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From: "Tim Behrendsen" <tim@airshields.com>
Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn
 C or Pascal?]
Date: 1996/09/01
Message-ID: <01bb9835$4795aa20$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>#1/1
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references: <31FBC584.4188@ivic.qc.ca>
 <01bb83f5$923391e0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>
 <4uah1k$b2o@solutions.solon.com>
 <01bb853b$ca4c8e00$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>
 <4udb2o$7io@solutions.solon.com>
 <01bb8569$9910dca0$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>
 <4urqam$r9u@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
 <01bb8b84$200baa80$87ee6fce@timpent.airshields.com>
 <4vbbf6$g0a@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> <01bb8f18$713e0e60$32ee6fce@timhome2>
 <4vroh3$17f@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
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 <503bq0$js@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>
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Date: 1996-09-01T00:00:00+00:00
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Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote in article
<503bq0$js@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>...
> 
> You don't even BEGIN to know what world I want.
> I can tell you for certain sure that we don't even begin to approach
> hailing distance of the shadow of the world I want.
> To start with, I would like students at entry
> 
> [lots of crying out for thinking, engaged students]
> 
> Tim Behrendsen, if you think assembler is more urgent than remedial
> English and elementary mathematics, we shall just have to disagree.

Well, now your getting into a whole other can o' worms.  I completely
agree with you that today's students are woefully unprepared.  Part of
it is (at least here in the US) the complete collapse of the public
school system, and part of the reason is the explosion of knowledge
of the last 50 years means that nothing can be taught in a complete
way.

I agree that education must get away from knowledge packing and
get back to the basics of learning to think.  To tell you the
truth, I'm not sure education has *ever* been devoted to learning
to think, but "knowledge packing"-style education will simply
collapse because there is too much knowledge.

But to bring it back to learning to program; don't underestimate
the specialized skills required to learn to "think like a programmer".
Programming is a quite unique skill blending abstract problem
solving with concrete data movement.  Yet, the data movement is
still abstract.

I believe that the more you can build a programming foundation
on concrete principles, the more likely a student will "get it."
Why do many people teach sorting using a deck of cards?  It's
because the student can see the cards moving around in a concrete
way.

When a student is taught using a *simple* assembly, they experience
the bytes moving around in a nice flat map.  This makes the
concepts concrete, because it's as if they are moving marbles
around in little boxes.  They can experience the data moving
around, without the confusion of the syntax.

I think one of the biggest myths in computer science is that
"HLL syntax is simple to understand."

-- Tim Behrendsen (tim@airshields.com)