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Why Johnny Can't Code and How That Can Change
snydeq writes "Fatal Exception's Neil McAllister discusses why schools are having a hard time engaging young minds in computer science — and what the Scalable Game Design program in Colorado is doing to try to change that. 'Repenning's program avoids this disheartening cycle in three important ways. First, it deemphasizes programming while still encouraging students to develop the logical thinking skills they'll need for more advanced studies. Second, it engages students by encouraging them to be creative and solve their own problems, rather than just repeating exercises dictated by their instructor. Third, and perhaps most important, students are rewarded for their efforts with an actual, concrete result they can relate to: a game.'"
no amount of coddling will make you a good programmer.
Middle school and high school students haven't had to fret about offshoring, I doubt that's a factor...
I think the big difference is, people in the industry (even young people, shortly out of college) grew up with (at minimum, if not earlier systems) DOS based systems, Windows 3.1, IRC chat client's etc. "Back in the day" anyone interested in using their computer for something useful had to learn to do it themselves, and tinker, and become interested in expanding their ability to make their computer do what they want.
Now, before they can walk, they have 3D games, music players, Facebook and all other forms of social media. I'm not saying it's all bad, but, where is the drive to get someone young interested in computing? To them, using a computer is playing a game, or reading Facebook. Not writing a script for mIRC to scrape text for keywords and have your bot auto respond to people, because that's what used to be fun.. 10+ years ago..
The poster made a mistake because of a homophone. Before you assume that he doesn't know the difference, consider that it may just be an honest mistake. I know the difference, for example, between "no" and "know", but when typing quickly, I might accidentally type the wrong one, and if I'm not careful, I won't go back and fix it. It doesn't mean I'm an idiot who doesn't know basic English. It just means I'm being careless. And for the commentary section on a second-rate news aggregator site, I don't think that's a big deal.
It has been my experience that walking a student through making something simple will widen their eyes considerably. This usually means something like an easy game where they can visually see the results of their work. Games that can be modified easily are even better, because they -will- play with the code and try to improve it for their own tastes.
On the other hand, teaching them to write a linked list is mind-numbingly boring for someone who can't imagine why they'd want such a thing.
Getting people interested in programmer is mostly about giving them the right exposure at the start.
This course sounds like it at least is headed the right direction.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM