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Higher Education for Mentally Handicapped?
Anonymous Coward asks: "I am an autistic high-schooler, who is currently in special education. I am very bright, but I lack the ability to do even very basic math. I am interested in Technology and Computers very much, but after looking at the requirements for a computer science major, there is no way I can do all that. What options, other than college, are available for a good education?"
Oh, if you really like to do something. Of if you want to make a profession out of your hobby. Then don't. After 4 years of learning, most people end up either disliking or hating the thing they loved to do.
I know that story too well. I really loved comp sci. Even after just two years, I hate it. I'm leaving university after three years of undergrad. It's just not fun any more. I must find new challenges.
He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
but you should realize that arithmatic isn't the same as mathematics. Some universities (like mine for instance) explain things in mind numbing mathematical formula, instead of focusing on the concepts first.
My advice: Consider software engineering instead of comp sci. They are different areas - compssci is a branch of math.
My final bit of advice is not to click this link.
Higher education makes a world of difference. I wish I knew some way to get this to that guy... Some way to get the "learn how to think". Anyway, in some points, you're not that wrong. Programming is about math, but is about language, too. And intuition. I have an interesting project that will need some hands, I'll try to keep him posted.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Suggesting perl as a more natural language is a really wrong. Just -- Wrong.
As you said, programming is a state of mind type of exercise. My experience has been -- consistently, and backed up by classical training, that you do not start people on things like perl which is indescriable.
A simple structured language -- python is acceptable but i'd still suggest good old fasioned pascal. Granted it teaches out-of-style procedural kind of programming, but it enforces rigid structure, is fairly simple and strait foreward, and verbose. These are important things to do when training someone else, or yourself, to program.
You can always move to a language that gives you mor syntactic sugar or a greator depth of standard libraries later, but ultimately the language is restricted beneath all of that to the rigidity of the 1 and 0. Having that firmly in your mind regardless of the $_[~/[...]]/i] syntactical shortcutting and flexability your still operating within that structure.
As far as the neccisity of math -- this depends on the kind of programming your doing. Most jobs these days are business app style jobs. They don't require the kind of math sensitivity that ivory tower programming (Sorry -- I tend to ignore accademic computing), systems programming or game programming require.
Yes the sort question is still applicable, but you don't need be able to determine the O(n) of the algorithm -- you just have to understand what it means and apply it to your problem domain. It breaks down to what philosophy students call first order logic, and mathematicians call boolean logic.
I've been architect and lead technical programmer on a number of different contracts and within my job now -- and i'm degree less -- my credits add up to two minors: philosphy with a concentration in logic and history with a concentration in eastern european.
Perhaps there are many things that i do intuitively, I've not studied those aspects of my style very deeply. But i do know that the focus on math in computer education -- particularly for programmers -- is a bit overkill.
-T
Old truckers never die, they just get a new peterbilt
I rarely reply to anonymous cowards, but you got lucky
Maybe i am a bastard,but, surely, no more than someone who is blind and wants to be a bus driver.
Or someone who is autistic and cant do even simple math and want to....
Slashdot Sig. version 0.1alpha. Use at your own risk.
If math is your weakness, shouldn't you concentrate on it?
AFAIK, the therapy for dyslexia includes reading lessons. The therapy for severe autism includes dealing with other people.
Personally, I'm pretty shy in certain situations. So I force myself to go out and say hello to strangers on the sidewalk, bore checkout ladies with chitchat, etc. If I ignored my problem, it would get worse. Will I ever reach the level of social interaction the average person has? No. But am I getting better? Yes!
So why are you avoiding math if its your weakness?
I use calculus all the time. And for the last 2 years I've been an business app developer. But I still integrate and take derivatives when I have to estimate how the size of an Oracle table will influence the time a query will take to run. And to calculate short paths when the crappy oracle7 won't optimize something. And a lot of other stuff.
Before that, even more so, because I worked in a geoprocessing program... that calculated loads in the electrical plant of a whole state (yeah, 12 million people). Global and local; dimensioning substations and trafos.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
You guys are a bunch of blubering ideots. I have terrible math skills (and spelling skills as well, dislexic). Anyway I struggled through a BS in computer science and the real challenge (aside from motivation) was the math. It took me 9 years to get through difeq.
Anyway as a practicing CS I can tell you that I did not need one lick of math. You need the higher math to understand how to analyse algorithms and for advanced graphics optimizations. But 99% of the time you get your algorithms from a book! Even more to the point 99% of the time you don't even care about the algorithm, outside of some simple queues I have not coded up a B-Tree or quick sort in years. All the math you need for CS can be taken care of with a good engineering calculator, one that can handle 64 bit numbers and can be set into bin/hex/oct mode for fast conversions and manipulations. And most run of the mill programmers don't even know how to count in binary or hex so there...
If I were you I would go to a good community college and see if you like the hard stuff. Its cheep and the teachers are 100% better than at a university. If it apeals to you you can easily transfer to a university later. If not try a trade school or just jump out there and start developing web pages/etc. Altho having a teacher makes learning to program a lot easier! I tried to teach myself to code for 5 years, but after 1 semester at a community college I hade it down pat.