<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 2/7/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">David Reed</b> <<a href="mailto:dreed@capital.edu">dreed@capital.edu</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>This is my personal comment and I don't claim to speak for others,<br>but the only thing I find militant is that sometimes it appears to me
<br>you ignore what others are saying and talk about your stuff even when<br>it's not particularly related. The question a few others and I were<br>responding to was whether or not it's okay to just do procedural<br>
coding and not OO coding in a CS0 course and it felt like you just<br>wanted to repeat the way you introduce your math concepts that we<br>have seen so many times on this list.</blockquote>
<div> </div>
<div>Yes, I suppose that's a fair criticism. On the other hand, I'm never sure</div>
<div>when a new reader might be lurking.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>To speak more directly to the question, my answer is: no, teaching</div>
<div>CS0 while bleeping over OOP is to neglect an important turn in computer</div>
<div>science. Like a literature survey course, CS0 should be aimed at </div>
<div>providing historical perspective and overview, as well as some enouraging</div>
<div>sense of increasing fluency with one or more specific language or </div>
<div>languages.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>I have aimed to show there are easy ways to introduce OOP early, using</div>
<div>Python syntax as a guide, that don't require great feats of mental effort</div>
<div>on the part of students. My Dog and Monkey show is quite accessible</div>
<div>to average 8th graders in public school as I've proved in the field. There's</div>
<div>nothing especially "mathematical" about it, even when a dog object eats \</div>
<div>a monkey object, per screencast.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Using Python to slog through procedural programming for a semester</div>
<div>rather than using it as scaffolding to develop some insights into OOP,</div>
<div>including among beginners, is a waste of a good language and a waste</div>
<div>of students' time. I'd be ashamed to be associated with any such </div>
<div>curriculum. I hope this practice proves short lived. We're in a dark age</div>
<div>right now. Lots of crappola.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Kirby</div>
<div> </div></div>