by Dwayne Phillips<\/p>\n
I had an enjoyable evening yesterday. My son was working on a programming project for a freshman-level computer science class (college). I – after being asked – jumped into the problem. Several observations.<\/p>\n
(1) Computer science professors aren’t any better at creating meaningful programming assignments than they were 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
(2) Programming assignments are strongly dependent on the programming language being used. In this case, Python is the language being used.<\/p>\n
(3) Methods of problem solving are “caught” after a lot of instances. They are not “taught” by themselves.<\/p>\n
I guess it is this last observation that bothers me the most. I watched my son struggle with what statements to type in what order. I grabbed a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. The assignment showed the input data and the desired output data. I filled in half a dozen data structures that lay between the original and final data. We worked step by step to create each of the interim data structures. Problem solved.<\/p>\n
How did I know to do that? How did I know to do it? I guess I “caught” it over the years. Drawing the interim data structures is one method of solving a problem. I suppose there are dozens of other methods. Experience brings them to the surface.<\/p>\n
I still find it a shame that the problem solving methods are not taught directly. That finding is some manifestation of my personality – I guess.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Dwayne Phillips I had an enjoyable evening yesterday. My son was working on a programming project for a freshman-level computer science class (college). I – after being asked – jumped into the problem. Several observations. (1) Computer science professors aren’t any better at creating meaningful programming assignments than they were 30 years ago. (2) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,7,13,6],"tags":[139,130,136,129],"class_list":["post-55","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-judgment","category-logic","category-observation","tag-culture","tag-judgment","tag-logic","tag-observation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55\/revisions\/56"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwaynephillips.net\/workingup\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}