway, I'll wait to see the bike now before I start suggesting training
> wheels or a different colour shed :-)
>
> Regards,
>
>
> Michael.
>
> On 22 September 2015 at 15:49, Larry Hastings <larry at hastings.org> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On 09/22/2015 02:05 PM, Michael wrote:
>>
>> Hi,
>>
>>
>> Sorry if I've offended you (it looks like I might've done).
>>
>>
>>
>> Naah, no worries.  And I didn't realize you weren't there yesterday--I
>> didn't get everybody's names.
>>
>> This is private, but I can post this to the list if you like,
>>
>>
>> */arry*
>>
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>
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