Five Principles For Programming Languages For Learners

[richmond62]

https://cacm.acm.org/blogcacm/five-prin ... -learners/

"The light and fluffy version of computer science—which is proliferating as a superficial response to the increased need for coders in the workplace—is a phenomenon I refer to as "pop computing." While calling all policy makers and education leaders to consider "computer science education for all" is a good thing, the coding culture promoted by Code.org and its library of movie-branded coding apps provide quick experiences of drag-and-drop code entertainment. This accessible attraction can be catchy, it may not lead to harder projects that deepen understanding…The typical coding apps don’t get at the heart of computer science. Instead they stay at the surface, teaching what is comfortable and catchy."

A good read.

[richmond62]

https://computinged.wordpress.com/2017/ ... our-tools/

"There is no community of practice. There isn’t a visible community of teachers using" OXT. "There isn’t an obvious industry call for more" OXT "programmers."

"We in computing education are mostly driven by surface-level interpretations of industry needs. It isn’t obvious that it must be so, or even that it should be so."

[OpenXTalkPaul]

provide quick experiences of drag-and-drop code entertainment

Yes please!

[richmond62]

I have been called many things in my 62 years, and 'light and fluffy' is not one of them. ROFL.

I, also, do not advocate 'pop computing', nor do I hold to the theory that everything a school child has to deal with has to be 'fun'.

A school child who is fed the idea that everything has to be 'fun' is going to be unable to cope when s/he has to wipe a baby's bottom, let alone, in terms of computer programming, anything beyond making pictures move around on a screen.

In 1976 I was in a class of school children sweating over FORTRAN IV, which was not 'fun', and, arguably, more arduous than wiping a baby's bottom.

With the exception of myself all the school children in that class were 17-18, I was 13-14.

We were driven not by "let's have fun", but by a healthy thirst for knowledge imbued in us by our Maths teacher who was under no illusions at all that the underlying ideas in computer programming were not 'fun', and until we got our heads round those underlying ideas no one was going to have any fun at all.

Personally I would like to round up all the 'prawns' who have seriously mislead several generations of school children with the 'cult of fun', and administer a 'short, sharp shock', such as, let's say: learn how to extract information from a database, twiddle it about a bit, and output it into another database.