more interesting ideas from Edu-sig

["Daniel Ajoy" <da.ajoy@xxxxxxxxx>]

Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 20:03:30 +0200
From: Laura Creighton 
Subject: Re: [Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question

...

A large problem I see with people learning to program is that they try
to do too much at once. As soon as they think of a a corner case,
they rush off to write code about it, while it is fresh in theie mind.
Quite often they end up with things that never quite work.  And
when they show you things, you can see 2 or 3 obvious bugs in
the same code.  Often they interact.  So the poor student is
busy trying to fix part A of his code when it is part B, or 
both part A and part B together that is the problem.

What this student needs, more than anything else, is an ability
to think in smaller chunks. 

...


===============================
Laura then advices to test each part individually.


===============================
Date: Fri, 06 Jul 2007 14:07:20 -0400
From: "Andy Judkis" 

Jeff,

Your thoughts are very much like mine were -- the problem is so trivial and 
obvious that anyone who's spent a little time with the material should see 
the solution immediately.  But my experience shows that that's simply not 
true.  This stuff is just hard for most kids, even bright ones.

When I was in college in the late 70s, I worked as a research assistant at 
Pitt, working with people studying expert/novice differences in Physics 
problem solving. 
(http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/classics1993/A1993LZ47400001.pdf) 
The outcome of the study (which seemed pretty predictable to me) was that 
experts used concepts like momentum and energy to approach the problems, 
while novices used cues like "spring" and "inclined plane" to figure out 
what to do.  I think something similar happens with programming.  Most 
programming instruction that I've seen starts off by having the kids copy 
programs and make changes to them, and over time the ones that stick with it 
build up some conceptual understanding of what's going on.  It just seems to 
take longer than I would expect.

Thanks,

Andy