Math Forum Discussions

Brian Harvey

Posts: 127
Registered: 12/6/04

Re: teaching programming
Posted: Aug 26, 2000 4:15 PM

Plain Text

"abe kohen" <abekohen@cloud9.net> writes:
>This is quite interesting. Why not teach C++, rather than Lisp?

I didn't mean to start yet another language war. The original question
to which I replied asked about "teaching functional programming," which
I took to mean that, at least for that particular person, the broader
philosophical issues were decided and specific curricula were needed.

Of course the language choice depends on your goals. Are your students
entering the job market right after high school? By all means, teach
them C++ -- but, in that case, it's not clear that teaching a programming
language is the right thing in the first place. Arguably a high school
graduate is more employable knowing HTML than knowing C++ today.

You'd choose a functional language, maybe, if your reason for teaching
programming in high school is to recruit kids to higher education, and
specifically to the study of computer science. In that case, you'd
want an idea-heavy rather than practical-detail-heavy experience.

>And the Marxism link on your Web Page?

[Here to end off-topic. :-)]

Marxism isn't a religion for me, but without Marx's ideas I couldn't make
any sense at all of the daily newspaper -- I'd have to think that human
beings were *inexplicably* stupid and cruel, and I'd have to try to figure
out why Americans seem to be the stupidest and cruelest of all. (Please
note that I said "seem to be"; Marx helps me understand that it's only
a few Americans who are so cruel, and they aren't stupid at all.)

(And I guess I have to add that Leninism/Stalinism isn't Marxism.)

----------------------------
submissions: post to k12.ed.math or e-mail to k12math@sd28.bc.ca
private e-mail to the k12.ed.math moderator: kem-moderator@thinkspot.net
newsgroup website: http://www.thinkspot.net/k12math/
newsgroup charter: http://www.thinkspot.net/k12math/charter.html