Blumenauer is my representative. He's a smart guy and would certainly be aware of the tradeoffs. And based on my knowledge of his voting record and his stated positions, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that there's a direct correlation between his corporate donors and his legislative work.
I posted a similar question on teaching web development to non-developer types here a few weeks back that may be of interest. I particularly liked a suggestion that I pair my class with a CS class to help broaden the exposure to topics and issues while also making it more likely that the class will get a real-world experience out of the work.
I've come to the conclusion that with non-CS students it doesn't really make sense to try to teach development in the coding sense, but it does make sense to try to teach development as a process.
I won't be able to do justice to all the insightful and interesting comments above, but let me at least thank everyone for participating.
What was particularly interesting were the posts with the perspective (reflecting my experience) that while you can't really teach the full coding aspect (most students coming in weren't even familiar with HTML) there is certainly value to be had in understanding programming methodology. But there's also value to be had in teaching the managerial perspective.
So what to do with only a limited amount of class time?
I actually did have the class do a large-scale simulated project last term. While the project itself didn't wrap at the end, the students have already said that they have a much greater appreciation for requirements documentation, testing processes, active management of lines of communication, and other less obvious aspects of development.
But many did express a desire to learn more code, which is problematic given that you can't easily go from HTML 101 to PHP/MySQL in a few weeks. And I chose PHP/MySQL in part because that's what I'm most familiar with, but also because the school is an MS shop and they haven't had any experience with open source. Given those parameters, we never even touched on some of the excellent suggestions made by others re: availability, failover, scalability, 'real' OOP, anything more than basic security...
I really liked the idea of hooking up the students with a CS class. I also am gravitating towards the less-code approach, though the students have already said that they wanted more code and less replication of what they had experienced in other business-oriented courses.
And as a personal note to those questioning the course itself: I'm adjunct, defined as "s/he who gets paid a token sum without benefits to teach a predefined course in an established program." It hath been determined that the business students will learn web application programming, therefore they shalt learn web application programming, and that's the gig.
Anyway, so here's where I'm leaning. Structure the course so that 30 managers (the students) are managing one developer (me). Each lecture is wrapped around understanding a specific aspect of the development process. Their assignments are built around learning enough tech to understand what is going on, being able to demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of the process, and the how code and business practices impact one another.
Again, thanks everyone for participating. Any more thoughts?
Two points here: one, there's a problem with only wanting to be exposed to what you seek out. People's methods and sources for seeking out information are usually influenced by the human need to be reassured, meaning that most users seek out perspectives that match their own. The consequence is a polarized debate where the public selectively hears only the messages they want to hear. Political Balkanization, anyone? Read Cass Sunstein's Republic.com for more on this.
And secondly, the reward isn't the salary, the issue is the ability to influence the business climate to the liking of your business constituency while in office, then the ability to peddle your subsequent 'influence' as a extraordinarily highly-paid lobbyist once you've left high office.
sigh...programmers. The problem here isn't a binary issue, it's an emotional one, and the vast majority of y'all aren't getting it.
let's step beyond the literal meaning of the words for a moment; we should all be able to admit that American society has unresolved racial issues. Using "master" and "slave" terminology is insensitive at best and racist at worst.
And if we want to talk literal meaning: "master" and "slave" implies a controller/controlled relationship. correct my understanding of the IDE bus if I'm wrong, but the "master" drive does NOT control activity on the IDE channel. the IDE controller does. So shouldn't the nomenclature reflect that?
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Blumenauer is my representative. He's a smart guy and would certainly be aware of the tradeoffs. And based on my knowledge of his voting record and his stated positions, I don't think it's reasonable to assume that there's a direct correlation between his corporate donors and his legislative work.
Does the exact same thing to me. It's completely unusable. I'm surprised that it shipped with behaviors like this...
I posted a similar question on teaching web development to non-developer types here a few weeks back that may be of interest. I particularly liked a suggestion that I pair my class with a CS class to help broaden the exposure to topics and issues while also making it more likely that the class will get a real-world experience out of the work.
I've come to the conclusion that with non-CS students it doesn't really make sense to try to teach development in the coding sense, but it does make sense to try to teach development as a process.
I won't be able to do justice to all the insightful and interesting comments above, but let me at least thank everyone for participating.
What was particularly interesting were the posts with the perspective (reflecting my experience) that while you can't really teach the full coding aspect (most students coming in weren't even familiar with HTML) there is certainly value to be had in understanding programming methodology. But there's also value to be had in teaching the managerial perspective.
So what to do with only a limited amount of class time?
I actually did have the class do a large-scale simulated project last term. While the project itself didn't wrap at the end, the students have already said that they have a much greater appreciation for requirements documentation, testing processes, active management of lines of communication, and other less obvious aspects of development.
But many did express a desire to learn more code, which is problematic given that you can't easily go from HTML 101 to PHP/MySQL in a few weeks. And I chose PHP/MySQL in part because that's what I'm most familiar with, but also because the school is an MS shop and they haven't had any experience with open source. Given those parameters, we never even touched on some of the excellent suggestions made by others re: availability, failover, scalability, 'real' OOP, anything more than basic security...
I really liked the idea of hooking up the students with a CS class. I also am gravitating towards the less-code approach, though the students have already said that they wanted more code and less replication of what they had experienced in other business-oriented courses.
And as a personal note to those questioning the course itself: I'm adjunct, defined as "s/he who gets paid a token sum without benefits to teach a predefined course in an established program." It hath been determined that the business students will learn web application programming, therefore they shalt learn web application programming, and that's the gig.
Anyway, so here's where I'm leaning. Structure the course so that 30 managers (the students) are managing one developer (me). Each lecture is wrapped around understanding a specific aspect of the development process. Their assignments are built around learning enough tech to understand what is going on, being able to demonstrate an understanding of the complexities of the process, and the how code and business practices impact one another.
Again, thanks everyone for participating. Any more thoughts?
Two points here: one, there's a problem with only wanting to be exposed to what you seek out. People's methods and sources for seeking out information are usually influenced by the human need to be reassured, meaning that most users seek out perspectives that match their own. The consequence is a polarized debate where the public selectively hears only the messages they want to hear. Political Balkanization, anyone? Read Cass Sunstein's Republic.com for more on this.
And secondly, the reward isn't the salary, the issue is the ability to influence the business climate to the liking of your business constituency while in office, then the ability to peddle your subsequent 'influence' as a extraordinarily highly-paid lobbyist once you've left high office.
hhmph. Go figure. Sounds like OS X two years ago. Go KDE! Who says OSS can't innovate?
sigh...programmers. The problem here isn't a binary issue, it's an emotional one, and the vast majority of y'all aren't getting it. let's step beyond the literal meaning of the words for a moment; we should all be able to admit that American society has unresolved racial issues. Using "master" and "slave" terminology is insensitive at best and racist at worst. And if we want to talk literal meaning: "master" and "slave" implies a controller/controlled relationship. correct my understanding of the IDE bus if I'm wrong, but the "master" drive does NOT control activity on the IDE channel. the IDE controller does. So shouldn't the nomenclature reflect that?