From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,abd120a1d5231d28 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au (Richard A. O'Keefe) Subject: Re: Looking for a good Ada 95 book Date: 1996/11/27 Message-ID: <57gpd3$1ri$1@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 200984789 references: <3290C33B.1772@cse.eng.lmu.edu> <1996Nov23.082018.1@eisner> <577mo9$57s@news.syspac.com> <57cofr$mgf@felix.seas.gwu.edu> organization: Comp Sci, RMIT, Melbourne, Australia nntp-posting-user: ok newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-11-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: mfeldman@seas.gwu.edu (Michael Feldman) writes: >In article , Robert Dewar wrote: >In my experience, even _professors_ who do not teach first-term courses >underestimate the difficulty of doing so, and overestimate what can be >taught. First-year (and even first-term) courses are, these days, being >heaped with all kinds of stuff so that the students are "prepared" for >all successor courses. >We are doing this because we both think it's important to build the >right foundation under the students' education. We may have our >differences on some of the details, but (I think) we're quite in >sync on the underlying fundamentals. I would greatly value the opinions of the two of you as to what _should_ be taught in CS1. In this department, I'm on record as saying that I would be perfectly happy if students didn't learn about pointers at all in 1st year (or OOP), but wish that the students _were_ taught the elements of Polya-style problem solving and more particularly of _testing_. The reason why I'd dearly love to see "How-to-solve-it" approaches and testing taught in first year is that these are skills the students _need_ in first year as well as in all the other years that follow. (Oh yes, and remedial English. Did I need to say that?) -- Mixed Member Proportional---a *great* way to vote! Richard A. O'Keefe; http://www.cs.rmit.edu.au/%7Eok; RMIT Comp.Sci.