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Ubiquitous Computing Gadget To Teach Coding
An anonymous reader writes "A distance learning university in the UK has revamped its IT curriculum to attract more students — the biggest change is that budding coders will get a chunk of hardware which plugs into a computer via USB and can be programmed using a language called Sense — based on MIT's Scratch 'drag and drop' programming language. The university hopes this gadget-based approach will encourage fewer students to give up on their studies."
Dunno how to feel about this really.
Personally I think if you don't have the kind of interest in computers that drives you to "figure it out" and get past the "can't do a damn thing" stage, you are probably gonna make a crumby programmer. My intro to programming was on a TRS-80 (actually a dragon32.. which is essentially a TRS-80 clone) and I spent many months messing around with it. Most of the programmers I know who have found success generally have the same story.
But then times change. Maybe this is what we need now. A different set of skills and general mindset. Maybe the things that attracted me to programming are no longer as relevant.
Probably can't hurt at least.
Programming is too hard with all that darn syntax and obscure words and stuff. We have to make this for the common man. So now, programming will all be done via Scratch and Sense.
Sure, need a loop? Drag over a loop. Need and if/then/else? it's on that toolbar over there. Need to consume a web service? Look in the Mashable toolbar.
Oh, need to parse a string of text to see if the input matches your criteria? No, that's called regex, you'll need to find a real programmer to help you with that.
Need to test your security/performance/useability? Sorry, go see that real programmer again.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Came to say basically the same thing. If the student's think 'drag and drop' programming is what they will be doing they are going to piss their pants when they have to program in a real language with real code.
IT needs apprenticeships not work free Internship where at some jobs you end working hard for free or doing stuff like being a Coffee boy or copy boy.
apprenticeships + class room is better then the theory loaded + filler class that most 2-4 years curriculum has. May it a 2 year mixed apprenticeships + class room setup with on going class after that as well.
Hands on is needed and books and cert tests are at times far off from the real work place. The tech schools are more hands on them the big school curriculum and don't have classes like art history. Also some the curriculum are a little to much math loaded.
Also there are people out there who are not cut out for a 4 year curriculum big school plan but can do real good in a apprenticeship plan.
Start adding stuff to make it useful on real projects though, and you'll see it used in real projects. "Easy to learn, visual" and "good for long term maintainability" tend not to belong together.
1990s called, they want their Visual Basic back ;-)
VB plus Access was a world class application demo tool. Fast n easy. The problem was 'ship it' was what usually came out of the demo targets mouths...
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
YES! YES!
Someone mod this up before I have a stroke!
This is _exactly_ what happens!
They didn't go far enough. They could ensure even better success rates by dropping the requirements for courses, and issue B.Sc to anyone that manages to find the registration, M.Sc for all dummies that managed to spell their names correctly the first time, Ph.D for all that manage to fill out the registration form correctly on first try.
Be serious, any IT/CS degrees offered need to consist of:
1.) practical programming experience (hard to teach, so it should be more in the sense of encouraging students to do it for the fun of it. No programming course will be able to bring the student past basic literacy in environment X, but the fluency needed for professional work is practically never learned in a classroom.) And please stop telling students that enlist for CS that they don't need any pre-knowledge, e.g. yeah, our classes will even teach you how to power on a PC.
2.) Theoretical CS knowledge. While many people take this as very unsexy, the math and CS theory are the base of all that stuff we do. How can you develop/design anything if you have no basic concept of algorithms and datastructures? (O-notion, classification of algorithms, ...) Same applies to math (I'd hope that every CS at the BS level can explain what the problems are with floats, and why it's critical to sort an array of floats before adding them.) => you need it basic knowledge, or all the fun parts of our profession (designing systems, be it databases, pattern matching, clever data mining) are not really possible.
3.) Some generic classes for a certain level of professional behavior, I mean, it's really fantastic if somebody is able to write an email that is mostly grammar-correct. Depending upon your environment secondary schools might provide that generic knowledge or not. Here around, it's difficult because there is no standardized exit exam at the secondary level, so for example CS maths include more or less the complete secondary school content in 1-2 semesters. (Which leads to a situation where students that know the stuff, but still want to sit in to see if they miss some basics are nicely asked to use headphones while playing games/surfing/...)
Thumbing down education standards won't help anybody that needs to work the profession, AFAIK, drag and drop programming has not yet arrived in the work place. And it's only of limited fun if you need to teach the new VBA "developer" the concept of loops. (Not the syntax of loops in VB. The CONCEPT).