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Rikers Inmates Learn How To Code Without Internet Access (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader sends the story of another prison where inmates are learning the basics of programming, despite having no access to the vast educational resources on the internet. Instructors from Columbia University have held a lengthy class at New York's Rikers Island prison to teach the basics of Python. Similar projects have been attempted in California and Oklahoma.
The goal wasn’t to turn the students into professional-grade programmers in just a few classes, [Instructor Dennis] Tenen emphasizes, but to introduce them to the basics of programming and reasoning about algorithms and code. "It’s really to give people a taste, to get people excited about coding, in hopes that when they come out, they continue," says Tenen. ...Having an explicit goal—building the Twitter bot—helped the class focus its limited time quickly on learning to do concrete tasks, instead of getting bogged down in abstract discussions of syntax and algorithms.
Absolutely this. I learned my programming back before the Internet. And I learned by reading manuals and text books. And I can still do that.
But why should I have to? I can get the same information faster by looking on the Internet. I still teach myself how to do new things by reading about it. The only difference is that I use my computer screen instead of dead trees. Well, that and the difference is that I can find answers to my questions in the literature a whole lot faster on the Internet than I can by digging through the appendix in the book(s).
While it's a good idea to learn the basics without having people on the Internet do your homework for you (so you actually learn it), having the Internet as a resource makes the day-to-day job of programming so much easier and I take full advantage.
I did, he was a corporate VP by the time we got bought out. It costs more to screen them, but they tend to stay a lot longer than the entitled generation, are willing to learn new things, and are a lot more resourceful than our standard employee with a CS degree. My experience has been largely in the programming field, with most of the convictions drug related, and we've only had about a dozen. Hell, one who worked with me for 5 years went to one of the defense contractors and got a security clearance; I was interviewed in his clearance process. There are plenty of organizations who are willing to hire a good employee in spite of a criminal record. There are, on the other hand, a bunch of ex-cons who haven't decided to change their lifestyle, so calling references is crucial.
Yep, it's two different things, and I find that the two sources compliment each other quite well.
The internet is great for getting instant answers and examples for specific questions, and that instant gratification is great for keeping me from being frustrated from being hung up on some stupid little thing for hours that the book forgot to mention. It comes with the downsides of learning how to do things but not why they're done (basically copying and modifying as opposed to creating), and feeling like I know more than I actually do (I know there's a term for this but I don't remember what it's called). There's also the loss of experiences gained through struggling with the code for hours at a time. A lot of the things I remember best I remember because I spent all day and all night fighting with it only to find out it was some stupid thing I'd missed somewhere else
On the other hand, books are good for getting a broad overview of the subject. Since it's a lot harder to search a specific question and find the answer distilled down to a sentence and a few lines of sample code, there's generally a lot of reading of things that aren't entirely relevant to my question. Even though said things aren't relevant then, I often encounter them later and think "oh yeah, this is that thing the book was talking about". The downside to books though is that it's a lot harder (compared to following some internet quickstart tutorial) to just dive in and start, and that in turn makes it hard to contextualize and store the information presented in the book.
Thinking back on my education, the best programming classes I took were the ones that combined a lecture and a lab segment. Get the broad overview of the concepts in the lecture and book portions, then get some practical examples that provide a base with which to test the lecture concepts on.