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[harrismh777]

rurpy at yahoo.com wrote:
>> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2006/07/separating-programming-sheep-from-non-programming-goats.html

> A later paper by the same authors...
> (http://www.eis.mdx.ac.uk/research/PhDArea/saeed/paper3.pdf)
>

These papers are fascinating reading, not only for philosophy sake in a 
great study in epistemology, but for a good clean study in good science 
and an appropriate measure of the scientific method in an interesting 
case study that 'failed'. In that regard it was a huge success!

The authors recognize (in paper [2]) that while their findings disproved 
their hypothesis the advances they made through good science have left 
the door open for further study. This is good news for the field of 
philosophy generally, and for epistemology in particular.

-------

I too have noticed the general 'case' put forward in paper(1): namely, 
some people just don't seem to get it on the surface, and we can't 
figure out why.  On the other hand, I have 'always' been able to teach 
computer science (programming in particular) to 'anyone' given enough 
time, attention, creativity, and caring. In fact, when I find someone 
who is exhibiting low aptitude potential (let's say zero '0') then I 
must allow even more time, more attention, much more creativity, and a 
lot more caring.

I remember a line from "Mr. Holland's Opus,"  (a great movie, by the 
way) where Mr Holland is explaining to the coach why a certain young man 
has not any musical acumen --- and the coach says, "..you telling me you 
can't teach a willing kid to beat a drum...?... then you're a lousy 
teacher!"  Holland ended up teaching us all a lot more than how to beat 
a drum, before the end of the movie....

The point here is that aptitude says what a person has been conditioned 
for at this 'point in time' to be able to do... but says nothing about 
what re-conditioning might do for a transformed life! If I can't teach a 
kid how to program a computer, I'm a lousy teacher!

-------

I grew up with computers. But kids today have 'magical' thinking about 
these machines, because they didn't grow up with them. If you started 
out (like I did) on the Altair 8800, or the Wang 700, programming in 
machine code, it became very clear rapidly why a high level language of 
some type might be beneficial ( and you could relate how the language 
constructs made the translation to machine code possible ). It was 
easier for me to learn programming, because I evolved with it.

On the other hand, kids today are dumped into a first comp sci course in 
programming and plopped in-front of a Hugs interactive shell and then 
are expected to learn programming and be successful by trying to grasp 
pure functional programming in Haskell(!) in a ten to 12 week term and 
we wonder why so many students are failing their 'first' programming 
class!!  Give me a break.  No, give them a break.

Guido van Rossum has said in one of his interviews (can't remember now 
which one) that BASIC is a terrible first computer language... and I 
agree... but, it was a lot better than Hugs!  But that's not my point, 
my point is that Python is better still.  Why?  Because Python can be 
taught at a *very* rudimentary level ( input, control, arithmetic, logic 
and output ) in almost a BASIC or REXX procedural style -- top down -- 
so that students 'get it'. Then, in subsequent classes down the road 
(much later) Python can grow and expand with the student's 
re-conditioning for more in-depth expansion of concepts and knowledge.

At the graduate level Python will still be there... challenging students 
to extend and expand in ways that were not even possible to discuss in 
the first introductory course. It seems to me that if the goal of comp 
sci courses at universities and colleges is 'education' that comp sci 
professors and instructors would get a handle on this.

If you can't teach a willing kid to write a functioning computer program 
then you're a lousy teacher.


kind regards,
m harris