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From: "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com>
Subject: Re: What's the best language to learn? [was Re: Should I learn C or
 Pascal?]
Date: 1996/08/18
Message-ID: <01bb8d2f$351b9500$32ee6fce@timhome2>#1/1
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references: <4u7hi6$s2b@nntp.seflin.lib.fl.us> <4uo74j$95p@ns.broadvision.com>
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Date: 1996-08-18T00:00:00+00:00
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Dr. Richard Botting <dick@silicon.csci.csusb.edu> wrote in article
<4v26j4$hkg@news.csus.edu>...
> [...]
> : > If they'd started him off with explaining, in his native language,
how to
> : sort
> : > things, and given him sample sets of cards to sort, while following
each
> : of a
> : > set of descriptions *in his native language*, he would have
understood
> : > quicksort.
> I first saw this done by a colleague with UK Freshman in their
> first programming class in 1974.   It worked very well.  I stole the
> idea and still use it.
> 
> Works with searching algorithms as well. I still looking for
> a similar thing for linked data.

Hmmm... moving a deck of cards around to learn a sorting
technique.  Reducing the problem to a very low-level set of
movement operations to help in understanding procedurally
what the computer is doing.  <s>Naaah, couldn't work.  Much easier
to focus on the high-level C abstraction of the sorting
algorithm. </s> ;->

-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)