weight is also an imperfect but decent indicator of the quality (or at least total power capacity, based on total weight of wires) of the power supply.
MacOS has had OS support for 12 buttons for a long time. Of course, an application has to have something it wants to do with all those buttons or nothing happens. But the use of the second button is standard in most apps, because ctrl-click defaults to the second button.
I'm very aware that you asked for Java solutions, but you ask/. to get out-of-the-box solutions, too.
I believe that Flash is better for applets than Java, largely because MS tainted the pool of JVMs. I happen to be currently doing quite a bit of work in graphing in Flash at www.aimchart.com and would be happy to help if you're interested in going that route instead.
I have a fairly ancient thinkpad (233 Mhz) but I _love_ that feature, which I call "warm swappable" since you can swap them so fast the drive will still be quite warm. Hibernate, swap, wake from hibernation - it's dualbooting without messy partitioning. I suppose I should really just put a single bigger drive in there, but still.
The federal government doesn't exactly pay for it.
on
Open Source Tax Products?
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· Score: 2, Informative
It's actually much better than that... in order to be a company that CAN charge for efile you have to give it away to a bunch of people.
Essentially the IRS said that industry had to come up with a way to make it largely free or else they WERE going to come out with a universal solution. And industry said ok.
It's a nearly perfect example of this kind of cooperation between government and the free market.
Apple isn't perfect, and their business practices aren't perfect. But as a rule they make good products - Microsoft routinely makes worst-of-class products (either by making them that way or by crippling or bundling something good) and then forces them on people, often by breaking compatibility with other things to force adoption.
Apple sometimes is behind the times. But Apple very rarely releases a new product that sucks, and at least in recent years they've been wonderful about interoperability and compatibility - with Windows AND with linux.
Bush got more money than Kerry, but Kerry should've won the election. The Bush win is clearly based on fixed results. (This does not denote a conspiracy; a lone actor could have pulled it off)
to take it out of an existing Macintosh. The first Macintosh laptops I saw were clones, from before Apple sanctioned clones. You send them a (possibly broken) desktop mac. Then sent you a mac laptop, after having moved the ROM.
I can't speak to other mac stores around the country, only to one in the western suburbs of Chicago that I used to work at. And I can't even speak about how it's been in the last couple years after the last close friend of mine left.
But the Apple stores don't fix broken macs (they ship them out) and we did. And we did substantial onsite work including network and crossplatform stuff that I'm fairly sure they didn't do. And we were a lot bigger than any of the local Apple stores. And I believe we were the top regional training center for Apple training. In short, we had a lot of local expertise in house that Apple only had at their national centers.
I'm sure we could argue for days about what should and shouldn't qualify as a real programming language, but I bet Actionscript 2.0 qualifies more than you think.
It cannot directly manipulate memory - you can use references but never directly manipulate pointers. It does require you to open a GUI to run the compiler. Otherwise it essentially lets you do whatever you'd expect to do in a totally abstract computer. No direct access to any hardware or OS specific systems, because it runs OS independently.
But it has all of the data and programmatic structures you'd expect of a programming language to do anything abstract or to interact with a user (via monitor, keyboard, mouse, audio)
Your rate should be based on your schedule. Both how busy you are and how urgently they need you. I set up something like this:
It's $95/hour for me to drop whatever I'm doing and come fix your problem right now. Almost nobody ever pays that.
Clients can pick whatever price they want lower than that, and I'll get to their project in that order, when I have time. If their price is too low, I might never get around to it - I might never need the work badly enough. But I'll keep their name and phone number for free.
I try to be honest about how long it's going to take for me to get to something. This allows important economic forces to help me out.
1) I get to have a high "full price" so this is profitable for me - it's what I make my living doing.
2) I give people who need help and can't really afford it a way to make my life easier and a reason not to just be cheap. I pick a time when things are slow.
3)---> I give clients who aren't paying top dollar a good, concrete reason why I don't have to drop everything for them and why they can't be mad at me because I'm busy.
Number 3 is huge, frankly. For a while all my customers were getting at least 50% off. But they knew that that was why I got to schedule them, and not the other way around. Give them the option to pay full price, and either you get much more money or they get much more reasonable.
Disclaimers: I also have a 2 hour minimum on places more than a 5 minute drive away. None of this necessarily applies to big repeat clients. These numbers aren't exactly my current ones. I'm fairly experienced and this includes a lot of types of work you're not including. I now exercise the right to give stuff on the lower end away to subcontractors if I feel it's appropriate.
I personally tell everyone they should use OOo instead of MSO because it is equal or better - in every case but 1. That one is if you have OSX. Because Office v.X is much sweeter than OOo OR Office for Windows.
The Mac dev group at Microsoft is the only group to consistently put out software that I think is well done. (IE isn't maintained, now, but it was the best mac browser for a period, too.)
That's not how it works - chips come in bits, not bytes. So if you make 1Gb chips, you put 8 (or 9, for parity) of them on a DIMM and you have a 1 GB DIMM. You put 4 (or 5 which is a waste of 1/2) of them on a DIMM and you have 512.
I have a two story house that used to be 3 bedrooms and it's 1200 sq feet interior (not counting the unfinished basement)
A "small, one story" house could be 700 sq feet, which is about half the size you listed.
A full bathroom must be about 6x8, not necessarily bigger. Most small places don't have a seperate living room and dining room - many don't even have a separate living room and kitchen. A place like that might have 6 feet of hallway... you don't run around the rooms.
This description almost perfectly describes a spacious 1 bedroom apartment I'm familiar with, and I've been in smaller houses.
And most ceilings these days aren't 9', they're 7'8" I think. Less than 8'.
That said, I'm all about the cardboard window boxes mentioned by some other poster.
To respond to another child post - MOST houses sit on much LESS than an acre plot. A "standard" suburban plot here is about 50'x120' and this is suburbia, not the density of the big city. I admit that NEW houses are usually built where they knocked down two old houses, but that's sillyness.
Mostly, I agree with you completely. The one button mouse idea is exactly what Apple stands for, and I'll buy into replacing the mouse if I want more buttons.
But there's one broad situation where you often DO use the mouse that came with your computer - your laptop.
I've given this suggestion before, and I'll give it again. Apple should ship all their laptops with at least 2 mouse buttons (preferably 3), and a control panel allowing you to map them places.
AND THE DEFAULT SHOULD BE THAT THEY ARE ALL MAPPED TO LEFT CLICK. This means that it ships with exactly Apple's paradigm, but I don't have to carry around extra external hardware just to use right click - I just have to change settings in a control panel.
I'm aware of some hacks involving tapping on the trackpad, but they're, well, hacks. And while they're better than not existing, they're not better than at least one more button. Heck, I'd take a three button laptop and the clicks to give me 4 or 5.
First, let me say that the only microsoft product I still recommend, even if they're all free, is the Office suite for OSX, because there are no powerful, viable alternatives (except possibly iWork, now) and because it's the best software I've ever seen Microsoft come out with.
For a while I was using an OSX laptop that didn't have it, and despite having OOo installed I'd literally go to another machine with a different OS and use OOo there instead of using it on the mac.
Keeping in mind that I'm a geek and that I professionally maintain Windows, OSX and linux systems - Getting X11 and OOo to install correctly was a pain, especially for it only take one double-click to start OOo. Starting it up takes too long. It's tricky to exit cleanly out of it, because there's no X11 integration with the dock, which also means window switching doesn't really work right.
For a very first introduction to computers, I recommend www.headsprout.com - an early reading program, starting as early as 4 or so.
I don't have a recommendation for introductory nonprogramming software for a fluent reader.
For an introduction to programming, I HIGHLY recommend english -> HTML -> HTML server side scripting language -> anything else. There's a broad class of people who would make good programmers but might not ever figure it out if the entire introduction has no positive feedback, which is why I recommend an easy to learn, yet powerful scripting language - Cold Fusion, perl, or PHP. (Of those, I only really know CF presently - and it's awesome)
The goal is that at each step, very early on, you can do SOMETHING that you couldn't do before. Then I'd recommend moving on to using SQL, and then to OOP structures.
Also, a lot of similar discussion went on in a recent Ask about computers and high school students.
He didn't say "drill it into the CENTER of the asteriod"
A nuclear warhead has tremendous energy but little mass. An asteriod has tremendous mass. In order to balance the momentum equation, in order to push the asteriod off course you have to make an equal momentum change in the other direction.
Which means you want to vaporize or eject enough of the asteriod in one direction, which means you need to get under a significant amount of it - not so much that you risk it not being rapidly ejected by your warhead, but otherwise more gives you a better chance of pushing the asteriod away.
I'm NOT saying you should teach VB - because VB has a poor structure WITHOUT the advantages of scripting languages.
I'm saying you should teach a scripting language first - one with sensible syntax, and preferably one that just doesn't do (at all) the things that are low level (as opposed to doing them wrong) because the speed and rapidity of feedback for scripting languages is much higher.
Then you should teach a proper OOP language - of which I don't think C++ is the ideal choice, either.
Perhaps by 8 you already were so interested that it was irrelevant - for you - which you learned first. But most people don't get past "Hello World" even people who would be talented programmers, because they never get rewarded for doing it - so for _most people_ it's better to teach them something that will actually produce some output before they don't care.
I posted in a different subthread with some similar points, but I wanted to reply to you to.
I think you are completely right about what the motivation is - but I want to expand on two comments.
Cold Fusion is rather awesome server side stuff from the POV of learning - it has an excellent clear markup syntax. And while the full edition isn't free, the "developer" edition is limited to connections from one external IP, but otherwise identical.
From something a parent post said, I want to point out the Flash design work has been around a long time, but real OOP programming in Actionscript hasn't - but it's around now, starting in 2004. While I choose CF for "my first language" experiences, Flash 2004 actually fufills all the promises Java applets could never keep after Microsoft got involved.
I don't work for Macromedia, but I do most of my work developing on their platforms.
I wouldn't pick C as a learning language. I think rapid development (so you get good feedback) consistent results, and clear consistent syntax are key to a good learning language.
While I've heard good things about ruby, perl, python and php on those counts, for my money nothing beats Macromedia's Cold Fusion as a "my very first programming language" And the development edition is free, which works exactly like the commercial version except only one external IP can connect to it. This may be enough of a consideration to choose something else - but the ONLY reason I can think of to choose C as a starting language is because somebody ELSE choose C - your principal is making you do it, because the AP test is in it...
I'll also happily admit that Cold Fusion is barely a programming language - I'd make a scale with CF/php, perl, C/Java - where the left gives you very immediate feedback, and the right requires you to define lots of structures to get to "Hello World". In CF, you just put "Hello World" on the page, and it appears in your browser.
But I philosophically _don't_ think an "intro to programming" class SHOULD to be drilling the low level details data structures into kids - the kids who want to learn that are a MUCH smaller group than the ones who might be inclined to use it as a tool. If you have enough of them, have another CSAP class. If you don't, let them find it in college, or on the net.
What it should be doing is opening up for them the basic way in which you go about making the computer be a tool for what you want. Before the web was prevalent, I think that would've been a shell scripting class, but now I think it should be a scripted HTML class - like CF or PHP.
ALSO I certainly did _not_ mean to imply that anyone who wasn't taught whole language can automatically program without instruction - especially C.
A good class should have outcome measures that provide rapid feedback of success or failure in a skill, an interaction of students working together who have the prerequisite skills, a good teacher who is good at the material, a good reference (book/web), and an environment that facilitates learning (few interruptions, machines that work... etc), supportive parents, access to teachers/tutors outside of class, students who are motivated to do well...
Very few places have all of that. The more you have, the easier it is. I was not implying that it's especially easy, only that I strongly doubt that the students are the _limiting_ factor.
Kids aren't stupider than he thinks - but maybe some of their teachers are. Possibilities:
1) Your CS teacher(s) aren't very good. They may not be very good at CS, OR they may not be very good teachers, but either way, they're not getting their point across.
2) The teachers that are supposed to have taught them prerequisite skills earlier in the chain are quite poor at THEIR jobs.
3) Either set of teachers are using curriculum that sucks. For instance, I think it's very hard to learn programming (or learn "advanced" math, or be able to read a contract) if you grow up with a "whole language" curriculum. All of those things require that certain groups of words DO have a precise meaning - exactly one meaning. And "whole language" teaches precisely that this is not true - that there is NEVER a precise interpretation to language. You cannot successfully program with that mindset.
Very little "technical literacy" is required to learn programming. (Much is very helpful for commercial success, but that goal is a world of difference) If you've already got them sitting in front of the computer and using the keyboard at a halfway reasonable rate, what you're missing is how they deal with language, not exposure to technology.
My HS had a CS teacher who was borderline incompetent at the CS she was teaching (CS AP - in Pascal at that time) but nonetheless most people got decent grades on the AP test, because she _was_ a halfway decent teacher, the kids helped each other, most of the kids were very literate (as in reading, not in tech) and this was only at the beginning of the "whole language" revolution.
On the other hand, my school was very exceptional in the following regard: It expected a lot and GOT a lot, at least from it's honors students. (By honors students, I mean at least 20% of the student body - and I only mean that I can't speak about the rest of the classes, not that they were bad.) This was all about a general _motivation_ which I think came from honestly rewarding the students for being successful. Clearly there were some other things going for this school - like a moderately affluent neighborhood. But I think that the singular significant difference was just and only that it successfully made a lot of students WANT to do well, and TRY to do well - and kept this up over a lot of the career of those students.
It may be illegal to go the speed limit /left lane
on
Gator's EULA Dissected
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· Score: 0, Offtopic
In WI, I've been in a car that was pulled over on I94 going 1mph under the limit in the left lane, because it is ALSO illegal to be in the left lane going that slowly. I can't remember if the terms were obstructing other traffic or about only being in the left lane while passing.
Admittedly, the deputy didn't like the looks of our car, was a real moron (unusual in my experience, but this guy was) and let us go after his superior showed up and they had this long talk back by their cars.
The upshot, though, was that no one could legally sit in the left lane (either obstructing OR speeding) UNLESS traffic was going slower than the speed limit in the right.
Also, in MA the state troopers started occasionally driving in all three lanes of traffic on some interstate, forcing everyone to go the speed limit. Citizens sued, and won. In MA, at least, officers have a right to cite you for speeding but NOT to prevent you from doing it. I imagine that if it's illegal for an officer to obstruct traffic at the speed limit, it's certainly illegal for an ordinary citizen.
Slashdot Mirror
weight is also an imperfect but decent indicator of the quality (or at least total power capacity, based on total weight of wires) of the power supply.
MacOS has had OS support for 12 buttons for a long time. Of course, an application has to have something it wants to do with all those buttons or nothing happens. But the use of the second button is standard in most apps, because ctrl-click defaults to the second button.
I'm very aware that you asked for Java solutions, but you ask /. to get out-of-the-box solutions, too.
I believe that Flash is better for applets than Java, largely because MS tainted the pool of JVMs. I happen to be currently doing quite a bit of work in graphing in Flash at www.aimchart.com and would be happy to help if you're interested in going that route instead.
I have a fairly ancient thinkpad (233 Mhz) but I _love_ that feature, which I call "warm swappable" since you can swap them so fast the drive will still be quite warm. Hibernate, swap, wake from hibernation - it's dualbooting without messy partitioning. I suppose I should really just put a single bigger drive in there, but still.
It's actually much better than that... in order to be a company that CAN charge for efile you have to give it away to a bunch of people.
Essentially the IRS said that industry had to come up with a way to make it largely free or else they WERE going to come out with a universal solution. And industry said ok.
It's a nearly perfect example of this kind of cooperation between government and the free market.
Apple isn't perfect, and their business practices aren't perfect. But as a rule they make good products - Microsoft routinely makes worst-of-class products (either by making them that way or by crippling or bundling something good) and then forces them on people, often by breaking compatibility with other things to force adoption.
Apple sometimes is behind the times. But Apple very rarely releases a new product that sucks, and at least in recent years they've been wonderful about interoperability and compatibility - with Windows AND with linux.
Bush got more money than Kerry, but Kerry should've won the election. The Bush win is clearly based on fixed results. (This does not denote a conspiracy; a lone actor could have pulled it off)
www.blackboxvoting.org
to take it out of an existing Macintosh. The first Macintosh laptops I saw were clones, from before Apple sanctioned clones. You send them a (possibly broken) desktop mac. Then sent you a mac laptop, after having moved the ROM.
Brilliant. : )
I can't speak to other mac stores around the country, only to one in the western suburbs of Chicago that I used to work at. And I can't even speak about how it's been in the last couple years after the last close friend of mine left.
But the Apple stores don't fix broken macs (they ship them out) and we did. And we did substantial onsite work including network and crossplatform stuff that I'm fairly sure they didn't do. And we were a lot bigger than any of the local Apple stores. And I believe we were the top regional training center for Apple training. In short, we had a lot of local expertise in house that Apple only had at their national centers.
I'm sure we could argue for days about what should and shouldn't qualify as a real programming language, but I bet Actionscript 2.0 qualifies more than you think.
It cannot directly manipulate memory - you can use references but never directly manipulate pointers. It does require you to open a GUI to run the compiler. Otherwise it essentially lets you do whatever you'd expect to do in a totally abstract computer. No direct access to any hardware or OS specific systems, because it runs OS independently.
But it has all of the data and programmatic structures you'd expect of a programming language to do anything abstract or to interact with a user (via monitor, keyboard, mouse, audio)
Your rate should be based on your schedule. Both how busy you are and how urgently they need you. I set up something like this:
It's $95/hour for me to drop whatever I'm doing and come fix your problem right now. Almost nobody ever pays that.
Clients can pick whatever price they want lower than that, and I'll get to their project in that order, when I have time. If their price is too low, I might never get around to it - I might never need the work badly enough. But I'll keep their name and phone number for free.
I try to be honest about how long it's going to take for me to get to something. This allows important economic forces to help me out.
1) I get to have a high "full price" so this is profitable for me - it's what I make my living doing.
2) I give people who need help and can't really afford it a way to make my life easier and a reason not to just be cheap. I pick a time when things are slow.
3)---> I give clients who aren't paying top dollar a good, concrete reason why I don't have to drop everything for them and why they can't be mad at me because I'm busy.
Number 3 is huge, frankly. For a while all my customers were getting at least 50% off. But they knew that that was why I got to schedule them, and not the other way around. Give them the option to pay full price, and either you get much more money or they get much more reasonable.
Disclaimers:
I also have a 2 hour minimum on places more than a 5 minute drive away. None of this necessarily applies to big repeat clients. These numbers aren't exactly my current ones. I'm fairly experienced and this includes a lot of types of work you're not including. I now exercise the right to give stuff on the lower end away to subcontractors if I feel it's appropriate.
I personally tell everyone they should use OOo instead of MSO because it is equal or better - in every case but 1. That one is if you have OSX. Because Office v.X is much sweeter than OOo OR Office for Windows.
The Mac dev group at Microsoft is the only group to consistently put out software that I think is well done. (IE isn't maintained, now, but it was the best mac browser for a period, too.)
Ben
That's not how it works - chips come in bits, not bytes. So if you make 1Gb chips, you put 8 (or 9, for parity) of them on a DIMM and you have a 1 GB DIMM. You put 4 (or 5 which is a waste of 1/2) of them on a DIMM and you have 512.
So a 1 Gb chip is only 128 MB of RAM.
Admittedly 2004 is the first year it's a "real" programming language, so maybe that's too recent. But now it's OOP and everything.
I have a two story house that used to be 3 bedrooms and it's 1200 sq feet interior (not counting the unfinished basement)
A "small, one story" house could be 700 sq feet, which is about half the size you listed.
A full bathroom must be about 6x8, not necessarily bigger. Most small places don't have a seperate living room and dining room - many don't even have a separate living room and kitchen. A place like that might have 6 feet of hallway... you don't run around the rooms.
This description almost perfectly describes a spacious 1 bedroom apartment I'm familiar with, and I've been in smaller houses.
And most ceilings these days aren't 9', they're 7'8" I think. Less than 8'.
That said, I'm all about the cardboard window boxes mentioned by some other poster.
To respond to another child post - MOST houses sit on much LESS than an acre plot. A "standard" suburban plot here is about 50'x120' and this is suburbia, not the density of the big city. I admit that NEW houses are usually built where they knocked down two old houses, but that's sillyness.
If most computers don't have right click, any operator dealing with most users would say "hold down control and click" which would work for everyone.
And I don't even think it physically needs a 1 piece trim, no mac user is going to see a split button and not just think they can click on it...
Mostly, I agree with you completely. The one button mouse idea is exactly what Apple stands for, and I'll buy into replacing the mouse if I want more buttons.
But there's one broad situation where you often DO use the mouse that came with your computer - your laptop.
I've given this suggestion before, and I'll give it again. Apple should ship all their laptops with at least 2 mouse buttons (preferably 3), and a control panel allowing you to map them places.
AND THE DEFAULT SHOULD BE THAT THEY ARE ALL MAPPED TO LEFT CLICK. This means that it ships with exactly Apple's paradigm, but I don't have to carry around extra external hardware just to use right click - I just have to change settings in a control panel.
I'm aware of some hacks involving tapping on the trackpad, but they're, well, hacks. And while they're better than not existing, they're not better than at least one more button. Heck, I'd take a three button laptop and the clicks to give me 4 or 5.
First, let me say that the only microsoft product I still recommend, even if they're all free, is the Office suite for OSX, because there are no powerful, viable alternatives (except possibly iWork, now) and because it's the best software I've ever seen Microsoft come out with.
For a while I was using an OSX laptop that didn't have it, and despite having OOo installed I'd literally go to another machine with a different OS and use OOo there instead of using it on the mac.
Keeping in mind that I'm a geek and that I professionally maintain Windows, OSX and linux systems - Getting X11 and OOo to install correctly was a pain, especially for it only take one double-click to start OOo. Starting it up takes too long. It's tricky to exit cleanly out of it, because there's no X11 integration with the dock, which also means window switching doesn't really work right.
It's plausible they've fixed some of this...
For a very first introduction to computers, I recommend www.headsprout.com - an early reading program, starting as early as 4 or so.
I don't have a recommendation for introductory nonprogramming software for a fluent reader.
For an introduction to programming, I HIGHLY recommend english -> HTML -> HTML server side scripting language -> anything else. There's a broad class of people who would make good programmers but might not ever figure it out if the entire introduction has no positive feedback, which is why I recommend an easy to learn, yet powerful scripting language - Cold Fusion, perl, or PHP. (Of those, I only really know CF presently - and it's awesome)
The goal is that at each step, very early on, you can do SOMETHING that you couldn't do before. Then I'd recommend moving on to using SQL, and then to OOP structures.
Also, a lot of similar discussion went on in a recent Ask about computers and high school students.
He didn't say "drill it into the CENTER of the asteriod"
A nuclear warhead has tremendous energy but little mass. An asteriod has tremendous mass. In order to balance the momentum equation, in order to push the asteriod off course you have to make an equal momentum change in the other direction.
Which means you want to vaporize or eject enough of the asteriod in one direction, which means you need to get under a significant amount of it - not so much that you risk it not being rapidly ejected by your warhead, but otherwise more gives you a better chance of pushing the asteriod away.
I'm NOT saying you should teach VB - because VB has a poor structure WITHOUT the advantages of scripting languages.
I'm saying you should teach a scripting language first - one with sensible syntax, and preferably one that just doesn't do (at all) the things that are low level (as opposed to doing them wrong) because the speed and rapidity of feedback for scripting languages is much higher.
Then you should teach a proper OOP language - of which I don't think C++ is the ideal choice, either.
Perhaps by 8 you already were so interested that it was irrelevant - for you - which you learned first. But most people don't get past "Hello World" even people who would be talented programmers, because they never get rewarded for doing it - so for _most people_ it's better to teach them something that will actually produce some output before they don't care.
I posted in a different subthread with some similar points, but I wanted to reply to you to.
I think you are completely right about what the motivation is - but I want to expand on two comments.
Cold Fusion is rather awesome server side stuff from the POV of learning - it has an excellent clear markup syntax. And while the full edition isn't free, the "developer" edition is limited to connections from one external IP, but otherwise identical.
From something a parent post said, I want to point out the Flash design work has been around a long time, but real OOP programming in Actionscript hasn't - but it's around now, starting in 2004. While I choose CF for "my first language" experiences, Flash 2004 actually fufills all the promises Java applets could never keep after Microsoft got involved.
I don't work for Macromedia, but I do most of my work developing on their platforms.
I wouldn't pick C as a learning language. I think rapid development (so you get good feedback) consistent results, and clear consistent syntax are key to a good learning language.
While I've heard good things about ruby, perl, python and php on those counts, for my money nothing beats Macromedia's Cold Fusion as a "my very first programming language" And the development edition is free, which works exactly like the commercial version except only one external IP can connect to it. This may be enough of a consideration to choose something else - but the ONLY reason I can think of to choose C as a starting language is because somebody ELSE choose C - your principal is making you do it, because the AP test is in it...
I'll also happily admit that Cold Fusion is barely a programming language - I'd make a scale with CF/php, perl, C/Java - where the left gives you very immediate feedback, and the right requires you to define lots of structures to get to "Hello World". In CF, you just put "Hello World" on the page, and it appears in your browser.
But I philosophically _don't_ think an "intro to programming" class SHOULD to be drilling the low level details data structures into kids - the kids who want to learn that are a MUCH smaller group than the ones who might be inclined to use it as a tool. If you have enough of them, have another CSAP class. If you don't, let them find it in college, or on the net.
What it should be doing is opening up for them the basic way in which you go about making the computer be a tool for what you want. Before the web was prevalent, I think that would've been a shell scripting class, but now I think it should be a scripted HTML class - like CF or PHP.
ALSO I certainly did _not_ mean to imply that anyone who wasn't taught whole language can automatically program without instruction - especially C.
A good class should have outcome measures that provide rapid feedback of success or failure in a skill, an interaction of students working together who have the prerequisite skills, a good teacher who is good at the material, a good reference (book/web), and an environment that facilitates learning (few interruptions, machines that work... etc), supportive parents, access to teachers/tutors outside of class, students who are motivated to do well...
Very few places have all of that. The more you have, the easier it is. I was not implying that it's especially easy, only that I strongly doubt that the students are the _limiting_ factor.
Kids aren't stupider than he thinks - but maybe some of their teachers are. Possibilities:
1) Your CS teacher(s) aren't very good. They may not be very good at CS, OR they may not be very good teachers, but either way, they're not getting their point across.
2) The teachers that are supposed to have taught them prerequisite skills earlier in the chain are quite poor at THEIR jobs.
3) Either set of teachers are using curriculum that sucks. For instance, I think it's very hard to learn programming (or learn "advanced" math, or be able to read a contract) if you grow up with a "whole language" curriculum. All of those things require that certain groups of words DO have a precise meaning - exactly one meaning. And "whole language" teaches precisely that this is not true - that there is NEVER a precise interpretation to language. You cannot successfully program with that mindset.
Very little "technical literacy" is required to learn programming. (Much is very helpful for commercial success, but that goal is a world of difference) If you've already got them sitting in front of the computer and using the keyboard at a halfway reasonable rate, what you're missing is how they deal with language, not exposure to technology.
My HS had a CS teacher who was borderline incompetent at the CS she was teaching (CS AP - in Pascal at that time) but nonetheless most people got decent grades on the AP test, because she _was_ a halfway decent teacher, the kids helped each other, most of the kids were very literate (as in reading, not in tech) and this was only at the beginning of the "whole language" revolution.
On the other hand, my school was very exceptional in the following regard: It expected a lot and GOT a lot, at least from it's honors students. (By honors students, I mean at least 20% of the student body - and I only mean that I can't speak about the rest of the classes, not that they were bad.) This was all about a general _motivation_ which I think came from honestly rewarding the students for being successful. Clearly there were some other things going for this school - like a moderately affluent neighborhood. But I think that the singular significant difference was just and only that it successfully made a lot of students WANT to do well, and TRY to do well - and kept this up over a lot of the career of those students.
In WI, I've been in a car that was pulled over on I94 going 1mph under the limit in the left lane, because it is ALSO illegal to be in the left lane going that slowly. I can't remember if the terms were obstructing other traffic or about only being in the left lane while passing.
Admittedly, the deputy didn't like the looks of our car, was a real moron (unusual in my experience, but this guy was) and let us go after his superior showed up and they had this long talk back by their cars.
The upshot, though, was that no one could legally sit in the left lane (either obstructing OR speeding) UNLESS traffic was going slower than the speed limit in the right.
Also, in MA the state troopers started occasionally driving in all three lanes of traffic on some interstate, forcing everyone to go the speed limit. Citizens sued, and won. In MA, at least, officers have a right to cite you for speeding but NOT to prevent you from doing it. I imagine that if it's illegal for an officer to obstruct traffic at the speed limit, it's certainly illegal for an ordinary citizen.