On 2/7/07, David Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
This is my personal comment and I don't claim to speak for others, but the only thing I find militant is that sometimes it appears to me you ignore what others are saying and talk about your stuff even when it's not particularly related. The question a few others and I were responding to was whether or not it's okay to just do procedural coding and not OO coding in a CS0 course and it felt like you just wanted to repeat the way you introduce your math concepts that we have seen so many times on this list.
Yes, I suppose that's a fair criticism. On the other hand, I'm never sure when a new reader might be lurking. To speak more directly to the question, my answer is: no, teaching CS0 while bleeping over OOP is to neglect an important turn in computer science. Like a literature survey course, CS0 should be aimed at providing historical perspective and overview, as well as some enouraging sense of increasing fluency with one or more specific language or languages. I have aimed to show there are easy ways to introduce OOP early, using Python syntax as a guide, that don't require great feats of mental effort on the part of students. My Dog and Monkey show is quite accessible to average 8th graders in public school as I've proved in the field. There's nothing especially "mathematical" about it, even when a dog object eats \ a monkey object, per screencast. Using Python to slog through procedural programming for a semester rather than using it as scaffolding to develop some insights into OOP, including among beginners, is a waste of a good language and a waste of students' time. I'd be ashamed to be associated with any such curriculum. I hope this practice proves short lived. We're in a dark age right now. Lots of crappola. Kirby
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