Hope Rouselle <hrouse...@jevedi.com> writes: [...]
>> Granted you may have to restrict some features if [...] > > To let students use the entire language feels a bit weird in the sense > that the group goes in so many different directions. It definitely put > teachers in a position they have to be --- I don't know the answer. ^^^^^^^^^^ Sorry. I meant ``they [hate] to be [in] --- I don't know the answer.'' And, alas, I also find many more typos, grammar and cosmetic incoherences below, which I fix with brackets. (Not that they were needed. Only this bit above seemed to lose the meaning of the author, Your Truly.) > It is not my case. But I do think that holding a class with wildly > different backgrounds, each going about in their own weird ways[,] is > kinda odd. It doesn't seem to bring people together --- on average. > > The better-idea brings people together by leveling everyone out. > Unpopular languages give us this feature. Students hardly ever master > them. It's a game nobody played. The rules are very simple. The > implications are far-fetching. Sometimes even the programmer-expert in > class realizes he is less skilled than the total-novice that never > handled a compiler: his tricks don't work in the new game. (It's not > that we don't allow him to use them. They're not there. They don't > compile.) (We take [Chess] players, Backgammon and Checkers players [the > students], we teach them a new game, say, Go, and suddenly everyone is > learning together. Assume Go is unpopular. It's very simple. Everyone > learns the rules quickly and we spend the semester looking into > strategies. Much better idea.) > >> For my Algorithm/Data Structure course (circa 1978), the instructor >> allowed us to use any language /he/ could understand (so no SNOBOL). At the >> time I'd gone through intro/advanced FORTRAN-4, intro/advanced COBOL, Sigma >> Assembly, UCSD Pascal (not on the campus main computer, just a pair of >> LSI-11s), and BASIC. The assignment was a "Hashed Head, Multiply-Linked >> List". I chose to do that assignment using BASIC! In nearly 45 years, I've >> only seen ONE real-world implementation of the HHMLL -- The file system >> used by the Commodore Amiga. (Hash the first component of the path/name, >> that maps to one of 64 entries in the root directory block; each entry >> points the start of a linked list, follow the list until you reach the >> block with the component name; if it is a directory block, hash the next >> component and repeat; if it is a file block, the "entries" point to data >> blocks instead of lists) > > Repeating my criticism with one more illustration. When ``there's > always more than one way to do it'', students can't even count on their > classmates to help each other --- because each one is doing a different > thing. This is good in science, but what I like the most in schooling > is working together and too much freedom like seems not very helpful in > this direction. > > But both worlds [are] possible. Use a limited tool (which is not > computationally limited, quite the contrary) and tell them --- you can > do anything you want with this. [...] [Although] everyone is more or > less original, the different solutions are never too far apart, so all > the exchange is quite possible. -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list