Awatarts.1121
net.cse
utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!watmath!watarts!geo
Mon Feb 8 22:45:16 1982
programming & intro computer courses
I personally feel that not nearly enough is being done to educate
non-programmers about computers.
Let me raise the following question. What role should computer pro-
gramming play in an introductory computing course?
Currently, hasn't just about every introductory computer course you
know of focussed 90% of its time and energy on computer programming?
(I would be interested in hearing about exceptions.) Teaching-
Compilers and High-speed Job Streams isolate the student from the
confusing details of a sophisticated computing environment. The in-
structor introduces the syntax and semantics of the features of some
programming language. Possibly the students are introduced to some
kind of conceptual tool, like flow-charts, or step-wise refinement.
The students, in a very painful, error-prone, sink or swim fashion,
try to emulate the examples they have read in their text, or followed
in class. A lot of what they do is `magic', they don't know why they
are doing it, but the teacher did it that way, or it seemed to help
last time. As many people have pointed out, once they get their pro-
gramme working correctly, they run it once, and throw it away. By the
end of the course they have learned to write a certain kind of trivial
programme. They probably have no idea how their programmes compare,
in terms of size and complexity with, for instance, the utilities as-
sociated with a modern operating system. They probably have a very
hazy idea of the distinction between the compiler they used, and the
operating system it was running under. By the time they finish they
probably either think they know just about everything important there
is to know about computers, or they hate and fear them more than they
did before they took the course.
Surely there is a better way to do things?
I would like to suggest that increasingly the people taking these
course are not going to have any intention of becoming (half-assed)
computer programmers. I would like to suggest that rather than teach-
ing students to use computers to help solve problems by writing pro-
grammes, which they should then throw away, that we would serve them
better if we taught them TO AVOID PROGRAMMING WHENEVER POSSIBLE.
Wise computer users use tools, why should we not teach students in in-
troductory courses to do the same? Particularly when this is probably
the only formal training in computers a great many of them are ever
likely to get.
I would not be so rash as to suggest that we should not teach program-
ming in introductory computer courses. I think that 90% of the course
hours is far too much. I think, for instance, that one of the things
that really should belong in such introductory courses is a broad
overview of the various kinds of documentation; what its for; who it
serves. I would like to hear from anyone out there who learned to
read documentation in other than a seat of the pants type fashion.
Geo Swan (watarts!geo)
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