[Tutor] [OT] Programming practice was: Re: string list in alphabetical!

[ALAN GAULD]

The interesting thing however is that the schools have not taught
>>any kind of approach to problem solving, they just give a homework assignment and expect them to produce code.
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>I feel like we've had this conversation a long, long time ago.  :P
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>This is the sort of thing that we should be expect out of math classes.  |
>Polya's "How to Solve It" gives an approachYou're right Danny, we have had similar discussions a while back. 
In fact I bought Polya's book after your recommendation :-)
But in my friend's case he does not do math at his school - they have 
made it an optional subject after second grade apparently! 
Add to this the fact that English is not his first language and 
that his old school was a year behind his current school and 
you can see why computing science is a challenge for him!
Another place where I'm seeing the act of problem solving being explicitly taught is in "How to Design Programs":
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>    http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/HtDP2e/
>Yes I really like this, even though their approach does rely 
on recursion (being based in Scheme) so doesn't always work
for other languages. It's also very math oriented in the problems 
they solve which wouldn't work for my young mathless friend..

Alan G.
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